Devices displayed in the Niepołomice Phonography Museum were created from the late 19th century to the last years of the 20th century and illustrate the history of sound recording, reproduction and transmission. They are displayed chronologically in seven rooms, among the original furnishings and with the accompaniment of fragments of music recordings typical for the time. Because of this, the collection can be viewed as an element of a certain whole consisting of the aesthetics of daily life in consecutive decades of the 20^th century as well as of the importance and nature of phonographic devices reflecting the place and role of music in the lives of consecutive generations. The desire to record sound has been with man since time immemorial but it was not until 1877 that it became a reality. It was then that the first device was created in Thomas Edison’s studio in Menlo Park, in the state of New Jersey, USA, that not only made it possible to record an acoustic wave but also to reproduce the recording audibly. That very fact as well as the establishment of the first record company made it possible to consider Thomas Edison the father of phonography. Despite its numerous imperfections and difficulties with the acquisition of large numbers of copies, Edison phonographs were produced until 1929. The model presented in the first room was developed in the early years of the 20th century. In 1887 Emil Berliner constructed the gramophone, a device for listening to a soundtrack recorded on another device. The recording on a gramophone record differed little physically from recording on a phonograph cylinder: it involved a change of the waveforms into analogous mechanical traces, i.e., cuts in the side walls of a groove running spirally from the edges of the record towards its centre. When a phonograph needle was placed in such a ‘saved’ track of a rotating record, the wavy surface of the groove induced its vibrations, which were transferred to the membrane. Vibrations of the membrane produced a sound wave corresponding to the recorded one. The application of a sound carrier in the form of a record in the gramophone significantly facilitated the copying process and contributed to the development of the phonographic industry. Initially, gramophones had large metal tubes to amplify sounds and a spring-loaded crank drive. One of such models from the early 20th century that stands on the round table allows us to listen to the characteristic sound of a shellac record. Shellac records came into use in 1897 and were used until the middle of the next century when they were replaced by vinyl records.