Ongoing History Daily: The first recorded sound
Recorded sound has been around for a lot longer than most people realize. But I’ll bet you’re thinking about Thomas Edison and his talking machine and Emile Berliner’s rotating discs. You’re not going back far enough. Come with me to 1860 when a Frenchman named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville made something he called a “photoautogram” of him singing a folk song called “Au Claire de La Lune” using a device that etched a waveform on paper.
About 150 years later, that waveform was turned into actual of audio. It sounds like a woman, but we think it’s Edouard himself. Speed control was a little tough in those days. The first known instance of recorded music, made on April 9, 1860.
