<P> Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to `` play back '' recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone . He announced his invention of the first phonograph , a device for recording and replaying sound , on November 21 , 1877 ( early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in the beginning of November , and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a ' talking - machine ' can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9 ) , and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 ( it was patented on February 19 , 1878 as US Patent 200,521 ) . `` In December , 1877 , a young man came into the office of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN , and placed before the editors a small , simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered . The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank , and to the astonishment of all present the machine said : `` Good morning . How do you do ? How do you like the phonograph ? '' The machine thus spoke for itself , and made known the fact that it was the phonograph ... '' </P>
who made possible the first reproduction of the human voice on the phonograph
Thomas Alva Edison