The humble turntable as we know it today has only been around for seven or so decades, but its technological roots go back over 160 years.
In 1857, French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville showcased his phonautograph. It used a vibrating diaphragm and stylus to record sound waves by tracing them on sheets of paper, but it could only visualise sound waves and thus could not play them back. It was this concept that led to Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877.
