Pre-Edison voice recording found in Paris
Published: March 27, 2008 at 5:52 PM
BERKELEY, Calif., March 27 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists said a recording of a French folk song made two decades before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph has been converted to sound.
The 10-second recording made on April 9, 1860 was discovered earlier this month in Paris, the New York Times reported Thursday.
It was recorded on a phonautograph, which was designed to record sounds visually but not to play them back. The squiggles were converted to sound by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., the newspaper said.
The phonautograph, invented by French typesetter Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, had a horn attached to a stylus that etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke. Audio historian David Giovannoni will play the recording Friday at a meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in Palo Alto, Calif.
The 10-second recording made on April 9, 1860 was discovered earlier this month in Paris, the New York Times reported Thursday.
It was recorded on a phonautograph, which was designed to record sounds visually but not to play them back. The squiggles were converted to sound by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., the newspaper said.
The phonautograph, invented by French typesetter Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, had a horn attached to a stylus that etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke. Audio historian David Giovannoni will play the recording Friday at a meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in Palo Alto, Calif.
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This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
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