The first human voice recording predates Edison by seventeen years

Evidence

Thomas Edison is usually credited with making the first recording of the human voice. Using a stylus connected to a device similar to the reproducer used in his later commercial machines (see figure 7.6), he recorded himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb onto tin foil in 1877. He was able to play the sounds back. But in March 2008, audio historian David Giovannoni discovered a recording produced on April 9, 1860, 28 years earlier than Edison’s oldest surviving recording, and 17 years before Edison’s first recording. Sitting all these years in an archive in the French Academy of Sciences was a “phonautograph” of Au Clair de la Lune that was first thought to be sung by a young woman. Later, it was realized that it was probably the inventor’s voice; the playback speed had been set too high. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Corrects a commonly held belief — connects to how technological creation stories routinely get their origins wrong, a theme running through media history works.
• CANDY: A delightful, low-context fact about Scott’s 1860 phonautograph predating Edison and even being misattributed to a female singer due to playback speed.