His Master's Voice

It is a dream of humanity to store sounds, speech, or music and to be able to reproduce this fleeting sound with a time delay. Even Johannes Kepler, in the early 17th century, had no doubt that one day machines for speech would be created, although he predicted they would have a hollow sound. About 200 years later, one of the first phonographs indeed scratches sound waves onto a sheet of paper using a wild boar bristle. However, the journey to the shiny, analog vinyl record, which some music lovers still prefer over any digital recording, is still long. Initially, Edison experimented with tin foil and hand-cranked cylinders to improve the recording of speech from office machines. In 1887, Emil Berliner finally patented a flat record, playable with his gramophone—one of the most successful products in the entertainment industry was born, triggering a cultural revolution. Herbert Haffner tells the story of sound recording in an entertaining, exciting, and highly informative way, from the beginnings with cylinders and shellacs through the development of the long-playing record to its often-cited but never realized death amid the upheavals of the digital age of CDs, download offerings, and streaming platforms.