WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. audio historians have discovered and played back a French inventor's historic 1860 recording of a folk song — the oldest-known audio recording — made 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.<\/p>\n
\nLasting 10 seconds, the recording is of a person singing “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit” (“By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied”) — part of a French song, according to First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists and others dedicated to preserving humankind's earliest sound recordings. It was made on April 9, 1860, by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp, Giovannoni said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. audio historians have discovered and played back a French inventor's historic 1860 recording of a folk song — the oldest-known audio recording — made 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.<\/p>\n
\nLasting 10 seconds, the recording is of a person singing “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit” (“By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied”) — part of a French song, according to First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists and others dedicated to preserving humankind's earliest sound recordings. It was made on April 9, 1860, by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp, Giovannoni said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n