The beauty of discoveries lies in the fact that ‘the first’ tag may not be permanent always. Since time immemorial, people believed Thomas Edison was the inventor of the sound recording concept and that the Phonograph was the first sound recorder. However, with the recent discovery of the Phonautograph, there seems to be an aberration in this belief. Apparently, the first sound recording was made almost 17 years before the birth of the Phonograph. The 10-second audio was recorded by a French typesetter - Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. He now takes the credit for inventing the phonautograph in 1857. It is also interesting to note that the first audio recorded was a song called Au Clair de la Lune. This feat was achieved after several attempts on April 9, 1860.
The Phonautograph is fundamentally different from the Phonograph due to the fact that, in the former, the sound is recorded in a visual format. The Phonautograph directs sound through a big barrel. Here, the vibrations move a stylus, which then etches the sound on to smoked paper. The result is what researchers call ‘a phonautogram’. Despite the clear disconnect between formats, scientists have been able to playback the sound with the help of optical imaging. They used high-resolution scanned images of the phonautogram for this purpose. This recent discovery re-establishes the fact that several inventions have never received the credit they duly deserve.
Via:Inventorspot
