Imagine, the first sound recording ever made wasn't a song but the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb! The American inventor, Thomas Edison, recorded it in 1877, on a device he named a "phonograph", meaning "sound writer". Using this device a person could speak while turning a cylinder on which a needle recorded the vibrations of the voice on tin foil. Playing back the sound was a simple case of placing the needle back at the start of the groove originally made in the tin foil and turning the cylinder.