First Ever Recorded Song Was in 1857, Here's The Story...

I like reading at history and listing to music. What better way to blog about music related topic than the first ever recorded sound on earth?

Well the answer is: Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville around the 1850s recorded the "Au Clair de la lune" and was archived in a France Library. The song would be played back for the first time in 1877 in this leads to somewhat of a gray area in history. Gray as in defining the song as the first song played back since early 1860s Thomas Edison had recorded and played back "Marry Had a Little Lamb". Since Edison had his song played back after it was recorded in the 1860s some historians consider that song as being the first and not Martinville's. I understand the argument made here. To be a recorded song it should be heard back by someone or how else is it considered a song?

(Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville - Courtesy of Wikipedia)

A French born in 1817 he was a printer by trade but had a hobby of inventing things. In a book he read he noticed a mechanical apparatus that could be used to record movement of air through mechanical stencil. He went on to develop a prototype device that would mechanically record sound and got a patent in France for such a device called a phonautograph. Basic concept of how the phonautograph works is that a needle carves on a reel when the reel is mechanically turned. A horn is attached to the entire apparatus and vibrates the needle when spoken into the horn. The carvings will in turn be shaped in a way that when played back on a reel the sound it makes would be similar to what was spoken/sung through the horn.

(Phonautograph - Courtesy of Wikipedia)

What makes the phonautograph for some historians to accept as the first recorder is the device itself cannot play back the sound. While Edison's phonograph could. In the end most historians still believes Martinville as being the first to ever make a recording since the reels on the phonautograph are records of sound.

In the following video on youtube is a little over 5 minutes long but basically shows how a phonautograph works and to my surprise easy to use and simply enough to recreate if one so chose to do so.

Amazing right? Let the music be recorded and shared even if its is phonautograph.

In closing since the phonautograph could not play back the sound it would be two decades later until someone by the name of Charles Cros, also French, figured out how to physically copy the phonautograph reel on to a metal sheet via photoengraving. Photoengraving reverses the phonautograph reel's grooves onto the metal sheet and allows sound to be playback when a needle retraces the grooves of the metal sheet. It would be another 10 years on top of this that someone else was able to make a phonautograph recording playback device, but by then Edison's phonograph had superceeded all of the uses of a phonautograph.

Funny how today we think technology advance so quickly such as mobile phones get updated every year in technology while even back then when the phonautograph was invented it did not take too long to be obsolete to what the phonograph had to offer. Got to love technology.

Thanks for reading.