Beer Bottle Meets 19th-Century Phonograph, Makes Beautiful Music

While Beck’s Beer was kicking off its first brews in Bemen, Germany, Thomas Edison was dreaming up the first phonograph, which he created in 1877. (His first recorded words were “Mary had a little lamb.”) Though phonographs have long been replaced, Beck’s is still around.

As a salute to “how beer has influenced recorded music” since the phonograph’s debut, members of Beck’s Record Label project decided to collaborate with music and engineering experts in New Zealand to create the Beck’s Edison Bottle—a music-playing beer bottle.

Here, you can see how they tinkered with the concepts behind Edison’s original phonograph to make a beer bottle sing. A song by an Auckland-based band called Ghost Wave received the first bottle-playing honors.

<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/68007497" width="575"></iframe>

More from Smithsonian.com:

History According to Beer
Thomas Edison a.k.a. the Movie Mogul Who Started LOLCats

Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.