Hardbopjazz Posted June 2, 2009 Report Posted June 2, 2009 Earliest Known Sound Recordings Revealed Researchers unveil imprints made 20 years before Edison invented phonograph Posted June 1, 2009 By Ron Cowen, Science News WASHINGTON—The muffled sounds from more than 150 years ago resemble the “wa wa” of the unseen teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. It would be impossible to know that someone was playing the coronet and guitar, although other fragments, from a dramatic speech from Shakespeare’s Othello, might be discerned if you knew the lines by heart in French. Yet these sound bites and other snippets, unveiled May 29 by historians at the annual meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, are the earliest known recordings. A bunch of wavy lines scratched by a stylus onto fragile paper that had been blackened by the soot from an oil lamp date from 1857. That’s 20 years before Edison invented the phonograph. Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville never intended for the soot-lined imprint of the sound waves to be played back, the historians reported. But the inventor hoped the visual patterns of the sound waves he had recorded using a hornlike device with the stylus attached resembling an artificial ear — called a phonautograph — might one day be read like sheet music to recreate a singer’s voice or the timbre of a musical instrument. The ful article Quote
Ron S Posted June 4, 2009 Report Posted June 4, 2009 Hear the original 1860 Au Clair de la Lune recording here. Quote
Hardbopjazz Posted June 4, 2009 Author Report Posted June 4, 2009 Hear the original 1860 Au Clair de la Lune recording here. Wow, we've come a long way from that. Quote
Claude Posted June 4, 2009 Report Posted June 4, 2009 (edited) Hear the original 1860 Au Clair de la Lune recording here. Wow, we've come a long way from that. I bet that in 150 years, our CDs will sound worse than that Edited June 4, 2009 by Claude Quote
Hardbopjazz Posted June 5, 2009 Author Report Posted June 5, 2009 Hear the original 1860 Au Clair de la Lune recording here. Wow, we've come a long way from that. I bet that in 150 years, our CDs will sound worse than that I'll check back with you in a 150 years. Quote
Niko Posted June 5, 2009 Report Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) here are some more http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php amazing that people didn't give up at that stage edit to add, on the final pages of this here http://www.firstsounds.org/public/First-So...ng-Paper-04.pdf one can actually see the recordings... Edited June 5, 2009 by Niko Quote
_forumlogo.png.a607ef20a6e0c299ab2aa6443aa1f32e.png)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.