records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and 
fleeting communication.” These words of Edison, published in 
the North American Review  of June, 1878, illustrate how the 
then recent telephone invention already had the power to color 
thinking in other fields. So, the record player had to be seen as 
a kind of phonetic record of telephone conversation. Hence, the 
names “phonograph” and “gramophone.”

     Behind the immediate popularity of the phonograph was 
the entire electric implosion that gave such new stress and 
importance to actual speech rhythms in music, poetry, and 
dance alike. Yet the phonograph was a machine merely. It did 
not at first use an electric motor or circuit. But in providing a 
mechanical extension of the human voice and the new ragtime 
melodies, the phonograph was propelled into a central place by 
some of the major currents of the age. The fact of acceptance