Editing Phonautograph

{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2022}}
{{Short description|Earliest known device for recording sound}}
[[File:Phonautograph 1859.jpg|thumb|250px|right|An early phonautograph (1859). The barre, for receiving sound, is made of [[plaster of paris]].]]
{{listen
| filename     = 1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune-05-09.ogg
| title        = Au clair de la lune
| description  = This 1860 phonautogram by [[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville]] is the oldest known intelligible recording of the human voice. Played at what is now believed to be the correct speed,<ref name=NPR/> it reveals a man's voice, presumably Scott de Martinville's, singing very slowly. The words are "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot, prête-m—".
}}

The '''phonautograph''' is the earliest known device for recording [[sound]]. Previously, tracings had been obtained of the sound-producing vibratory motions of [[tuning forks]] and other objects by physical contact with them, but not of actual sound waves as they [[Wave propagation|propagated]] through air or other [[Transmission medium|mediums]]. Invented by Frenchman [[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville]], it was patented on March 25, 1857.<ref>{{Cite episode |title=1860 'Phonautograph' Is Earliest Known Recording |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89380697 |access-date=September 19, 2017 |series=Talk of the Nation |last=Flatow |first=Ira |network=NPR |date=April 4, 2008}}</ref> It transcribed sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass. Scott believed that future technology would allow the traces to be deciphered as a kind of "natural [[stenography]]".<ref>{{cite web |title=Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville: The Phonautograph |url=https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording-edouard-leon-scott-de-martinville.htm |website=National Park Service |access-date=20 December 2023}}</ref> Intended as a laboratory instrument for the study of [[acoustics]], it was used to visually study and measure the [[amplitude envelope]]s and [[waveform]]s of speech and other sounds or to determine the [[frequency]] of a given [[musical pitch]] by comparison with a simultaneously recorded reference frequency.

It did not occur to anyone before the 1870s that the recordings, called '''phonautograms''', contained enough information about the sound that they could, in theory, be used to recreate it. Because the phonautogram tracing was an insubstantial two-dimensional line, direct physical playback was impossible in any case. However, several phonautograms recorded before 1861 were successfully converted and played as sound in 2008 by optically scanning them and using a computer to process the scans into digital audio files.

== Construction ==
[[File:Phonautogram - Scott 1859.jpg|70px|thumb|Detail of a phonautogram made in 1859]]
The phonautograph was patented on March 25, 1857 by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville,<ref name=TimeGraphics>{{cite web|url=https://time.graphics/event/41158|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|title=mar 25, 1857 - Phonautograph invented.|language=en-US|url-status=live|accessdate=July 13, 2022|archivedate=June 29, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220629175625/https://time.graphics/event/41158}}</ref> an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris.<ref name=NatParkService>{{cite web|url=https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording-edouard-leon-scott-de-martinville.htm|title=Origins of Sound Recording: The Inventors|publisher=[[National Park Service]]|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=July 17, 2017|accessdate=July 13, 2022|archivedate=January 22, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122002822/https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording-edouard-leon-scott-de-martinville.htm}}</ref> One day while editing Professor Longet's ''Traité de Physiologie'', he happened upon that customer’s engraved illustration of the anatomy of the human ear, and conceived of "the imprudent idea of photographing the word." In 1853 or 1854 (Scott cited both years) he began working on "le problème de la parole s'écrivant elle-même" ("the problem of speech writing itself"), aiming to build a device that could replicate the function of the human ear.<ref name=NatParkService/><ref name=FirstSounds>{{cite web|url=https://www.firstsounds.org/research/scott.php|title=Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville|publisher=First Sounds|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=2008|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=July 1, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220701004645/http://www.firstsounds.org/research/scott.php}}</ref> 

