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.'"

Comments

Not the first, but gets all the credit?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Edison sounds like a modern day Microsoft.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it to the French to invent write only memory.

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

[Ethanol-fueled]

I thought that write-only memory was a Polish invention, like rasin juice and metal skateboard wheels.

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

[dcsmith]

Note that, in the end, AC prevailed.

Blast it, don't encourage the Anonymous Cowards!

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

[multisync]

We also had strap on skate wheels that were also metal.

I remember those, you wore them over your sneakers, and tightened the metal clamps around your feet with a key. The vibration of metal on pavement would cause numbing foot paralysis within minutes.

And do you think it would ever occur to our parents to put a helmet or shin pads on us? Apparently we were expendable back then.

Oh well, /OT Rant

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

[wattrlz]

If someone creates a cookie recipe that happens to, in several dozen years time, be interpretable as a Grand Unified Theory then there might be some gray area. If they vehemently decry any attempt at such a theory as an egregious misapplication of culinary knowledge even though they have yet to create a single edible confection, I should think it at least requires a historical footnote with any recognition they receive.

More importantly, though; "Thomas Alva Edison" is so much easier to write than, "Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville". Think of all the trees and ink we'd save!

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

[kalirion]

Yeah, it's great that we're just now rediscovering genetic engineering, nuclear reactors, CIGS cells, multicore processors, carbon nanotubes, and satellite communications. We know that the Romans did all of these things thousands of years ago.

Not Romans, but the aliens Xenu dumped into the volcano. Now their souls are slowly uploading their knowledge into our heads.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

and this comes from someone who has DC in his initials.

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

[cheater512]

Of course the Romans didnt have computers and nuclear energy.

It was the Atlantians who had that stuff.
I even heard they had 1024 core computers with terrabytes of ram! ;)

And the first words were ...

[trolltalk.com]

researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman

"I surrender!"

Re:And the first words were ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, not "premier post" ?

Well?

[NotInfinitumLabs]

Where's the fucking sound clip?

Re:Well?

[Joe the Lesser]

The RIAA is releasing it next month on their 'Best of the Live 19th Century Recordings' album, priced at $39.99.

Re:Well?

[noidentity]

Right here: --~~~~^v^v/\/\/\/\/^v^v~--~/\/\~~-~~/\/\/\/^v^v^v---^v^v^v--~~~~~---

Possible contents:

[Ancient_Hacker]

Likely contents:

• "American scum like you cannot have a table at our fine restaurant."
• "Regardez! The recording industry strike begins at dawn!"

Re:Here we go again

[sm62704]

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

That would be George Washington Carver Rodrigues LaFitte, the black Hispanic Frenchman who invented a method of storing binary data ao a peanut?

Re:So...

[dex22]

Man, he's gonna get SO sued...

DMCA Violation!

[khendron]

So some scientists managed to decipher and playback a recording of some singing that was encoded 150 years ago. That sounds like a violation of the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions! They'll be getting a letter from the RIAA soon.

RIAA

[dcsmith]

I'd say that since the New York Times has 'made available for download' a copy of the recording, we should be hearing from the RIAA any minute now.

Edison and The Simpsons

[herks]

(Homer realizes that Thomas Edison has already invented safety legs for the back of a chair.) Homer: (Shouting) Aww, damn it! (Bart comes running down the basement stairs.) Bart: Hey Dad, heard you swearin'. Mind if I join in? Crap, boobs, crap! Homer: I thought I had a great idea, I must have seen it on this poster. (Bart studies Homer's Thomas Edison invention chart.) Bart: If Edison thought of that chair, how come it's not on this chart? Homer: It's not? Maybe he never told anyone about it. (Points at Edison poster.) That chair might be the only one he made. Bart: So? Homer: So, we've got to go to the Edison Museum and smash it! Then I'll be an inventor! Bart: But I thought you loved Edison. Homer: Aw, to hell with him. Bart: Yeah! Hell, damn, fart!

Transcript

[Dancindan84]

The transcript of his speech writing is said to be:

Dear Aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all Historians are still trying to determine the meaning, if any.

Re:Here we go again

[Jesus_666]

You're displaying envy paranoia, which was discovered by a Swede, if I'm not mistaken.

Re:So what

[oldhack]

Let it go, man. You have to let it go.