In one of them, an angry wife records herself lecturing her absent husband, so that when he finally returns from the bar, he can simply play the record and let her sleep. Puck, a New York-based humor magazine, published several illustrations suggesting alternate uses for the technology. The cover of the March 21st, 1878 Daily Graphic, depicting various phonograph mishaps. On March 21, 1878, the front page of the illustrated newspaper The Daily Graphic featured ten separate sketches of ways phonographic technology might go wrong: greedy thieves might trick elderly millionaires into vocally amending their wills sketchy neighbors might use opera recordings to lure women out of their homes and wives might frighten their husbands out of sleep by cranking a record that yells “POLICE! FIRE!” over and over again. “He has been addicted to electricity for many years,” the editorial posits, tongue firmly in cheek, before more seriously alleging that the phonograph, with its ability to record speech, “will eventually destroy all confidence between man and man.”Ĭartoonists had an especially good time with the phonograph. The aforementioned New York Times editorial leans equally on scaremongering and humor, switching between over-the-top mockery and genuine fear. While plenty of outlets sung the praises of this new techno-talker, others took the opportunity to poke fun. The news media responded swiftly and variously. Scientific American describes a typical show: Edison put the machine on a table and turned the crank, and the phonograph proceeded to “talk,” introducing itself and exchanging various pleasantries with gaping onlookers. Throughout the winter of 1877 and the spring of 1878, he traveled the world demonstrating his newest invention, the phonograph. Brown University Library/Public DomainĮdison was a big player in this era of discovery. One of Edison’s phonograph demonstrations, illustrated by Paul Uestel. At times, to the layperson, “progress seemed like an onslaught of newness for its own sake,” writes the media scholar Ivy Roberts in a new paper in Early Popular Visual Culture. Inventors were expected to prove how revolutionary their new gizmos were, and in turn, publications rewarded them with breathless coverage. In such a competitive atmosphere, novelty, more than usefulness, was the order of the day. In 1878 alone, the world was introduced to Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Eadweard Muybridge’s stop-motion photography, and Gustav Kessel’s espresso machine, to name just a few world-changing examples. The late 1870s marked a time of great inventiveness. Although Edison elicited reams of fawning and excited coverage, the publications of his time also occasionally painted the great man and his inventions as creepy and dangerous-or, more often, just plain laughable. But a trip back into the archives reveals that he was not always so revered. Although he had his fair share of scandals-the War of Currents, the Great Phenol Plot, the patent disputes-his modern reputation paints him as a man who single-handedly invented the 20th century with an electric-light halo around his head.
Looking back on Edison now, it’s easy to see him as a perpetual hero. Their target was Thomas Edison, and the provoking incident was his recent invention of the phonograph. But the Times wasn’t skewering a corrupt politician, or even a rival newsmaker.
“Something ought to be done,” about this person, they began, “and there is a growing conviction that it had better be done with a hemp rope.” Their subject, they alleged, was a public figure “of the most deleterious character,” hell-bent on “the destruction of human society”-all words fit for a true enemy. On March 25, 1878, in an unsigned editorial, The New York Times spent a few column inches dragging a public figure through the mud. Edison poses by his phonograph in a photograph from 1878.
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