A gramophone record (also vinyl record, vinyl, phonograph record, or simply record) is an analogue sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc. (Some commercial-use only records ran the groove from the center to the edge of the record.) Gramophone records were the primary medium used for commercial music reproduction for most of the 20th century. They replaced the phonograph cylinder as the most popular recording medium in the 1900s, and although they were supplanted in popularity in the early 1990s by digital media, they continue to be manufactured and sold as of 2008. Gramophone records remain the medium of choice for some audiophiles, and specialist areas such as electronica.
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 built by Edouard-Leon Scott of
In 1877, Thomas Edison developed the phonautograph into a machine, the phonograph, that was capable of replaying the recordings made. The recordings were made on tinfoil, and were initially intending to be used as a voice recording medium, typically for office dictation. This initial machine was developed further by Edward Guilliard, though his developments were subsequently incorporated into
This 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