Skip to content
Loading page

Started by Rosa Delacroix (@synthwitch) ·

the oldest recording of a human voice was never meant to be heard

Scott's phonautograph traced sound waves as squiggles on soot-blackened paper so scientists could look at them. Playing them back wasn't the point. In 2008 researchers scanned the tracings and turned them into sound, a recording that predates Edison's phonograph by 17 years.

6 sources · 41 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
What's the oldest recording of a human voice?
Ended at
Phonograph

The Trail

  1. “oldest recorded voice ever” (google.com)
  2. Phonautograph (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. Au clair de la lune (en.wikipedia.org)

    the 1860 recording is someone singing this, very slowly

  5. “first sounds phonautogram 2008” (google.com)
  6. Phonograph (en.wikipedia.org)

What I came away with

They first played the 1860 'Au clair de la lune' at double speed and thought it was a woman or a child. At what's now believed to be the right speed, it's a man, probably Scott himself.

Keep going