Ongoing History Daily: Famous firsts in music, part 3

Here are three famous firsts when it comes to recording music. We’ll start in 1877 when Thomas Edison was testing his new talking machine. He recorded himself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to see if his invention worked. Not exactly a song, but you get the idea.

Then we go back to 1960 when inventor and musician Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville created a waveform of him singing a song called “Au clair de la lune.” He couldn’t play it back, but the waveform of his voice was preserved.

And how about this: There is a theory in some circles of archeology that in ancient times, spinning pottery wheels may have accidentally recorded what was going on in their immediate vicinity. The idea is that human hand etched soundwaves into clay just like we cut grooves into vinyl. If this is proven true—and if we ever figure out a way to play back those sounds—we might one day hear what things sounded like six thousand years ago.