Edison Cylinders

I am now the proud owner of a fairly rare part of history. These are called Edison Cylinders and if you look closely you will see that they have grooves carved into the side of them. These grooves serve the same purpose as a vinyl record groove. When Edison first commercialized sound recordings they were done on these cylinders. The first type was made out of a black wax and played for about two minutes but was very soft and could only play about thirty times. So, he improved on his methods and created the Blue Amberol series that was made out of a substance so hard you could hardly scratch it. You could play these puppies over a hundred times and they could hold about four minutes of music. These are just under a hundred years old.

This is what a cylinder looks like when it is being played.