1880s

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1887

Emile Berliner presents the gramophone, which uses a flat disc for the recording of the sound.

1888

English engineer Oberlin Smith publishes the basic principles for recording electrical signals on a magnetic support.

Thomas Alva Edison introduces an electric motor to his phonographs and incorporates wax cylinders (the previous ones were of paper covered in tinfoil).

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz proves by experiment the existence and behaviour of electromagnetic waves just as James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday had previously predicted.