While it’s tempt­ing to think of audio record­ing as start­ing with Edi­son and his phono­graph in 1877, the truth is that record­ing had been hap­pen­ing for 20 years longer than that. If we dis­count devices to play­back pre-recorded music (musicboxes, orchestri­ons) or sim­u­lated speech (Wolf­gang von Kempelen’s speak­ing machine) the first record­ing, as we come to know it today, was done in 1857. It was Édouard-Léon Scott who invented the phonoau­to­graph, a device that recorded sound-waves on to a soot-covered glass plate. For many years it remained a labra­tory curios­ity; a device for the study of sound and lit­tle else. It wasn’t until Edison’s improved ver­sion, of basi­cally the same prin­ci­ple, that sound record­ing became a com­mer­cially viable ven­ture. Even then, Edi­son and oth­ers went after the busi­ness mar­ket, hock­ing their recorders as dic­tion machines for the busi­ness pro­fes­sional. Few would have thought at the time that an entire indus­try would rise from this early exper­i­ment in cap­tur­ing sound. Fewer still would have fore­told that the fur­ther pro­lif­er­a­tion of record­ing tech­nol­ogy to the masses would spell that industry’s downfall.

Go to the First Sounds web­site to delve into early audio recordings.

Tags: History, Recording

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