The Edison Bottle, The World’s First Beer Bottle to Play Music

For the Beck’s Record Label project, creative agency Shine Limited created the Edison Bottle, the world’s first playable beer bottle. The bottle is inscribed with the single “Here She Comes” by New Zealand band Ghost Wave from their album Ages and can be “played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison’s original cylindrical phonograph.”

Making the world’s first playable beer bottle was a formidable technical challenge. The clever people at Auckland firm Gyro Constructivists first had to design and build a record-cutting lathe, driven by a hard drive recording head. Then they reinvented Edison’s original cylinder player, using modern materials and electronics and built to very fine tolerances. The Edison Bottle made its public debut at SemiPermanent in Auckland in May to a standing ovation from the assembled media and design community.

Beck’s has had a long association with music and art. In fact, at about the same time Heinrich Beck was brewing his first beer in the 1870s, Tom Edison was tinkering away on designs for the first phonograph. Considering how beer has influenced recorded music since then, this physical collaboration was very appropriate and long overdue.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips