The gramophone: a box that “stores a word” and freezes sound, just like photography freezes an image. Its immediate ancestor was the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison at the end of the 19th century.  This phonograph from the Museum’s collection is one example and it is powered by a special crank. Sound was recorded with a needle on a cylinder placed on the roller, and playback proceeds in the same way. The loudspeaker and microphone was a large metal funnel-shaped tube in order to amplify sound.