Scott coated a plate of glass with a thin layer of [[lampblack]]. He then took an acoustic trumpet, and at its tapered end affixed a thin membrane that served as the analog to the [[eardrum]]. At the center of that membrane, he attached a rigid boar's bristle approximately a centimeter long, placed so that it just grazed the lampblack. As the glass plate was slid horizontally in a well formed groove at a speed of one meter per second, a person would speak into the trumpet, causing the membrane to vibrate and the stylus to trace figures<ref name=NatParkService/> that were scratched into the lampblack.<ref name=BBCNews>{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7318180.stm|publisher=[[BBC News]]|title=Oldest recorded voices sing again|language=en|url-status=live|date=March 28, 2008|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=April 17, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220417185139/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7318180.stm}}</ref> On March 25, 1857, Scott received the French patent<ref>{{cite web|url=https://blogs.loc.gov/preservation/2021/12/introducing-irene/|author=Villafana, Tana|title=Observing the Slightest Motion: Using Visual Tools to Preserve Sound|publisher=[[Library of Congress]]|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=December 20, 2021|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=January 3, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220103215417/https://blogs.loc.gov/preservation/2021/12/introducing-irene/}}</ref> #17,897/31,470 for his device, which he called a phonautograph.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/scott.html|title=Leon Scott and the Phonautograph|author=Schoenherr, Steven E.|publisher=[[University of San Diego]]|language=en-US|url-status=dead|date=1999|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=February 7, 2018|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180207234442/http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/scott.html}}</ref> The earliest known intelligible recorded sound of a human voice was conducted on April 9, 1860 when Scott recorded<ref name=BBCNews/> someone singing the song "[[Au Clair de la Lune]]" ("By the Light of the Moon") on the device.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2008/03/27/89148959/sound-recording-predates-edison-phonograph|title=Sound Recording Predates Edison Phonograph|work=[[All Things Considered]]|via=[[NPR]]|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=March 27, 2008|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=May 26, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220526211443/https://www.npr.org/2008/03/27/89148959/sound-recording-predates-edison-phonograph}}</ref> However, the device was not designed to play back sounds,<ref name=BBCNews/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording-edouard-leon-scott-de-martinville.htm|title=Origins of Sound Recording: The Inventors|date=2017|website=www.nps.gov|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170921003319/https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording-edouard-leon-scott-de-martinville.htm|archive-date=2017-09-21|url-status=live}}</ref> as Scott intended for people to read back the tracings,<ref name=Time5.1.18>{{cite web|url=https://time.com/5084599/first-recorded-sound/|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|title=What Was the First Sound Ever Recorded by a Machine?|author=Fabry, Merrill|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=May 1, 2018|access-date=February 13, 2022|archivedate=June 7, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220607172532/https://time.com/5084599/first-recorded-sound/}}</ref> which he called phonautograms.<ref name=FirstSounds/> This was not the first time someone had used a device to create direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects, as [[tuning fork]]s had been used in this way by English physicist [[Thomas Young (scientist)|Thomas Young]] in 1807.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FaAYfJYVNXQC|title=Nineeenth-century Scientific Instruments|language=en-US|url-status=live|publisher=University of California Press|page=137|date=1983|isbn=9780520051607 |archivedate=February 15, 2017|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215062429/https://books.google.com/books?id=FaAYfJYVNXQC&pg=PA137&dq=thomas+young+tuning+fork&hl=en&ei=bsY5Tcm7GYmh8QOnppXYCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBw}}</ref> By late 1857, with support from the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, Scott’s phonautograph was recording sounds with sufficient precision to be adopted by the scientific community, paving the way for the nascent science of acoustics.<ref name=FirstSounds/> 

