page_title: Timeline of audio formats
section_title: Timeline of audio format developments
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of audio formats / Timeline of audio format developments
caption_attribution_description: Thomas Edison and his early phonograph. Cropped from Library of Congress copy.
context_page_description: An audio format is a medium for sound recording and reproduction. The term is applied to both the physical recording media and the recording formats of the audio content—in computer science it is often limited to the audio file format, but its wider use usually refers to the physical method used to store the data.
  Music is recorded and distributed using a variety of audio formats, some of which store additional information.
caption: In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first recorder that could also play back
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