Phonautograph
Fonoautógrafo
- Date
- 1857 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Parisian typographer Scott de Martinville patented the first known sound-recording device: a horn transmitted vibration to a membrane fitted with a stylus that traced the sound onto soot-coated paper or glass, with no way to play it back.
In 2008 a fragment of "Au Clair de la Lune" recorded in 1860 was digitally recovered, considered the oldest intelligible recording of a human voice, almost twenty years before the phonograph.
What it led to
- Earliest known graphical recordings of the human voice (1857-1860)
- Conceptual precursor of Edison's phonograph (1877)
- Digital recovery of his recordings in 2008 (First Sounds project)