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Music Boxes
Music boxes were invented by Louis Favre in 1815, using metal combs and steel pins to produce a delicate sound. They were ornate and intricately designed and could play multiple songs. -
Phonograph
The first music-playing device able to both record and play back music was the phonograph. The old-time music player - AKA the phonograph - was created by Thomas Edison in July 1877 and captured sounds and engraved the movements into tinfoil cylinders. Edison first had the idea for a sound recording device when he was working on his diagrams for the telephone transmitter and realized he could replicate those vibration indentations for other purposes. -
Graphophone
Alexander Graham Bell — the same man responsible for the invention of the telephone — was also the first one to change Edison's design. Instead of tinfoil cylinders, Bell used wax cylinders for his graphophone because they had stronger ridges and were more effective at recording sounds. -
Gramophone
Around the same time, Bell was making his improvements, a German-American inventor by the name of Emile Berliner was working on his own modification — the gramophone. Although you will often find "gramophone" and "phonograph" used interchangeably, they are slightly different. In 1887, Berliner patented the first sound recording device that utilized grooved, flat disks, rather than cylinders. -
Radios
By Reginald Fessenden, up until the 1920s, radios were used almost exclusively for naval and military communication. However, after World War I ended, people began buying radios for private use. Eventually, public broadcast stations — including the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) — started to fill the airwaves with news updates and entertainment. Westinghouse Company's KDKA was the first radio station officially licensed by the government. -
Jukeboxes
When you consider the fact that most people today still know of — and have likely seen or even used — jukeboxes, you'll begin to understand the immense popularity of these music players after they burst onto the scene in the early 1930s. Early versions of the jukebox were technically just coin-operated phonographs, but it wasn't their function that made them popular. -
Audio Cassettes and the Walkman
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released the first audio cassettes in 1958, but it wasn't until 1966 that Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt and Johnny Mathis recorded albums on audio cassette. Sony Corp. released the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 in 1979, dominating music and pop culture for the 1980s. -
CD Players
Sony released the first commercially available CD player, known as the Sony CDP-101. When Dire Straits released their new album "Brothers in Arms" in 1985, the CD version outsold the cassette for the first time in music history. Soon after, CD sales jumped and studios shifted their focus, making these discs a permanent staple in the evolution of music-playing devices. -
MP3 Players
By Harlheinz Bradenburg., MP3 players became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s due to their portability and use of peer-to-peer websites and software, such as Apple's iPod in 2001. -
Music Streaming
By Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, after YouTube launched in 2005, internet-based music streaming and other streaming services — such as Spotify — allowed listeners to browse and select specific songs with ease. Listeners no longer need ample storage space to fit their vast libraries of downloaded music. Instead, we can now craft, save and revisit dozens of personalized playlists and share them with others in a few clicks. -
Wireless Listening
by Nathaniel Baldwin, Thanks to Bluetooth technology, there is a special emphasis on listening to music privately but without the need for wired headphones. Instead, many of today's listeners utilize rechargeable earbuds or headphones.