Valdemar Poulsen was the first person to build a working magnetic sound recorder. He envisioned all possible media: wire, tape and disc, all of which were used on various Telegraphone machines buit in Europe and in the USA.
When the first Telegraphone wire recorder built by Mix & Genest was demonstrated at the Paris Exhibition in 1900, Poulsen recorded Emperor Franz Joseph. In his recording, Emperor Franz Joseph acknowledges Poulsen's scientific achievement and expresses his thanks for the opportunity to make a recording.
The recording that you hear is absolutely authentic and sounds as preserved during more than a century. It is also the oldest known magnetic recording, and I dare you to find another type of modern storage medium which will last that long.
Although no "cylinder" Telegraphone machine was marketed, wire models used removable reels just like more recent models did (Webster, etc.).
The wire ran at 1.5 meter per second and there was NO amplification, meaning that the microphone was directly connected to the recording head. When recording, a battery was connected in series for premagnetisation (DC bias). Even though the Telegraphone was a very archaic machine, it performed extremely well.

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