20 years before Edison recorded and reproduced sound eduard leon scot de martinville constructed this machine to trace sound waves on to blackened paper. the stylus would scribe a lateral modulated line into the paper as a waveform, this allowed you to actually "see" sound waves, much like a modern oscilloscope. surprisingly it was discovered that scanning these sound wave tracings with a laser actually allowed them to be played. this is the first machine in history to actually record sound.
i am repairing this machine for the national museum of south Korea. i will be experimenting for the next 2 weeks with this machine. this is virtually unknown with only a handful of machines extant. this is a replica built in the 1970s. it was only display in a Los Angeles museum which closed, it went to a private collector who recently passed away. it was bought on ebay and shipped here for repair.
link to you tube is not working
THE 1857 PHONAUTOGRAPH
Moderators: piaptk, tragwag, Steve E., Aussie0zborn
- Jesus H Chrysler
- Posts: 190
- Joined: Sun Nov 26, 2006 12:03 am
- Location: Asheville, NC
Re: THE 1857 PHONAUTOGRAPH
This just came across my Facebook feed and seemed relevant. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/listen-to-the-eerie-warbles-of-the-oldest-sound-recording-in-history?utm_source=aofb