Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Phonograph
/ˈfoʊnəɡræf/noun
An early machine that recorded sound as a groove and played it back.
The Greek roots
φωνή
phōnḗ
voice, sound
γράφω
gráphō
to write, scratch
Literally: “sound-writer”
The story of the word
The name is literal about the mechanism, since γράφω first meant to scratch: a needle cut a physical trace of the pressure wave into tinfoil. Edison built his in 1877 and listed the likely uses in order, with office dictation and talking books ahead of music, which he thought a minor application. Léon Scott had already made a phonautograph in 1857 that wrote sound down accurately but had no way to play it back, so those traces waited until 2008 to be heard by computer.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1877
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
telephonesymphonyphotographphoneticsgraphite
In a sentence
The phonograph in the corner still works if you crank it long enough.