When French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang a nursery rhyme into his phonograph on April 9, 1860, he had no plans ever to play this recording back. A precursor to the wax cylinder, the phonautograph (a device for recording sounds visual without being able to play them back) took inputs for the study of sound waves but could not be turned into an output device. More than 160 years later, the voice of Scott can now be heard in what is considered the first-ever recording of human sound.
The Guinness World Records recorded human voice is a ten-second fragment of the French nursery rhyme 'Au Clair de la Lune'. Discovered in 2008 by researchers in Paris, the clip was created on paper using a phonautograph.
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) analysed the paper recording and used optical imaging as a 'virtual stylus', allowing the clip to be replayed for the first time.
According to educational media Open Culture, Scott had looked to the invention of photography and wondered if he could do something similar with sound waves, focused as he was on improving stenography. The phonautograph took in sound vibrations through a diaphragm, which moved a stylus against a rotating cylinder covered in lampblack. What was left was a wiggly line in a concentric circle.
However, he did not know how to play them back. Scott's invention never yielded results, and he went back to bookselling. His creation and some of the paper cylinders were sent to museums.
Scribbles Discovered In 2008
In 2008, American audio historians found the scribbles and turned to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and software called IRENE, designed to extract sounds from wax cylinders without touching the delicate surfaces. The first pass revealed what they thought at first was a child or young woman singing "Au Clair de la lune," the French rhyme (not the Debussy piano work).
However, a further examination of the inventor's notes revealed that the recording was at a significantly slower speed, and it was a baritone voice, probably Scott–singing the lullaby.