The trip was extended and Wangemann made numerous early sound recordings on wax cylinders, some of which were lost for more than 100 years.

[1] Wangemann began working as an assistant to Thomas Edison at his laboratory in 1888,[7] experimenting to find the best ways of recording music and voice.

[5] In March and April 1889, he recorded a number of musicians, including Hans von Bülow and John Knowles Paine.

[11] While he was in Europe, more than 2,000 blank cylinders were sent to Wangemann for this purpose and he recorded a number of prominent individuals, musicians, comedians, singers and statesmen,[8][11] and the trip turned into a public relations sensation.

[12] Beginning with artists who were at the Paris Expo, Wangemann recorded pianist Édouard Risler, the popular French café-concert singer Paulus, and Charles-Marie Widor, an organist, among others.

This cylinder became a particular favorite of Wangemann's, and he lauded the "international value" of the new American invention, which enabled a German audience to hear a Russian melody once sung by a Hungarian quartet on a French stage.

Von Siemens, a friend and business partner of Edison's, provided a special room for Wangemann, as well as a German mechanic to assist him while he toured Germany and Austria-Hungary.

In Frankfurt, where he spoke to a wider audience in a packed hall, he condescendingly made them look unsophisticated and feel unworthy of his time.

[11] During this period, Wangemann received invitations for demonstrations from Bismarck, Helmuth von Moltke,[7] Wilhelm II and Czar Alexander III of Russia, then in Berlin.

[11] Shortly before leaving Berlin, he organized a charity concert, where he charged admission, possibly his only European appearance with an entrance fee.

Despite the 20-mark entrance fee, then equivalent to an average working man's weekly wage, the hall was full, showing how eager people were to hear the voices of Bismarck and the German crown princes.

[11] Wangemann, his wife and his assistants left Berlin on October 20 and, having been unable to see von Moltke on their first attempt, spent two days with him on the way to Vienna.

The wax cylinders were found in 1957, when Edison's home and laboratory were donated to the United States' National Park Service[9] but they were unlabeled and remained unidentified until 2011, when two sound historians were able to deduce their identity.

[7] On January 30, 2012, the Thomas Edison National Historical Park announced that it had the original wax cylinder recordings of Bismarck, von Moltke, and others.

[5] According to the FamilySearch International Genealogical Index, which in 1950 made a microfilm of parish documents held at the Lutheran church in Luisenstadt,[17] a section of Berlin, an Adelbert Theodor Wangemann was born on February 13, 1855, and christened on April 13, 1855.