The device's true significance in the history of recorded sound was not fully realized prior to March 2008, when it was discovered and resurrected in a Paris patent office by First Sounds, an informal collaborative of American audio historians, recording engineers, and sound archivists founded to make the earliest sound recordings available to the public. The phonautograms were then digitally converted by scientists at the [[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]] in California, who were able to play back the recorded sounds, something Scott had never conceived of. Prior to this point, the earliest known record of a human voice was thought to be an 1877 phonograph recording by [[Thomas Edison]].<ref name=BBCNews/><ref name=NYTimes>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|author=Rosen, Jody|title=Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=March 27, 2008|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=April 13, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220413194226/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html}}</ref> The phonautograph would play a role in the development of the [[gramophone]], whose inventor, [[Emile Berliner]], worked with the phonautograph in the course of developing his own device.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/emile-berliner/articles-and-essays/gramophone/|title=The Gramophone|publisher=[[Library of Congress]]|language=en-US|url-status=live|access-date=July 13, 2022|archivedate=June 1, 2022|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20220601195449/https://www.loc.gov/collections/emile-berliner/articles-and-essays/gramophone/}}</ref>

== Invention and Technical Design ==
The [[phonautograph]], created by [[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville]] in 1857, was designed to visually capture sound waves.<ref>Sterne, Jonathan. ''The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.'' Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3097-4.</ref> It used a horn to funnel sound toward a thin membrane, similar to a drumhead. Attached to the membrane was a stylus that scratched the vibrations onto a surface coated with soot, such as smoked paper or glass.<ref>"First Sounds Project." [https://www.firstsounds.org/]</ref> As sound entered the horn, the stylus moved in response, producing a wavy line that represented the sound’s vibrations. These visual traces, known as phonautograms, were studied for scientific purposes, helping researchers observe the physical properties of sound, such as frequency and amplitude. The device was not intended to reproduce sound but instead to allow for the analysis of its patterns.

== Rediscovery ==
In 2008, a team of researchers known as the [[First Sounds Project]] successfully played back Scott de Martinville’s phonautograms for the first time.<ref>"First Sounds Project." [https://www.firstsounds.org/]</ref><ref>Rosen, Jody. "Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison." ''The New York Times,'' March 27, 2008. [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html]</ref> Using high-resolution optical scanning and digital analysis, they were able to convert the soot tracings into audible sound without damaging the original artifacts. Among the recordings was a brief excerpt of "Au Clair de la Lune," dating from 1860, which became the earliest known recording of a human voice.<ref>NPR. "Oldest Known Recording Played." ''Morning Edition,'' March 28, 2008. [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169893]</ref>This breakthrough revealed that Scott had captured sound nearly two decades before [[Thomas Edison]]’s invention of the [[phonograph]], prompting a reevaluation of the early history of sound recording.

== Legacy and influence ==
Although the phonautograph was not capable of sound playback and was originally conceived as a tool for studying acoustics, its invention laid essential groundwork for the development of sound recording technologies.<ref>Sterne, Jonathan. ''The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.'' Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3097-4.</ref> Scott de Martinville’s conceptual leap—the idea that sound could be captured and visually inscribed—prefigured the audio revolution that would follow decades later.

When [[Thomas Edison]] introduced the [[phonograph]] in 1877, he was likely unaware of Scott’s earlier work.<ref>Sterne, Jonathan. ''The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.'' Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3097-4.</ref> Unlike the phonautograph, Edison’s device could both record and reproduce sound, making it commercially viable and historically celebrated. However, Scott’s phonautograph represented a key conceptual milestone: the translation of sound waves into a physical medium.

Scott’s contributions remained largely unknown outside of niche academic circles until the early 21st century. The recovery and playback of the phonautograms by the [[First Sounds Project]] spurred renewed interest in Scott’s work and emphasized his underappreciated role in the history of sound recording.<ref>"First Sounds Project." [https://www.firstsounds.org/]</ref> Historians and scholars now recognize the phonautograph as a pioneering invention that bridged the gap between scientific study and artistic expression, and as a precursor to the modern audio industry. As technology continues to evolve, Scott’s vision of capturing sound in a tangible form remains foundational

== Playback ==
By mid-April 1877, [[Charles Cros]] had realized that a phonautogram could be converted back into sound by [[photoengraving]] the tracing into a metal surface to create a playable groove, then using a [[stylus]] and [[diaphragm (acoustics)|diaphragm]] similar to those of the phonautograph to reverse the recording process and recreate the sound. Before he was able to put his ideas into practice, the announcement of [[Thomas Edison]]'s [[phonograph]], which recorded sound waves by indenting them into a sheet of tinfoil from which they could be played back immediately, temporarily relegated Cros's less direct method to obscurity.<ref name="Berliner" />

