Thomas Alva Edison’s self-proclaimed greatest invention, the phonograph, won him overnight fame. “ Edison was after a device that would accommodate the infinite gradations of the human voice. “I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back,” Edison wrote. No wonder that Kruesi, listening with incredulity to the thing he had made talking with Edison’s voice, exclaimed, “Mein Gott im Himmel!” (My God in heaven). All those who heard the miraculous machine in the ensuing months, from the president of the U.S. on down, reacted with equal disbelief.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 17, 2019 15:11 UTC