Music in Maine

The invention of recording machines opened up a world of choices for listening to music without leaving the home.
Use the navigation tool on the left to explore the exhibition.

Wax Cylinders

Anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes traveled to Calais, Maine in March 1890 to test inventor Thomas Edison’s new phonograph in field conditions. He recorded Passamaquoddy peoples singing and speaking their language into the bell, etching them on cylinders made of ceresin, beeswax, and stearic wax. Fewkes’ recordings were the first ethnographic phonograph recordings ever made, and pivotal to further fieldwork with the Edison phonograph.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the first telephones, started the Dictaphone Company. Bell improved on Edison’s phonograph by adding new recording mediums like cylinders and disc records made of more stable materials, making sound recording practical.

Dwayne Tomah, a member of the Passamaquoddy Nation from Sipayik (Pleasant Point), discussed the importance of wax cylinder recordings made in 1890 by Jesse Walter Fewkes of his ancestors. Archives recently made the wax cylinders accessible to Passamaquoddy communities, where the remastered wax cylinders are reviving language learning and cultural teachings.

Phonographs and Record Players

Thomas Edison created the first phonograph in 1877. Also called a record player, his invention, along with the radio, changed home entertainment from people playing instruments to people listening to recordings.

Evolving from hand-cranked Victrolas to automatic disk changing record players, the machines eventually accommodated multiple records, and those of different revolutions per minute (RPM) from 78, 45, 33 and 16 RPMs.

Radios

While many inventors worked on harnessing electromagnetic waves, Italian Guglielmo Marconi created the Wireless Telegraph and Signal company in 1897, the precursor to today’s radios.

Radios changed how the world connected and communicated over distances. During the Golden Age of Radio, the late 1920s to early 1950s news, variety shows, game shows, and popular music drew millions of listeners. With the 1950s came the introduction of television, further expanding the ways people experienced music.

Classic rock radio station WBLM first aired on March 1, 1973 with the slogan, "We Are The BLiMp!" The radio station used a blimp airship as their mascot.

In 2023, WBLM commemorated 50 years of operation. The station’s original broadcast came from Litchfield, and the first song played on WBLM was The Story in Your Eyes by The Moody Blues. The station moved to Portland in 1988.