What are gramophones?

'Gramophone' is a trademark, and was an early term for what came to be known as the 'record player.' Depending on your age, however, the next question you might ask is, 'What are record players?'

A gramophone is a record player that plays flat records on a turntable (with or without amplification). They were created a few years after Edison invented his phonograph that played cylindrical records to bypass both his patents (by using a disk instead of a cylinder) and his trademarks (calling them gramophones instead of phonographs).

One of the earliest brands of gramophone sold was the Victrola.

Ultimately the gramophone design made the Edison phonograph design obsolete, but the name phonograph came to apply in the public mind to both designs and many people have completely forgotten the original meaning of the Word gramophone.