The phonograph stands as one of the two inventions most directly linked to Thomas Alva Edison's name. A device for recording and reproducing sound, it represents the kind of work that defined his career as an inventor — practical, material, and aimed at altering how people moved through the world.

Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, a citizen of the United States who worked in English throughout his life. He received education at Cooper Union, and from those foundations he developed a career that ran along two tracks at once: inventor and businessman. These were not separate phases but simultaneous pursuits. His work on the incandescent light bulb, the other invention most closely associated with him, reflects the same dual orientation that characterized his approach across his working life.

Edison died on October 18, 1931, in West Orange. By that point he had accumulated a record as both a maker of devices and a figure in commerce, the two roles he had occupied in tandem since the beginning. The incandescent light bulb and the phonograph are the inventions the FACTS identify as central to his legacy, and it is on those two concrete achievements that any account of his life properly rests.