Thomas Edison's cylinder phonograph was fantastic, no doubt. Can you imagine what it would've been like to hear the first artificial sound? But Edison's mind for the accurate doomed his cylinder, because the cylinder as it turns out is a really stupid shape for this sort of a thing.
Emile Berliner threw accuracy to the wind with his disc phonograph, assuming people would rather deal with an easier and cheaper phonograph than a more "scientifically correct" one. Boy was he right.
We explore Berinler's idea of storing sound in a different way on a different shape in this episode of Technology Connections.