Ten years later, the early experiments of Emile Berliner, the creator of the disc [[Gramophone]], employed a recording machine that was in essence a disc form of the phonautograph. It traced a clear sound-modulated spiral line through a thin black coating on a glass disc. The [[photoengraving]] method first proposed by Cros was then used to produce a metal disc with a playable groove. Arguably, these circa 1887 experiments by Berliner were the first known reproductions of sound from phonautograph recordings.<ref name="Berliner">Berliner, E: "The Gramophone: Etching the Human Voice", ''Journal of the Franklin Institute'', June 1888 125(6):425–447. Berliner, who scrupulously acknowledges the work of Scott and Cros in this paper, uses the word "phonautogram" (see pages 437 and 438) to describe his own recordings prior to their processing into playable form by photoengraving or direct etching.</ref>

However, as far as is known, no attempt was ever made to use this method to play any of the surviving early phonautograms made by Scott de Martinville. Possibly this was because the few images of them generally available in books and periodicals were of unpromising short bursts of sound, of fragmentary areas of longer recordings, or simply too crude and indistinct to encourage such an experiment.<ref>Morton, D., ''Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology'', JHU Press, 2006 indicates (see page 3) that this could be the case even when photochemical processes were no longer the only option and optimized results were possible: in 2000, a planned experiment to recover sounds from phonautograms by means of scanning and digital processing was abandoned because there was "little to try to recover" in the specimens at hand.</ref>

Nearly 150 years after they had been recorded, promising specimens of Scott de Martinville's phonautograms, stored among his papers in France's patent office and at the Académie des Sciences, were located by American audio historians. High-quality images of them were obtained. In 2008, the team played back the recordings as sound for the first time. Modern computer-based image processing methods were used to accomplish the playback. The first results were obtained by using a specialized system developed for optically playing recordings on more conventional media which were too fragile or damaged to be played by traditional means. Later, generally available image-editing and image-to-sound conversion software, requiring only a high-quality scan of the phonautogram and an ordinary personal computer, were found to be sufficient for this application.<ref>{{Citation |title=FirstSounds.org |url=http://www.firstsounds.org}}</ref><ref name="NYT2008">{{Cite news |last=Rosen |first=Jody |date=March 27, 2008 |title=Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison|work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html}}</ref>

For First Sounds' March 2008 release of "Au Clair de la Lune", its engineers wrote software to improve the stability of the sound. It did the same with a May 17, 1860 recording of "Gamme de la Voix" which First Sounds presented at the Audie Engineering Society's convention in late 2008.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://firstsounds.org/sounds/approach.php |title=Retrieving Sound from Soot—Our Evolving Approaches|publisher=First Sounds|access-date=April 20, 2023|archive-date=March 7, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230307231619/https://firstsounds.org/sounds/approach.php}}</ref>

== Recovered sounds ==

One phonautogram, created on April 9, 1860, was revealed to be a 20-second recording of the French folk song "[[Au clair de la lune]]".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Earliest Recordings Ever Made |url=http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/08/earliest-recording-human-voice/ |access-date=September 19, 2017 |website=NoiseAddicts|date=August 13, 2008 }}</ref> It was initially played at double the original recording speed and believed to be the voice of a woman or child. However, further recordings were uncovered accompanied with notes Scott de Martinville made that inadvertently identified himself as the speaker.<ref>{{Cite web |date=September 21, 2010 |title=This Sealed Packet Contained the World's First Recorded Sound (firstsounds.org) |url=https://reaktorplayer.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/this-sealed-packet-contained-the-worlds-first-recorded-sound-firstsounds-org/ |website=reaktorplayer.wordpress.com}}</ref> At the correct speed, the voice of a man, almost certainly Scott de Martinville himself, is heard singing the song very slowly.<ref name="NPR">{{Cite episode |title=Reconsidering Earliest-Known Recording |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104797243 |access-date=February 12, 2022 |series=All Things Considered |last=Block |first=Melissa |network=NPR |date=June 1, 2009 |last2=Siegel |first2=Robert}}</ref> Also recovered were two 1860 recordings of "Vole, petite abeille" ("Fly, Little Bee"), a lively song from a comic opera.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Feaster |first=Patrick |date=2009 |title="Vole, Petite Abeille" – Scott's Last Known Phonautograms (1860) |url=http://phonozoic.brinkster.net/vole.html |access-date=February 12, 2022 |website=Phonozoic}}</ref> Previously, the earliest known recording of vocal music was an 1888 [[Edison Records|Edison]] wax cylinder [[phonograph]] recording of a [[Handel]] choral concert.

