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Far from having been viewed at the beginning of its history as a medium for music, the record initially was a talking machine. The translation of this scientific and technological invention into a cultural medium resulted from a triple innovation –?a technological, commercial and cultural one–? which occurred during the first half-century of its existence. We propose to analyze this process with tools forged by the sociologies of innovation and of uses in order to reconsider the most widespread stories of the record: this allows one to give its full importance to this central cultural revolution of the 20th century and, also, to understand some of the most recent transformations ongoing in the audiovisual world.