<P> The use of a flat recording surface instead of a cylindrical one was an obvious alternative which thought - experimenter Charles Cros initially favored and which practical experimenter Thomas Edison and others actually tested in the late 1870s and early 1880s . The oldest surviving example is a copper electrotype of a recording cut into a wax disc in 1881 . The commercialization of sound recording technology was initially aimed at use for business correspondence and transcription into writing , in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages , the storage of large numbers of records seemed unlikely , and the ease of producing multiple copies was not a consideration . </P>
<P> The use of a flat recording surface instead of a cylindrical one was an obvious alternative which thought - experimenter Charles Cros initially favored and which practical experimenter Thomas Edison and others actually tested in the late 1870s and early 1880s . The oldest surviving example is a copper electrotype of a recording cut into a wax disc in 1881 . The commercialization of sound recording technology was initially aimed at use for business correspondence and transcription into writing , in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages , the storage of large numbers of records seemed unlikely , and the ease of producing multiple copies was not a consideration . </P>
when did the records take over the production of the phonographs
when did the records take over the production of the phonographs
1881
1881