1878: Thomas Alva Edison, then best known for inventing the porno theater, develops the “phonograph,” a machine to take sound and etch it onto a cylinder with something called a “stylus,” an early precursor to pretension on the Internet. The etchings formed grooves of varying heights that, when played back, would reproduce the sounds recorded. The original cylinders were made of wax, hence the modern term “wheels of steel.” In 1878, Edison’s assistant Charles Batchelor was listening to the hot single of the day, Edison’s own “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” when he accidentally bumped into the phonograph, causing the cylinder to skip. “Mary, Mary,” went the phonograph, and thus, hip-hop was born. This will be the last mention of hip-hop in this column, as its connection to vinyl records is well-documented, and I am secretly racist.

1939: By this time, there is a phonograph in every home, by law, and the hits of yesterday and today blare on across the land. The wax had been replaced my plastic, and the cylinders were squashed into dinner-plates. Leave it to institution-bothering iconoclast John Cage to see more than just passive playback in them. In 1937, he went in front of the Seattle Arts Society to demand greater recognition for the turntable as an instrument. What a loon! By 1939 he had composed “Imaginary Landscape No. 1,” for two prepared turntables, set with recordings of pure frequencies, along with muted piano and cymbals. You’ll hear echoes of today’s electro-acoustic improv in this, which goes to show that Keith Rowe is a total biter. This recording is taken from a 1958 performance at New York’s Town Hall curated by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, so it’s very artful.

1979: Christian Marclay, student of Cage and the post-Dadaist Fluxus performance-art movement, sees Cage’s ideas and decides he didn’t take them far enough. He looks at his probably-vast record collection and sees destruction as the only answer; he takes out scissors and saws and glue and sandpaper and obliterates his vinyl, then puts a few on some turntables, and sets them off each other. The result is scraping, screeching, yawning maw symphony, which often sounds remarkably like the end of music. Naturally, he fell in with the likes of Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca, the omega and alpha, respectively, of the New York no-wave scene, and still plays frequently with the Youth, as well as folks like Otomo Yoshihide and Elliot Sharp. The piece here is from his 1988 recording More Encores, featuring tracks inspired by artists who inspired him. It features several pieces of live-performance vinyl, chopped up, and glued together to make one entirely new record. The name: “John Cage.”

1990s: Aphex Twin supposedly performs DJ sets where he throws down 12″ circular sheets of sandpaper. I have a hard time believing this, since finding concrete information about it is next to impossible, and also since The Independent recently discovered that there’s no such person as Aphex Twin, and, in fact, he’s just a robot jointly developed by the CIA and MI6 to persuade indie kids to join the army. So I don’t have an MP3 for you here, but, honestly, would you want one?

2000: There are still a few folks carrying on the avant-garde turntable torch—Yoshihide, Jan Jelinek, and DJ Olive, to name a few—but none of them wave it as fondly or as high as Liverpudlian Philip Jeck. Known outside of Europe primarily for properly recorded albums like 7 and Stoke, in the Old Country he’s made a name as an installation artist, in the sense that he performs mainly in art galleries. This particular piece, from his Vinyl Coda series of live performances, finds him at the height of his powers, mixing elements from up to eight turntables at once, looping fragments and layering them into caverns of pre-recorded sound. Released in a three-CD set by German avant-label Intermedium, much of it is out of print, so, you know, good luck and happy hunting.