this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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History Memes

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] tomiant@piefed.social 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The ancient greeks had early grammophones, and they ditched the idea because what the fuck you need that for.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've never heard that before, do you know what the device was called or what to look up for it?

[–] SystemDisc@piefed.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This is all I could find on Google, sorry it’s an output from Gemini…

None of them are gramophones, but they do have similarities.

  • Antikythera Mechanism (c. 2nd Century BC)
    • The First Device: It is the earliest known complex mechanical analogue device.
    • Gramophone Analogy: It uses an intricate, hand-cranked system of gears to decode physically "stored" mathematical information into a readable output.
  • The Hydraulis (Hydraulic Organ) (3rd Century BC)
    • Gramophone Analogy: Later versions utilized rotating pinned barrels that held pre-coded musical compositions to play songs automatically without human performance.
  • Hero’s Programmed Cylindrical Automata (1st Century AD)
    • Gramophone Analogy: They relied on a rotating cylinder wrapped with ropes and pegs to mechanically "record" and playback a sequence of physical actions and acoustic sounds.
  • Hero’s Automatic Trumpet Alarm (1st Century AD)
    • Gramophone Analogy: It used a kinetic trigger to instantly convert mechanical energy into a specific, predetermined acoustic playback through a brass horn.
[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago

The cylindrical automata is probably the closest, but that's more like a music box (still very advanced and cool) than a gramophone.