Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

Tree131 writes "The New York Times is reporting that sound recordings pre-dating Edison's made by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer, were discovered by American audio historians at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. The archives are on paper and were meant for recording but not playback. Researchers used a high quality scan of the recording and an electronic needle to play back the sounds recorded 150 years ago. 'For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words "Mary had a little lamb" on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison's invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.'"

Poor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville

[eldavojohn]

Well, time to add another to the list [slashdot.org].

Remember, if you want to be a scientist, you just have to be smart. If you want to be a well-known-until-the-end-of-time scientist, you have to be smart and suffer from at least a little megalomania [wiktionary.org] (see the war of currents [wikipedia.org] or Einstein's failure to accept quantum theory [wikipedia.org]).

I'm still shocked fewer people don't realize Leibniz beat Newton to Calculus [wikipedia.org]. Oh well, great disputes make for great reading.

Oh well, one could spend countless hours recalling the great debates of science, it's a shame that some of them are about who's name goes in the history books. Strangely, ingenuity & legacy complexes seem to go hand in hand. I'm saddened to think that there may be others buried in history by ultra competitive researchers.

Flight?

[Spazmania]

Wasn't there also a Frenchman whose flight predated the Wright Brothers? I seem to remember that the key difference was the Wright Brothers got the whole process to work.

Here we go again

[elrous0]

Yet another round of the "Who invented it first" pissing contest. An American claims to invent something and 10 Europeans jump up to say "No, Sir Dunston Whogivesashit from MY country actually invented it first!", followed by a black nationalist who announces that it was actually a black man who invented it first, a Hispanic who proclaims that a Guatemalan invented it first, etc.

History shows us yet again,

[pwnies]

That this seems to be the case with may of Edison's "inventions". Many of them were either invented by one of his subordinates and simply registered under his own name in the patent process, or were taken altogether from another scientist and claimed directly as his own. Take a look at Nikola Tesla's history and you'll see what I mean.

Edison, Newton, Einstein....

[tjstork]

Edison was the man, because, unlike this inventor, his device allowed people to play back sounds. It wasn't even possible to play back the recording this other guy made until they could scan the paper and convert the signal to a waveform. As a side note, I'd have to ask: this is what passes for research these days? I'm unimpressed.

Newton beat Leibniz to calculus. Really, the whole thing with Newton was that, he wrote the principia while trying to hide the calculus that he used to invent. It's pretty difficult for someone to come out with a volume like that, unless they have calculus. I might even start using Newton's fluxion notation....

As for Einstein, while we was off about quantum physics, he did predict the appearance of stars -behind- the sun during a solar eclipse, which is really outrageous when you think about it.

been done before

[apodyopsis]

I'd of thought it would of said "testing, testing, testing.."

Hell, he could of recorded anything he wanted as long as there was no method of playing it back.

It reminds me of that clever SW speech recognition that decoded audio from the Berghof films of Hitler and Eva Braun - I bet they did not realise that technology would one say be able to decode their speech, HAL would of loved it. Alternatively there were some very clever approaches to scanning vinyl recordings and cleaning up the signal digitally before recontructing the audio without hisses and scratches. This is not new, but its certainly clever.

The Hitler tapes are darn right creepy, I saw a great documentary on it, in fact you can watch the whole thing here:-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2763127556620650689&q=hitler+speaks+duration%3Along&total=36&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 [google.com]

On the historical front, it once again proves that in the world of science many people generally work on the same this simultaneously and behind every great man there are many almost great men who got there at the same time or earlier. Of course, everybody knows that Newton got there first...

Sure, next you're going to tell us...

[justfred]

...that a crazy Brazilian invented the airplane, before the Wright Brothers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont [wikipedia.org]
http://www.amazon.com/Wings-Madness-Alberto-Santos-Dumont-Invention/dp/B000FVHJ94 [amazon.com]

Re:He was the first.

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO Edison can still be considered the father of sound recording

While he may not have been the first person to transcribe sound in another medium...

Okie doke.

he was indeed the first to discover a medium that would allow for easy playback - and reproduction as well

No, that was Emile Berliner, who created the first disc record. Edison's was cylindrical, which was difficult (and expensive) to produce and inconvenient to store. Although Edison did consider the disc shape, he did not pursue it and instead focused on the cylinder because he (correctly) felt it was technologically superior.

Years later, after the disc proved to be the better in terms of reproduction costs and storage and all-around convenience, Edison reluctantly abandoned the cylinders in favor of Berliner's discs.

And since no /. post is complete without digression...

the definition of "father" is

• A man who creates, originates, or founds something: Chaucer is considered the father of English poetry.
• An early form; a prototype.
  
• A member of the senate in ancient Rome.

