127 YEARS AGO

O.K., Apple Music, I like a lot of Monkees and a little Monteverdi. Now make me a playlist and let’s see how well you really know me.

Refined questions of this order have met the introduction this week of A.M. (we’re already best buds), the latest music delivery system in an age in which we take for granted that we can hear music without being in the same room as the musicians.

Rewind to May 13, 1888, when The New York Times published an article headlined “Testing the Phonograph”:

“There were strange sounds and sights in the unique headquarters of the Electric Club, in East Twenty-second-street, last night. Thomas A. Edison was there with a dozen of his perfected phonographs, and the compact little machines entertained a distinguished company of invited guests with oratorical eloquence and harmonious music. Gen. W. T. Sherman related war reminiscences, which were faithfully recorded and reproduced; Col. Robert G. Ingersoll said to a phonograph in the parlor: ‘You are the most ingenious thing that was ever worked out of the human brain,’ and the compliment came back with the clearness of a bell echo; Marshall P. Wilder told a funny story and went into convulsions when he heard himself mimicked with startling accuracy; George Parsons Lathrop dictated a story to the little mechanical wizard in a room up stairs and then watched it transmit the narrative to the ears of a printer, who deftly put it in type; the Rev. Robert Collyer and Col. Elliott F. Shepard quoted Scripture to another phonograph, and a typewriter who heard the words for the first time second hand made manifold copies for general distribution among the members of the club.”

That was very close to the beginning for recorded music — or recorded anything. But it took a while for Edison to get it right.