Edison cylinder phonograph ca. 1899
A 10-inch gramophone blank for self recording with 78 rpm, 1948, brand as material "Decelith" with special surface for hardening. A device utilizing a vibrating pen to graphically represent sound on discs of paper, without the idea of playing it back in any manner, was described by Charles Cros of France in 1877, but never built.

In 1877, Thomas Edison independently built the first working phonograph, a tinfoil cylinder machine, intending to use it as a voice recording medium, typically for office dictation. The phonograph cylinder dominated the recorded sound market beginning in the 1880s. Lateral-cut disc records were invented by Emile Berliner in 1888 and were used exclusively in toys until 1894, when Berliner began marketing disc records under the Berliner Gramophone label. The Edison "Blue Amberol" cylinder was introduced in 1912, with a longer playing time of around 4 minutes (at 160 rpm) and a more resilient playing surface than its wax predecessor, but the format was doomed due to the difficulty of reproducing recordings. By November 1918 the patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records expired, opening the field for countless companies to produce them, causing disc records to overtake cylinders in popularity.

Disc records would dominate the market until they were supplanted by the Compact Disc, starting from the 1980s. Production of Amberol cylinders ceased in the late 1920s.