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Pre-Edison Audio Recording Discovered
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Researchers have found a recording of a human voice dating from 1860, shedding light on the work of a little-known French inventor.
30-Second Summary
Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter, recorded a 10-second clip of a human voice singing the folk song “Au Clair de La Lune” on his phonautograph machine.
The device, which recorded sounds visually but could not play them back, predates Thomas Alva Edison’s first phonograph by nearly two decades.
Created April 9, 1860, the 10-second clip was discovered by historians in a Paris archive earlier this month and was made playable for the first time by scientists at a lab in Berkeley, Calif.
Regardless of the discovery, Edison remains the first person to reproduce sound with his phonograph machine, which brought him fame and ushered in a new era of music.
“Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery,” said David Giovannoni, an American historian who led the research effort.
However, the discovery has finally shed light on de Martinville’s achievement, as he believed that credit for his breakthroughs in sound recording had been improperly given to Edison.
“What are the rights of the discoverer versus the improver?” de Martinville wrote before his death in 1879. “Come, Parisians, don’t let them take our prize.”
The history of invention is rife with stories of disputed claims and competing egos.
American inventor Elisha Gray missed his chance at history when he filed his patent for the telephone a few hours after Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The U.S. Patent Office gave the patent to Bell, although Gray started a lengthy litigation process.
Edison is also given historical credit for the invention of the incandescent lamp, although English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan produced an early electric light bulb in 1860. Edison’s light bulb, however, was the first that was commercially viable.
The device, which recorded sounds visually but could not play them back, predates Thomas Alva Edison’s first phonograph by nearly two decades.
Created April 9, 1860, the 10-second clip was discovered by historians in a Paris archive earlier this month and was made playable for the first time by scientists at a lab in Berkeley, Calif.
Regardless of the discovery, Edison remains the first person to reproduce sound with his phonograph machine, which brought him fame and ushered in a new era of music.
“Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery,” said David Giovannoni, an American historian who led the research effort.
However, the discovery has finally shed light on de Martinville’s achievement, as he believed that credit for his breakthroughs in sound recording had been improperly given to Edison.
“What are the rights of the discoverer versus the improver?” de Martinville wrote before his death in 1879. “Come, Parisians, don’t let them take our prize.”
The history of invention is rife with stories of disputed claims and competing egos.
American inventor Elisha Gray missed his chance at history when he filed his patent for the telephone a few hours after Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The U.S. Patent Office gave the patent to Bell, although Gray started a lengthy litigation process.
Edison is also given historical credit for the invention of the incandescent lamp, although English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan produced an early electric light bulb in 1860. Edison’s light bulb, however, was the first that was commercially viable.
Headline links: Researchers play tune recorded before Edison
De Martinville recording of “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860, predates Edison's of "Mary Had a Little Lamb." In his memoirs, de Martinville accused Edison of “appropriating” his methods. However, there is no evidence that Edison drew on his work to invent the phonograph, and he remains the first person to mechanically reproduce sound. “Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery,” said David Giovannoni, an American audio historian who led the research effort.
Source: The New York Times
New York Magazine calls de Martinville’s phonautograph “the world’s first and most useless recording device.”
Source: New York Magazine
Reaction: BBC newsreader loses it on air
A colleague’s joking remark that the pre-Edison recording of Au Clair de la Lune sounded like a “bee buzzing in a bottle” caused Charlotte Green to break into a fit of giggles. Green is an award-winning newsreader who has been with BBC Radio 4 for about 10 years.
Source: The Times of London
Audio of BBC broadcaster Charlotte Green’s laughing fit is available on the BBC Web site.
Source: The BBC
Related Topics: History’s contested inventions
Sir Joseph (Wilson) Swan, an English physicist and chemist, produced an early electric light bulb in 1860, and in 1880 he created a carbon-filament incandescent electric lamp independent of Thomas Alva Edison. His other inventions include a process for squeezing nitrocellulose through holes to form fibers and the dry photographic plate, an important improvement in photography.
Source: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2007
The incandescent lamp is a device that heats a suitable material to a high temperature to produce light. Joseph Swan and Thomas Alva Edison both developed independent models in the late 1870s. Edison received historical credit because of his development of power lines and other equipment necessary for a lighting system.
Source: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
American inventor Elisha Gray contested Alexander Grahams Bell’s claim to have invented the telephone. Gray filed his patent caveat—an announcement of his intention to file a claim for a patent—for the telephone on the same day Graham filed his on Feb. 14, 1876. The U.S. Patent Office gave the patent to Bell, although Gray started a lengthy litigation process that eventually came out in favor of Bell. “The history of the telephone will never be fully written … It is partly hidden away … and partly lying on the hearts and consciences of a few whose lips are sealed—some in death and others by a golden clasp whose grip is even tighter,” Gray wrote in a note that was found after his death.
Source: PBS
Reference: Edison invents the phonograph
On Nov. 21, 1877, Thomas Alva Edison announced that he had devised a method to record sound with the phonograph. The device was a marvel of engineering that ushered in a new era of music, spoken word and celebrity.
Source: findingDulcinea
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