[Dr. Sivana]

The first time? Really? The first time EVER? Somehow I am suspecting it is “the first time in X number of years...”

There were even earlier recordings that were recorded, but unplayed:

A group of researchers has succeeded in playing a sound recording of a human voice made in 1860 – 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Roughly ten seconds in length, the recording is of a person singing “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” – a snippet from a French folksong. It was made on April 9, 1860 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on his “phonautograph” – a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. Scott never dreamed of playing back his recordings. But this morning, the dream Scott never had will come true. A cadre of audio historians, recording engineers, and scientists working in conjunction with the First Sounds initiative has transformed Scott’s smoked-paper tracings into sound.

http://www.firstsounds.org/press/032708/release_2008-0327.pdf

And yes, the creepy recording is on YouTube somewhere.

[freedomlover]

“And yes, the creepy recording is on YouTube somewhere.”

---

And yes, it still sounds better than Yoko Ono.

[cynwoody]

http://www.firstsounds.org/press/032708/release_2008-0327.pdf

According to your link, the scientist who speaks in the second part of the posted video, Carl Haber, was also among those responsible for playing back de Martinville's recordings.

It's not clear that de Martinville even attempted to build a playback device. His phonautograph was really the first audio oscillograph. And it's purpose was to study sound, not to play it back.