NPS Phonograph

Disc phonograph record storage.

Preserving the Recorded Sound Collection:

The National Park Service preserves approximately 28,000 disc phonograph records, 10,000 cylinder phonograph records, and 9700 disc master metal molds at Edison National Historic Site. 

In 2005 Edison NHS completed a ten-year project to relocate, rehouse, and catalog the disc and cylinder record collections that have been at the Edison Laboratory since its donation to the National Park Service in 1956. These 38,000 phonograph records are now stored in a large walk-in refrigerator, temperature and humidity controlled, secured with intrusion and fire protection systems. The collection is meticulously organized, each item housed in an archival container and individually cataloged in a MARC-format database.

Edison NHS received the collection of 9700 disc master metal molds as a donation from The Henry Ford of Dearborn, Michigan in 2001. Originally stored in Vault 32 of the Edison Phonograph Works, plans are to return the molds to this vault, which became a part of Edison NHS in 1976. The disc mold collection is currently inaccessible. 

Presently underway is an effort to make preservation-quality digital transfers of the most significant and at-risk portions of the collection. In 1999 the Friends of Edison NHS received a grant from the Grammy Foundation to set-up an audio transfer workstation at Edison NHS. In 2001, the Mp3.com Foundation donated funds to the Friends of Edison NHS to purchase a French-made “Archeophone” cylinder record playback machine for the transfer facility. 

Several of these digitized recordings can be heard from the “Sounds”  page of the Edison NHS website. A much larger number are available online via the “Thomas Edison’s Attic”  radio program and podcast from WFMU, a non-profit radio station in Jersey City, New Jersey.