The Oldest Recorded Human Voice

It is a mere 10-second clip of the French song "Au Clair de La Lune" - yet this first ever human voice recording, by Frenchman Edourado-Leon Scott in April of 1860, has changed history.

That is because this recording predates Thomas Edison's recording of "Mary had a little lamb", previously thought as the oldest recorded voice - by seventeen years!

Scott recorded the voice, thought to be his daughters', on a machine called a phonautograph that worked by etching sounds onto a paper covered with soot.

The sound from the ponautograph was retrieved by a group of scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, USA. They used a technology that is designed to play audio records without touching them.

While the 10-second song clip may not seem like much, keep in mind it was done almost one-hundred fifty years ago, even before the light bulb was invented!

sources :Guardian.co.uk