These days music is increasingly free—in just about every sense of the word. Right now, if you decided you wanted to hear, say, “Uptown Funk,” you could be listening to it in seconds.

In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) invented the tin foil phonograph – a machine that recorded sound by indenting a sheet of tin foil into a groove in a cylinder. A later wax version was ...

In a way, of course, all this goes back to Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph 80 years earlier. Back then, he thought he was inventing a playback dictaphone machine, which would make ...

Designated at the present sites of Edison's three research laboratories: the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida, on May 25, 2014; at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West ...

In 1882, in a townhouse at 136 East 36th Street in New York City, Edward Hibberd Johnson had an idea that would make him the unsung set decorator of a zillion holiday snapshots. Fronted by a ...

Working in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison gained fame through his various inventions, including the phonograph. His Kinetoscope, which showed moving images through a pinhole, was the forerunner to ...