BS: Earliest recorded sound and song

07 Jun 09 - 11:50 AM (#2650576)
Subject: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Peter T.

This is the web site where you can hear the earliest recorded sound (and song). This is 1860, twenty years before Edison -- reconstituted from a kind of mapping of sound.   There was some press about it in 2008 -- "Au Clair de La Lune" is the first song, just a single line fragment. The original re-release was too fast, and the most recent re-release has slowed it down somewhat:


http://firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php


yours,

Peter T.

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07 Jun 09 - 12:15 PM (#2650590)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Rapparee

Yes, I heard it on NPR the other day. They have recorded voice from 1857 but it's nearly impossible to determine what is being said because the recorder was hand cranked.

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07 Jun 09 - 03:56 PM (#2650751)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Ebbie

Fascinating. It's a window back into time. How come we accept that Edison was the first?

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07 Jun 09 - 04:01 PM (#2650755)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: robomatic

Edison was the first with something repeatable and workable, and it actually output sound. This earlier technology was more of a lab experiment.

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07 Jun 09 - 04:13 PM (#2650763)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Ebbie

Yes, robo, but technology results from experiments. I should think that school children would be taught about earlier approaches.

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07 Jun 09 - 04:46 PM (#2650781)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Peter T.

America did everything first (just ask the Russians, who play the same game).

Automobiles (no).
Light bulbs (no).
(one could go on....)

yours,

Peter T.

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07 Jun 09 - 05:13 PM (#2650804)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: GUEST,Lighter

Wow! And his version of "Au Claire de la Lune" sounds modal too! A first?

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08 Jun 09 - 07:22 AM (#2651199)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: kendall

RADAR
the Chronometer
telephone
raincoat
rubber tires
The industrial revolution
Penicillin
radio (Marconi)
Dynamite
gun powder
Pizza

The list is endless

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08 Jun 09 - 07:34 AM (#2651201)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: kendall

Cats eyes
Depth charges
crossword puzzles
cordite
cork screws
disk brakes
light bulbs
the locomotive
fax machine
the periodic table
the periscope
polyester
rubber bands
jet engines
lawn mower
seismometer
sewing machine
shrapnel
TV
thermos
toilet paper
vacuum cleaner
Viagra


Enough

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08 Jun 09 - 10:08 AM (#2651304)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Geoff the Duck

Hi Kendall,
Cats Eyes invented by a bloke named Percy Shaw, lived other side of a big hill near where I grew up.
Story goes that he was driving on the road up the side of the hill - narrow road, steep drop down one side to valley below, no street lighting - pretty dangerous really. Still a bit hairy today on an icy evening.
Anyway. Story goes, he was driving up the road one night, taking great care to stay on the road and not plummet down the hill, when a cat crossed his path. He could see the light from his headlights reflected by the eye of the cat shining bright in the darkness. That gave him the idea for the reflecting road studs.

They reckon that if the cat had been facing the other way round he would have invented the pencil sharpener...

Quack!
GtD.

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08 Jun 09 - 02:38 PM (#2651508)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Paul Burke

Sex.

But back to the question. Some Belgian archaeologists are on line as having claimed that ancient pottery from Pompeii had the ambient sound in the workshop where it was being made imprinted on it by the stylus used to mark decorations on it. That would make the earliest recordings 2000 years old or so. Do we believe them?

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08 Jun 09 - 02:44 PM (#2651520)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: kendall

No.

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08 Jun 09 - 06:29 PM (#2651696)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: katlaughing

Fascinating, Peter, esp. the tuning fork one...it is so clear!

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08 Jun 09 - 06:46 PM (#2651710)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: frogprince

Not a contender for teh earliest, but Tom Russell has an interesting recording of Walt Whitman on the album "The Man From God Knows Where". Whitman died in 1892.

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08 Jun 09 - 08:03 PM (#2651792)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: RangerSteve

I heard what was reputed to be the first recording ever made, sometime in the 1850's, it was a glass rod with one groove running the length of the rod, and was supposed to be of Chopin. The radio host, who played a copy of the original, had all kinds of historical facts to show that it couldn't be authentic. And soundwise, it was terrible.

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09 Jun 09 - 02:21 AM (#2651979)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Paul Burke

It's not the recording of the sound, it's getting it back again. In fact, if we knew where to look, every sound that has ever been made is recorded, in four channel 192kHz sampling digital recording, within the digits of pi. So is everything else that exists, and everything that doesn't exist too- if only we knew where to look!

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09 Jun 09 - 09:10 PM (#2652800)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: GUEST,hg

PB and gargoyle....very fascinating ideas! Where to read more about such things for an interesting thinking session?

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10 Jun 09 - 02:47 AM (#2652918)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: semi-submersible

Just close your eyes and listen.

Ommmm...

(I'm picking up good vibrations.)

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10 Jun 09 - 09:12 AM (#2653096)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: M.Ted

Of course, those very stones from the Sea of Galilee also picked up 2000 years worth chatter from the women washing and the fishermen fishing, as well as conversations from waves of Roman,Byzantine, and Ottoman soldiers, not to mention all that chatter from the Kibbutzim.

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10 Jun 09 - 09:37 AM (#2653118)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Jack Campin

Chopin died in 1849 so a recording of him from the 1850s would be rather quiet.

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10 Jun 09 - 04:55 PM (#2653458)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Seamus Kennedy

Kendall - penicillin?
I thought that was Sir Alexander Fleming...

Seamus

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10 Jun 09 - 06:56 PM (#2653555)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Rowan

Kendall - penicillin?
I thought that was Sir Alexander Fleming...

Even better, try looking Florey up.

Cheers, Rowan

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10 Jun 09 - 08:21 PM (#2653616)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Donuel

The static you hear between AM stations is the EM remnants of the big bang.

The earliest song I have is Debussy playing piano originally recorded on wire.

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10 Jun 09 - 09:18 PM (#2653652)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: frogprince

Didn't he have a hard time keeping the piano and stool balanced?

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11 Jun 09 - 10:44 AM (#2653987)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Stringsinger

"those who surf the net deserve all the disinformation they get"....
Tom Lehrer.


"Mr. Watson, come in here!"

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11 Jun 09 - 01:13 PM (#2654110)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: frogprince

What if, when they retrieve the sound from those rocks in Galilee, it turns out that the guy in "Life of Brian" was right, and he really said "Blessed are the Cheezemakers"....

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11 Jun 09 - 04:32 PM (#2654275)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: RangerSteve

Jack Campin - Maybe is was the 1840's, then. I'm remembering something I heard on the radio about 20 years ago. I probably remembered the date wrong.

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11 Jun 09 - 04:46 PM (#2654289)
Subject: RE: BS: Earliest recorded sound and song
From: Rifleman (inactive)

.....How come we accept that Edison was the first?
Because that's what Edison wanted, he was totally ruthless in business

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