A phonautogram containing the opening lines of [[Torquato Tasso]]'s pastoral drama [[Aminta]] has also been found. Probably recorded in April or May 1860, this phonautogram is the earliest known recording of intelligible spoken words to be played back,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Feaster |first=Patrick |date=2009 |title=The "Aminta" Phonautogram (1860) |url=http://phonozoic.brinkster.net/aminta.html |access-date=February 12, 2022 |website=Phonozoic}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Cowen |first=Ron |date=June 1, 2009 |title=Earliest Known Sound Recordings Revealed: Researchers Unveil Imprints Made 20 Years Before Edison Invented Phonograph |work=U.S. News & World Report |url=https://www.usnews.com/articles/science/2009/06/01/earliest-known-sound-recordings-revealed.html |access-date=June 26, 2009}}</ref> predating [[Frank Lambert (inventor)|Frank Lambert]]'s 1878 [[Experimental Talking Clock|talking clock recording]]. Earlier recordings, made in 1857, 1854, and 1853, also contain Scott de Martinville's voice but are unintelligible because of their low quality, brevity and irregularity of speed.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=uRbIJc05QTA&t=65s |title=Leon Scott's Complete Discography 1853–1860 |last=Orbin |first=Joe |publisher=FirstSounds.org |access-date=March 20, 2019 |website=YouTube}}</ref> Only one of these recordings, 1857 cornet scale recording, was restored and made intelligible.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMdL7ZI5TdM |title=Restored ! 1857 Cornet Scale Recording |last=Orbin |first=Joe |publisher=FirstSounds.org |access-date=March 20, 2019 |website=YouTube}}</ref>

== Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville ==
[[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville]] (1817–1879) was a French inventor and typographer who sought to develop a method for capturing sound for visual study. Despite his innovation with the phonautograph, he received little recognition during his lifetime, and his work was largely forgotten until the early 21st century.<ref>Sterne, Jonathan. ''The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.'' Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3097-4.</ref> The rediscovery and playback of his recordings have since restored his place in the narrative of sound recording history, acknowledging him as an important precursor to later breakthroughs in audio technology.<ref>Rosen, Jody. "Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison." ''The New York Times,'' March 27, 2008. [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html]</ref>

== See also ==
* [[History of sound recording]]
* [[Au clair de la lune recording]]

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== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* Koenigsberg, Allen. [http://www.phonobooks.com/BirthRec.htm The Birth of the Recording Industry], adapted from "The Seventeen-Year Itch", delivered at the [[U.S. Patent Office]] bi-centennial in Washington, D.C., on May 9, 1990.

== External links ==
{{wiktionary}}
{{commons category|Phonautographs}}
* [http://www.firstsounds.org FirstSounds.org], an informal collaborative aiming to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.
* [http://www.firstsounds.org/public/Phonautographic-Manuscripts.pdf ''The Phonautographic Manuscripts of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville''] ([[PDF]]), containing French and English texts of all Scott's known writings about the phonautograph from the 1850s and 1860s.

{{Audio formats}}

[[Category:Acoustics]]
[[Category:History of sound recording]]
[[Category:Sound recording technology]]
[[Category:Audiovisual introductions in 1857]]
[[Category:French inventions]]