The earliest commercial sound recordings used Thomas Edison's phonograph technology - wax cylinders. In the late 19th Century, Emil Berliner (1851-1929) developed the gramophone, which employed flat discs instead of cylinders. Cylinders and discs co-existed for a few years, but eventually Berliner's discs won out and became the dominant technology. The discs in this collection represent some of the earliest published disc recordings, and offer a unique insight into the earliest years of music and spoken word recording.