In December 1877, a journalist writing in Scientific American noted there was a now ‘a startling possibility of recording voices of the dead’. He had just witnessed Edison recording sound on his new invention: the phonograph.

In this live demonstration, I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of audio recording, as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph.

Delving into the archives, I’ll also examine a little-known curiosity from the eighteenth century, one which may have been used to record short segments of sound 150 years before the phonograph.

This event will include some short, musical interludes incorporating a few of my inventions. As I use the theremin to conjure up ‘music from the aether’, I’ll reveal how the first ‘electric servants’ were also seen as tools for paranormal investigation.

At The Last Tuesday Society, 10 December 2010.

Here’s an Edison phonograph recording, freshly made at the London Dorkbot Christmas party, December 2009.

Dorkbot is a meeting for ‘people doing strange things with electricity’ so the phonograph is an odd guest as it records and playback sounds using no electricity at all. As you can see when I lift the lid (see video), this machine is entirely mechanical. You turn up a handle to wind up a spring. This unfurls over several minutes, supplying the Edison with energy. Sound recordings are made using nothing more than a heavy stylus and a horn…