An actual recording of a voice from 1860.
I'm speechless.
P
http://tinyurl.com/2cw8mj
"Oldest human voice recording uncovered
By Martina Smit and agencies
Last Updated: 1:57pm GMT 28/03/2008
At first listen, the grainy high-pitched warble does not sound like
much, but scientists say the French recording from 1860 is the oldest
known recorded human voice.
The 10-second clip of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune" predates
Thomas Edison's "Mary had a little lamb" - previously credited as the
oldest recorded voice - by 17 years.
The recording of the French folk song, taken from a so-called
phonautogram, was recently discovered by audio historian David
Giovannoni.
"When I first heard the recording as you hear it ... it was magical,
so ethereal," said Mr Giovannoni.
The newly discovered clip was recorded using a phonautograph - a
device with a needle that moved in response to sound, creating visual
recordings of the waves.
Invented by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in Paris, the
phonautograph etched sound waves into paper coated with soot from an
oil lamp.
Mr Giovannoni and his research partner, Patrick Feaster, began looking
for phonautograms last year and in December discovered two of Mr
Scott's - from 1857 and 1859 - in France's patent office.
"We found that (Mr Scott's) technique wasn't very developed," Mr
Giovannoni said. "There were squiggles on paper, but it was not
recording sound."
However, earlier this month the French Academy of Sciences sent more
digital scans to Mr Giovannoni at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in America.
"When I opened up the file, I nearly fell off my chair," Mr Giovannoni
said. "We had beautifully recorded and preserved phonautograms, many
of which had dates on them."
However, the images - which was never meant to be played - still had
to be translated into sound. The scientists used optical imaging and a
"virtual stylus" to read the sooty paper, fine-tuning the recording to
bring the voice out more from the static.
"The fact is it's recorded in smoke. The voice is coming out from
behind this screen of aural smoke," Mr Giovannoni said.
Mr Scott never intended for anyone to listen to his phonautograms, but
the result of this work was to be played in public on Friday at the
annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at
Stanford University."
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