Wax cylinder

Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Known simply as records in their heyday, a name since passed to their disc-shaped successors, these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. The first cylinders were wrapped with tin foil but the improved version made of wax was created a decade later, after which they were commercialized.

In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.

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Source: Wikipedia · Image: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

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