Friday, April 4th, 2008

Oldest Recorded Song is Heard

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Leon Scott's 1857 phonautograph , the first machine to record sound. Smithsonian Institution image.

Hear the first known recorded sound, recorded April 9, 1860. The words being sung are "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit." Recording courtesy First Sounds

Audio historians have found a sound recording that pre-dates Edison's phonograph. The device, the 'phonautograph,' was invented by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville abd patented in 1857, some 20 years before Edison unveiled the phonograph. The device recorded images from sounds, tracing squiggles in black soot coating a surface. Recently, First Sounds, a group of audio historians, was able to play back one of Scott's recordings by scanning the phonautogram image and using computer software to translate the squiggles back into sound waves -- a feat that was not technologically possible when the sounds were first recorded.

In this segment, we'll talk about the 'phonautograph' and take a listen to the recording, a 10 second recording of someone singing the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune," recorded April 9, 1860. Why are some inventors and inventions almost lost to history?

Guests

Patrick Feaster
Instructor, Department of Communication and Culture
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana

Related Links

Segment produced by:Karin Vergoth

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Image: Drawing of a phonautograph from the Century Dictionary, 1911.

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