And welcome to the exciting world of antique music machines! I hope that you will find the information presented here informative and that you will visit us again to view additions that will be made often. I have placed links to sections with photos of the machines and the media that started the recording industry over 100 years ago! There is also a section where you can email us with questions regarding phonographs/records that you may have and need to have evaluated. We also repair, sell and buy phonographs and all related material. So please sit back and enjoy your stay.

The image above is of a Berliner phonograph from just before the turn of the century, about 1898. At that time, Thomas Edison was a big manufacturer of the phonograph that started the whole recording industry in 1877. In that year he invented the first machine to record and playback the human voice! His "Mary Had A Little Lamb" dictation has been immortalized in word, text and film. Edison soon left the phonograph to pursue the electric light and Alexander Graham Bell filled the void. Actually, it was his nephew Chichester Bell and Tainter who worked out the details of a more commercial phonograph product line called the Graphophone. Both the Graphophone and Phonograph used, as a recording and playback medium, a cylinder in the shape of a tube. On this tube, numerous comedy routines, vaudeville and song and march were recorded and America could now enjoy them right in the comfort of the front parlor. Emile Berliner, a German immigrant, saw it a different way. He put his material on a disc. The advantage of the disc record was not so obvious at first, but eventually it was to turn the recording industry around. In any event, disc or cylinder, the entertainment was produced and reproduced acoustically...that is to say without the advantage of any electronics whatsoever! And you didn't need to plug the machines in since they ran on mechanical power. They were spring driven just like the mantel clock!