...making babies

You are thinking of sire, or perhaps even sperm donor.

the french light shines on

[circletimessquare]

it just so happened around the time you imagine the french hit a wall, another light brightened up across the atlantic. so its not a case of their light going out so much as it is a case of their light being outshone. the usa gobbled up the lions share of the glory in the 20th century

but i think you are right that much of french, and european, glory was cut off at the knees by the wars there starting with the crimean war up through world war ii, with the last one being certainly among the worst human decency devouring spectacles the planet has ever put on. and now it's the usa's turn to get mired in war after war, while the glory of china and india grows to take the spotlight and outshine the usa

Even older sounds

[PapayaSF]

There is an ancient technique for decorating pottery called sgraffito [wikipedia.org]. One of the ways it can be done is to spin a pot on a wheel and slowly move the point of a sharp tool down the outside of the pot, making a long helical groove. Sounds like Edison cylinder recording, doesn't it? I've read that scientists have used lasers to "read" such a groove, and got the sound of the potter's wheel squeaking. More here [upenn.edu], including a discussion of a recent hoax. Also, there are rumors that Abraham Lincoln's voice was recorded by phonautograph: [aol.com]

In 1863, nearly 15 years before Thomas Alva Edison created the first phonograph, an inventor named Leon Scott is said to have visited the White House. If historical anecdotes are accurate, he made a tracing of President Lincoln's voice with his newly invented "phonautograph," a machine that scratched sound vibrations onto a soot-blackened sheet of paper wrapped around a drum.

The cylinder on which a paper record of Lincoln's voice was apparently made has never been found.

Re:Even older sounds

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is an ancient technique for decorating pottery called sgraffito. One of the ways it can be done is to spin a pot on a wheel and slowly move the point of a sharp tool down the outside of the pot, making a long helical groove. Sounds like Edison cylinder recording, doesn't it?"

Someone (Murray Leinster?) wrote a story that used this idea 50 or more years ago. I think the story pre-dated lasers, but scientists played audio from a pot that had been made around the time the Christian religion was beginning to displace the older religion.

Re:Edison, Newton, Einstein....

[DRJlaw]

Because the history books would get too large if you included everybody? Julius Braunsdorf had invented an electric light long before Edison, but he is mostly forgotten, and people are taught that the electric light was thought impossible before Edison invented it.

No. History books tend to include enough information concerning major inventions to show that "invention" is an incremental process. People's oral summaries of the history books or history itself tends grossly oversimplify issues because, at a minimum, they have to match the level of detail to the level of interest in order to hold the listener(s).

"When he announced that he intended to produce an electric light that would compete with gaslight, the stock prices of gaslight companies tumbled as their executives panicked. Many people, most notably Sir Joseph Swan, had tried to invent an electric light using an incandescent filament, or wire, enclosed in a glass bulb, but had not been able to create a filament that could withstand intense heat over long enough periods oftime to be practical. Even Edison had a tough time of it, going through a long, trial-and-error process in which he tested thousands of materials. Undaunted by failures, Edison finally found that a scorched cotton thread would work best. When heated in a vacuum, it produced a white glow without melting, evaporating, or breaking. Although Swan came up with a similar light bulb around the same time, Edison patented his idea more aggressively, promoted his product more effectively, and sketched out a practical system of power supply which could support its use on a large scale. On New Year's Eve of 1879, Edisongave a public demonstration of the new bulb, lighting up his laboratory anda half mile of streets in Menlo Park before of thousands of spectators. Edison had not only invented an economical light source, but developed an entire system for generating and distributing electricity from a central power station." "History book" [madehow.com]

Humphry Davy [uh.edu] is cursing your name in the afterlife because you've fixated on this Braunsdorf character who merely improved upon pre-existing arc lights. There's another horde of people who likely long before that overloaded a wire, but didn't run off to tell the world how to make a short lived flash of light by screwing up in an impractical manner.

Do you want to know what Thomas Edison invented? Read U.S. Patent No. 223,898. [google.com]. Most importantly, look at claim 1:

1. An electric lamp for giving light by incandescence, consisting of a filiment of carbon of high resistance, made as described, and secured to metallic wires, as set forth.

My public school taught that Edison invented the first practical incandecent bulb by trying several thousand types of materials, not that Edison invented the first electric light. I'm very willing to bet that yours taught something similar as well, but you've oversimplified the information, whether you ment to or not.

Re:Not the first, but gets all the credit?

[4D6963]

This French phonautogram is analagous to visualizations in WinAmp where Edison's recordings would be analagous to the MP3 file.

Bad analogy. More as if de Martinville invented a sound spectrograph (which actually exists since the late 1930s) and Edison invented something to play back spectrographs (which only has been really done since the 1990s it seems). It doesn't diminish Edison's merit though.