Oldest Soundrecording 1860

The oldest soundrecording will be introduced this friday in Palo Alto, Ca, at a conference by US radio historian David Giovannoni and staff members of Archeophone Records .

It will be a part of a french children song "Au Clair de la Lune". It is a recording by Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. He patented the so called Phonoautograph march 1857, french pat.nr. 17,897/31,470. It is a graphical recording not intended to be played back.
Autograms from the Parisien patent office and the French Academie of Science were scanned and given to Carl Haber and Earl Cornell from Berkeley National Laboratory, Ca. The scans were played by a program behaving like a digital gramophon needle. This program had been developed for the record collection of the US congress library some years ago.

Origin: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/m...543754,00.html
Flash included.
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Peter

The New York Times:
Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/ar...hp&oref=slogin

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...s/sound450.jpg
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Peter

Hello Peter,

Interesting story. It appears Edison's invention actually in a different light.

regards
juergen

ps Peter, I have in another forum pointed out.

They actually played it on the news last night. Pretty much unintelligable, but then I only had two years of high school French.

They showed what looked like a picture a a flat rectangular plate that had markings on it, but there was no explanation of what it was (the player or the playee) or how it worked.

Prince Bismarck and Count Moltke Before the Recording Horn: The Edison Phonograph in Europe, 1889-1890
by Stephan Puille [translation by Patrick Feaster]

On 15 June 1889, Adelbert Theodor Edward ("Theo") Wangemann started out aboard the four-master "La Bourgogne" on a trip to Europe on behalf of Thomas Alva Edison that was supposed to last for only a few weeks, but from which he was not in fact to return until 27 February 1890. ..

including twelve sound examples.

http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultim...n.htm#_ednref1
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Peter