Welcome to Bedtime History. Hello, this is Breck.

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Close your eyes and imagine you're sitting in a quiet room a long time ago.

There is no radio playing, no headphones, and no music coming from a phone.

If someone wanted to hear music, they had to be in the same room as musicians playing live.

A piano, a violin, or a singer's voice filled the air, and once the performance ended, the sound was gone.

For thousands of years, this was the only way people experienced music. Then inventors began asking

an exciting question. What if sound could be captured and played again? In the late 1800s,

a huge breakthrough changed everything. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first machine that could record and play back sound.

The phonograph used a needle that moved along grooves carved into a spinning cylinder.

As the grooves vibrated, they recreated sound waves, allowing people to hear recorded voices and music for the first time.

Imagine how amazing it must have felt to hear a voice from a machine when that had never happened

before.

Soon flat records replace cylinders.

These records spun on devices called record players or turntables. Music companies began recording singers and orchestras,

and families gathered around their players to listen together.

For the first time, music could travel across distances.

A singer in one city could be heard in homes around the world.

In the early 1900s, radios became popular. Instead of

choosing a specific recording, people could listen to live broadcasts sent through the air. Families

listen to music, news, and stories together each evening. Radio made audio entertainment part of everyday life.

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