[low.pfile]

It could have all started here:

1860 Recording: http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune.mp3

Thomas Edison wasn't the first person to record sound. A Frenchman named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville actually did it earlier.

He invented a device called the phonautograph, and, on April 9, 1860, recorded someone singing the words, "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit." But he never had any intention of playing it back. He just wanted to study the pattern the sound waves made on a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

A group of researchers found some of his old phonautograph papers and used a computer program to play the recording. They are presenting it publicly for the first time on Friday at Stanford University.  Source: All Things Considered, March 27, 2008

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89148959

Also San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/28/MNOSVSB9J.DTL&tsp=1

Thanks Thomas Edison and Monsieur Scott! We've come a long way.


Also see: http://www.firstsounds.org/

[lonewolfny42]

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=52850.0

[low.pfile]

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=52850.0

Dang it chris, And I even did a search...except keywork "Edison".  Lock-er up or move it as needed....

[Rob Babcock]

That's still a very cool article!

[lonewolfny42]

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=52850.0

Dang it chris, And I even did a search...except keywork "Edison".  Lock-er up or move it as needed....

As Rob mentioned....."That's still a very cool article!" ....I agree.
And its in the Music Circle....perfect.

Glad to see Monsieur Scott getting some credit. I did some early work on perfecting the telephone and communications....but it never took off ....too bad....it was a real money saver.......

[Russell Dawkins]

What was brilliant, I think, was his recording a tuning fork playing A at the same time as the voice recording - knowing that it would likely help playback sometime in the future to provide a pitch reference to compensate for the uneven speed of manual paper movement. Presumably it was notch-filtered out after reconstruction.

He was actually looking 147 years into the future.