Move over Thomas Edison, you fuckin' slouch! First Sounds has released this recording, the first known audio recording, made in 1880 - 17 years before Edison's tinfoil recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"! It is an unidentified French person singing "Au Clair de la Lune", recorded by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on his "phonautograph", a device which scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke from an oil lamp! The sound quality is terrible, as you can imagine - ghostly, crackly, and actually pretty spooky. But it's undeniably there! And unless paleo/archaeoacoustics are ever able to capture sounds in ancient Greek pottery or lava flows or stalactites, this may be the oldest recording you will ever get to hear - so enjoy!
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