A Brief History of Sound Recording Technology | The Sound Continuum

The first known synchronized sound recording was made in 1894 by William K.L. Dickson, an inventor working with Thomas Edison. Titled the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, it shows a man playing the violin into a recording horn while two others dance. This early attempt at combining motion pictures with sound used Edison’s Kinetophone, which paired a Kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer) with a phonograph. Although not widely adopted at the time, this experiment marked an important step toward sy