Commercial entertainment wax cylinders were made in their millions between the 1890s and the late 1920s. They continued in use for office, domestic and archival purposes until the arrival of the portable tape recorder in the 1950s. There was a de-facto standard for entertainment cylinders supported by Edison, but many manufacturers did not follow this standard. Dictating machines had several different standards, which ensured that they could not be interchanged between various makes of machine. Columbia (Dictaphone) and Edison (Ediphone) were the commonest makes.

Poppy records has designed and built a cylinder playing machine which can cope with almost all known cylinder formats and which can play warped or eccentric cylinders at a constant surface speed to reduce wow and flutter. We also offer a cylinder recording service