In
1892 the records had been high priced and low quality. The
return years experiments duplicating— carried out
without interruption since 1888 according Edison— had now
paid off; the moulded cylinder records that sold for cents,
T O
cost only cents make. Phonograph sales the 1890s started from a
ceiling $25,000 per annum and reached quarter million
dollars per annum the end the decade.'*'®
In 1902 The Edison Phonograph Works made nine phonograph
models, their prices ranging from $10 $100. Ten years
earlier Tate had seen that the business selling machines was
12
based the availability reasonably priced records.VIII- 6
of Wurth's trial plant and began design the automatic
machinery for the duplicating facilities Edison planned.
Edison's phonograph business had moved from amusement
parlors the living rooms average Americans."
. Each year the
twentieth century brought increase sales. 1902,
with phonograph sales soaring, the National Phonograph Company
could now deliver the right product the right time. Edison realized
the dream one his machines every home, announcing that
"There family poor that cannot buy talking
, 4
machine. Output
of records was 25,000 day 1903 and rising rapidly. The first
decade the twentieth century marked the transformation a
novelty into article mass consumption, and one part a
diversified business the core industry the Edison
enterprise
