How Beck’s turned an ordinary beer bottle into a phonograph

While Heinrich Beck was beginning his brewing business in Germany in the late 1800’s, Thomas Edison was across the Atlantic Ocean working on his phonograph. Now, over a hundred years later, the Beck and Edison have merged their areas of expertise to create a beer bottle phonograph.

The first music-playing beer bottle. (Image via Shine Limited)

Maybe you’re used to seeing the traditional disc-shaped phonograph, but before that came the cylindrical device that could play minutes of music on it.

Beck’s Record Label and creative agency, Shine Limited, got together to reinvent this version of the phonograph using a beer bottle as the cylinder.

The actual phonograph was constructed by a New Zealand firm called Gyro Constructivists that designed and built a record-cutting tool driven by a hard-drive recording head. Then, they carved out the bottle as needed and made some adjustments to Edison’s original cylinder player using some more modern electronics.

Grooves on a normal record (left) vs. grooves on the Edison Bottle (right). (Image via Shine Limited)

Featured on the phonograph is New Zealand indie rock band “Ghost Wave,” playing their new single “Here She Comes.” The Edison bottle played its 3-minute and 23-second song publicly for the first time at the SemiPermenant creative event for the art and design world last month.

Watch this video below to listen to the first beer bottle player.