Recording technology began in 1877 with Thomas Edison's "talking machine," and during the first decade of the twentieth century Americans could buy recordings of opera and classical music; In the 1910s the sound-recording business took off, owing in large part to the dance craze sweeping the country. Between 1912 and 1916 number of commercial recording companies grew from just three — Victor, Columbia/and Edison to forty-six, and Victor's assets doubled. By 1919 some two hundred companies were manufacturing nearly two million record players a year, and spite their high price.(anywhere from $375 $2,000), public demand exceeded the supply. addition to the hundreds of dance-music releases, popular records included John Philip Sousa's "Liberty Loan March," recorded by Sousa's band; George M. Cohan's wartime anthem, "Over There,", recorded by vaudevillian Nora Bayes and by opera star Enrico Caruso; many versions of Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band'"; "and after...