EIGHT readers managed to identify last week's Craven Curiosity.

Lesley Mason, David Henderson, Jonathan Mosley, Anne Lindsay, David Heather, Steven Mawdsley, Phyllis Capstick and HJ Hill guessed that it was an old phonograph cylinder.

And the latter gave a very full description, adding: "The song on the cylinder in the Herald’s photograph was recorded in London on January 15, 1906, and the vocalist was Stanley Kirkby.

"The phonograph was manufactured by Edison Bell who bought Thomas Edison’s phonograph UK patent rights for a staggering £40,000 in 1893; and produced cylinders until January 1914. In 1909 they started to manufacture gramophone records (discs), where the groove wiggled side-to-side.

"The popular music culture format of the three-minute song owes much to the playing time of the phonograph cylinder and its replacement, the 78rpm gramophone record."

Experts at Craven Museum and Gallery concur.

They add: "A phonograph is the earliest example of recording and reproducing sound. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant market leader in audio."

All items featured in this column can be viewed at the Craven District Council-run museum which is located at Skipton Town Hall.

Meanwhile, we are inviting guesses about this week’s mystery object. Suggestions can be emailed to news@cravenherald.co.uk, to arrive no later than noon on Monday.