Phonograph cylinders are a precursor to gramophone and latterly vinyl records and are perhaps best known for being developed by Thomas Edison in the late 19th century as the playback medium for his "talking machine" device. In fact the term cylinder record is technically correct and should be used in conjunction with a phonograph player, although in common parlance phonograph cylinder, wax cylinder and cylinder roll are often used.
However Thomas Edison was not the first to develop a means of recording sound. That honour fell to Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville who, in March 1857, patented the phonautograph, although he never got around to making a playback device. Edison managed in the summer of 1877 to figured out the principles of recording and reproducing sound and made the first actual demonstration later in the year.
By then the floodgates were open for development and a number of competing systems were developed, refined and latterly superseded.
Musiclibrary.fi maintains a large collection of phonograph cylinders/cylinder records ranging from some early brown wax examples to the more modern, commonplace Edison cylinder products.
Access will be provided to musiclibrary.fi cylinder record catalogues in the future.