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.
Wow. So I don’t get it. How did the guy know he was recording sound if he wasn’t able to play it back?
Sounds as good as all the other MP3’s I’ve heard...
I find this fascinating!
My most favorite poet, James Whitcomb Riley recorded some of his poetry by a process called pressing. It was ‘recorded’ by the Victor Talking Machine, in 1912. (My parents weren’t even born yet!)
Hear some of his poetry on the Victor Talking Machine, here - 4 years before his death at age 67:
http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Friley
Thank you for posting this!
Yup. I've read something along that line too.
What it was IIRC some kind of pottery. When they put the clay on the wheel and start to turn it, then use their hands and utensils to shape it, it picked up sonic vibrations and recorded it into the pot.
I was a clay pot from a wheel....and the story is that you could “hear” what was happening during the manufacture of the pot since the sound vibrations were transcribed into the pot. They played back the “sound” saying it was the sound of the wheel ...
man ... and I thought 128 bit mp3 sucked for sound quality.
man ... and I thought 128 bit mp3 sucked for sound quality.
Much warmer and richer than the wax cylinder adopted by the technogeeks later on.
That sounds about right. (pun intended)
Ah! The fat lady sings, lol.
I got an mp3 of a lead cylinder recording. For a clock, iirc. I wonder how many times it could be used. (The lead cylinder, not the mp3).
And a year before my great-grandfather (born in 1833) joined the Confederate cavalry!
I wouldn’t call an .mp3 at 128 kilobytes “true”.
Awesome.
ONLY 34 years after the death of John Adams... cool to think only a few years difference, and we'd be able to hear the orator of the American Revolution.
The bad news is that if you download this recording, John McCain will come after your life savings.
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