These earliest phonographs were sold mainly to entrepreneurs who made a living out of traveling around the country giving "educational" lectures in hired halls or otherwise demonstrating the device to audiences for a fee.

The wax entertainment cylinder made its commercial debut in 1889 (a relatively well-preserved and freely available example from that year is the Fifth Regiment March, played by Issler's Orchestra[2]).

At that time, a phonograph cost the equivalent of several months' wages for the average worker and was driven by an electric motor powered by hazardous, high-maintenance wet cell batteries.

After more affordable spring-motor-driven phonographs designed for home use were introduced in 1895, the industry of producing recorded entertainment cylinders for sale to the general public began in earnest.

One important early use, in line with the original term for a phonograph as a "talking machine", was in business for recording dictation.

Attachments were added to facilitate starting, stopping, and skipping back the recording for dictation and playback by stenographers.

A significant technological development at the Edison Laboratories was devising a method to mass-produce pre-recorded phonograph cylinders in molds.

Most of the regional Edison distributors were able to fill the small early market for recordings by mechanical duplication of a few dozen cylinders at a time.

In 1908, Edison introduced a new line of cylinders (called Amberol) playing 4 rather than 2 minutes of music on the same sized record, achieved by shrinking the grooves and spacing them twice as close together.

In November 1912, the new Blue Amberol Records, made out of a type of smooth, hard plastic similar to celluloid invented by Edison labs, were introduced for public sale.

Thomas A. Edison, Inc., successor to the National Phonograph Company, continued selling cylinders until they went out of the record business in November 1929.

However, from January 1915 onwards these were simply dubs of their commercial disc records intended for customers who still used cylinder phonographs purchased years before.

In 1889, Aylsworth developed an aluminum wax, using acetate of alumina and stearic acid with sodium hydroxide added as a saponifying agent.

Two problems contributed to this, stearic quality varied from different makers; Aylsworth purchased some from Procter & Gamble and found it contained too much oleic acid.

Thomas MacDonald experimented with wax alloys with poor results: the records fogged or decomposed in the summer, just like the early Edison blanks.

Columbia resorted to hiring old Edison Phonograph Works employees, such as Mr. Storms, in order to learn their secrets.

Paraffin, ceresine, and ozokerite all look similar, making the tempering agent even more difficult to identifify by the wax mixer.

Melzer devised a formula comparable to Edison's with the exception of the tempering agent (using cocinic acid, derived from coconut oil instead.)

[4][5] This discussion was gleaned from facts provided by Walter Miller, Jonas Aylsworth, Thomas Edison, Adolphe Melzer, and Charles Wurth.

The Edison team experimented with Vacuum Deposited Gold masters as early as 1888, and it has been reported that some brown wax records were molded, although this is unproven.

The 1888 experiments were not successful due to the fact the grooves of the cylinders were square, and the sound waves were saw-tooth-shaped and deep.

The master record was put on a spinning mandrel, a pump removes the air from a glass bell jar, and two pieces of gold leaf were attached to an induction coil.

However, carnauba wax was added, as well as pine tar and lampblack resulting in a black, shiny, durable record.

The records were then trimmed, dried and cleaned, then later put on warm mandrels for 2 hours where they shrank evenly.

Nonetheless, Edison Discs for a time became the third best selling brand in the United States, behind Victor and Columbia Records.

Classical performers who became Edison artists in the late 1920s included pianists E. Robert Schmitz and Moriz Rosenthal, violinists Arcadie Birkenholz and Erna Rubinstein, the Roth Quartet, tenors José Mojica and Giovanni Martinelli, and baritone Mario Basiola.

Although several hundred lateral cut masters and stampers had been made by January 1929, the first "Needle Cut" discs were not released until August, and new titles were issued at a rate of only a few at a time each week for ten weeks before the company ceased record sales, thus only about 100 titles ever commercially appeared.

The audio fidelity was often comparable to the best of other record companies of the time, but they sold poorly not only because Edison's market share had declined to the point where it was no longer one of the leading companies and Edison had few distributors compared to leaders like Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick, but also because their brief existence did not allow them to establish any kind of market presence.

Edison's remaining wax masters and thousands of metal master molds, including unissued experimental recordings dating to several years before Diamond Discs were commercially introduced (many in a never-released 12-inch (300 mm) format), were purchased by Henry Ford, and became part of the collection of the Henry Ford Museum.