After American Thomas Alva Edison discovered in 1877 that sounds could be recorded and reproduced mechanically, the cylinder phonograph he invented for this purpose did not remain without competition for long. Only ten years later, his colleague Emil Berliner, who had emigrated to the States from Germany, applied for a patent for his so-called gramophone which, as a device used purely for playing, was the forerunner of the record player. Instead of the cylinder glued with tin foil that was used on Edison’s device, signals were now stored on a flat disc which was originally made of hard rubber. However, as this had a maximum capacity of 90 seconds, Berliner developed a mixture based on shellac and used this as a carrier material from 1897.

Despite initial problems with background noise, the gramophone and record asserted their dominance over the cylinder phonograph at the beginning of the 20th century. Their advantage lay mainly in the fact that the manufacture of matrices made mass production possible. The record – mostly made of vinyl after the Second World War – was the leading sound carrier medium until the music cassette and CD came onto the market in the 1970s and 1980s respectively. Nowadays it has become a niche product that enjoys popularity above all among music enthusiasts.