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Sound recording devices have been available to us for little over a century. For most of history, neither music nor speech, or any other sounds, could be captured and replayed. Sound recording devices were developed during the late 19th century, with the first commercial playback devices sold in 1889 in Germany and 1893 in the United States. Thomas Edison, in the United States, and Charles Cros, in France, were pioneers of sound reproduction in the late 19th century. In 1877, Edison was the first to record and play back speech using a “phonograph.” He spoke into a horn fitted with a stylus at the narrow end that cut into soft wax on a cylinder, the depth of each cut reflecting the sound vibration. The earliest ...