Jim Cartwright has given up his home and garage to a collection of CDs, LPs, 45s, 78s, wax cylinders, phonographs, cylinder players, and other audio equipment we didn't even know existed.

In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) invented the tin foil phonograph – a machine that recorded sound by indenting a sheet of tin foil into a groove in a cylinder. A later wax version was ...