Posted on 03/27/2008 7:30:43 PM PDT by blam
World's oldest voice recording goes online
It's no-one's idea of great music -- to some, it may sound like a dolphin with tonsilitis -- but the ghostly warbling of a French folk song nearly 148 years ago comprises the oldest recording of the human voice, France's Academy of Sciences says.
The 10-second recording was made by a Parisian inventor, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on April 9 1860, when Emperor Napoleon III, the last monarch of France, was on the throne.
It was made a whole 17 years before Thomas Edison made his historic message, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a phonograph, which is the landmark event in the history of recorded sound.
Scott de Martinville's gadget, a "phonautograph", was a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke from an oil lamp.
Unlike Edison, whose great achievement was to not only record but also play back the recording, Scott de Martinville was never able to hear what was traced on the smoked paper.
It took 21st-century technology and the diligence of a team of US audio historians, recording engineers and scientists, using digital imaging to track the tiny groove in the paper, to make his dream come true.
The initiative was supported by First Sounds, a collaborative US project aimed at resurrecting long-lost early recordings.
The recording, comprising a snippet of the song "Au clair de la lune," can be heard in MP3 format on (http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/index.php).
Edison's breakthrough, in 1877, was based on tinfoil wrapped around a cylinder. The foil was indented by a stylus which moved in response to vibrations from a mouthpiece. His first recording was the initial words of a nursery rhyme.
Very cool.
bump
Cooool!
That’s great! Thanks, blam!
Just like the French to snap defeat from the jaws of victory. Thank you Thomas Edison.
Simply incredible! Thank you sir.
We take technology for granted.
way KOOL!
Wasn’t it an old disk or ceramic jar that someone put a record needle to and found a melodic tonal quality to? I remember seeing something about that in a book or online. I figured if anyone would know it’d be you?
We certainly do! Gave me shivers, almost like hearing a ghost.
Whoa...very interesting. BTT.
It’s not a true recording if it took modern computers to decode and play it, is it?
A voice recording that dates from five weeks before Lincoln first won the GOP nomination.
These are not words, since you need a computer to read them.
And through the miracle of 148 years of advances since that first recording, we now have...Ludacris.
But I shouldn’t be so cynical. This is pretty cool to hear the very first recorded sound!
The RIAA is going to have your ass!
Wasn’t the mp3 format developed in France?
“It’s not a true recording if it took modern computers to decode and play it, is it?”
No, it’s a true recording. The representation of the sound waves is recorded onto the medium. Never mind that he couldn’t figure out how to play it back; the recording is there. You can’t play back that which was not recorded.
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