Thomas Edison is the great-great-grandfather of the iPod, the first one to develop a means for sound recording and playback. He was experimenting with playing recording and playing back telegraph transmission using paper with indentations, when he conceived there might be a way to create the same for the telephone. A prototype model had a stylus moved by voice vibrations etching grooves in rapidly-scrolling paraffin paper. A revised prototype replaced the paper with a tin foil-wrapped cylinder, and while sound fidelity left much to be desired, Edison was able to accurately reproduce his short dictation.

On this day, November 21, in 1877, Thomas Edison announced the creation of the phonograph – the first of his many extraordinary inventions.

Few people believed that voice recording was possible, and Edison himself was amazed when his recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was replayed clearly. Public demonstrations earned him the title of “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” and Edison filed a patent the following February. In June of 1878 he wrote of the many possible uses of his device: music recording, elocution lessons, business correspondence without the need for stenographers, and a valuable accessory to his other great invention, the telephone.