Culture

In the 1890s, the idea of a “record industry” was a novel concept. The phonograph had only been invented in 1877, its close cousin the gramophone patented and made available for purchase little more than a decade later. The notion that you could hear a sound at a time other than when it was being created? Until recently, this had been beyond the pale of possibility, akin to the first decades of the photograph, just starting to shift the sonic and cultural contours of daily life.