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.
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.
referance ping
As an aside, a Scotsman named Baird quite literally "tinkered" with videodiscs back in the 1920's, and at the time even he couldn't get the playback to work to his satisfaction. Nowadays his hopes at reproducing his efforts are done very well by hobbyists.
When I listened to it I thought I heard, “Did anyone notice George’s fingernails?” Then a female voice answering, “Oh my, yes. They looked like they were eaten away by weevils.” Then, a male voice remarks, “It’s warm in here. Open a window.” Then, “Hey! What are you doing?” Then female voice exclaims, “Dear God.” After that there’s a clunking sound on the tape, a low rumple, a metallic ‘squink’ and a ‘glonk.’
Man, Solti shakes a mean stick for a bald guy, don’t he? Nilsson is simply astounding. I noticed her sneak her jacket over her shoulders when she wasn’t singing, sort of like a major league pitcher. And that Wagner feller was a heckuva composer as well as a fine shortstop. Honus. ;-)
“I wouldn’t call an .mp3 at 128 kilobytes ‘true’.”
You miss the point. The question was whether the original was a true recording, since it could not be played back without the help of technology.
The answer to that question remains yes, it is a true recording. The fact that you are listening a compressed 128-kbps MP3 of it now is irrelevant.
As an aside, I am sure that an uncompressed rendering of it existed before it was made into an MP3 for web consumption. But again, that’s beside the point. The original would have remained a true recording whether or not it had ever been played back, using any method.
bump
Der Baseballdiamond des Pittsburghen Zwergstoppen. Unggghhh!
Mythbusters did an episode on the ‘recording on clay’ thing. They said no way.
Free Republic & Mythbusters, what a combination
Seems like an audio version of Muybridge’s motion photography (though Muybridge, unlike Scott de Martinville, soon developed an interest in recreating the motion his camera banks captured.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.