‘The Origins of Sound Recording’

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The National Park Service recently released an online exhibit and videos that share the latest historical research into the beginnings of recorded sound technology. The web presentation, titled “The Origins of Sound Recording,” is available at www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording.htm. Recent research calls attention to the work of mid-1800s French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville. Scott’s phonautograph, patented in France in 1857, graphically inscribed airborne sounds over time onto a permanent medium. As such, it was the earliest sound-recording device. Twenty years later, Thomas Edison independently re-invented sound recording in the form of the phonograph — the first device to both record and reproduce — or “play back” — sound.

The web exhibit, authored by researcher David Giovannoni, contextualizes and compares the innovations of Scott and Edison. It also explains the role of Charles Cros, a visionary Frenchman who conceptualized sound reproduction just weeks before Edison. While both Scott and Cros clearly anticipated a number of essential elements of Edison’s phonograph, historical evidence indicates that Edison conceived of sound recording without prior knowledge of their work.

On April 29, Thomas Edison National Historical Park hosted an international symposium to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Scott’s birth, titled “The Origins of Sound Recording: Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville Bicentennial Symposium.” Researchers Patrick Feaster and Giovannoni presented their latest findings to an audience of scholars, teachers, students, writers and documentarians. Included among the attendees were American representatives from the National Park Service, French dignitaries from the scientific establishment, and representatives of both Scott’s and Edison’s families. The new web presentation features video recordings of the full program.

A physical version of the exhibit, which includes a full-scale replica of the 1859 Scott phonautograph, is on display at Thomas Edison National Historical Park this summer through Aug. 27.

Because Scott’s phonautograph lacked the ability to play back its recordings, he was unable to prove that it actually captured interpretable sound recordings and faced skepticism. The significance of Scott’s phonautograph was not fully recognized during his lifetime. In 2008, Giovannoni and Feaster located Scott’s surviving recordings in French archives. Using digital technologies, they demonstrated that Scott’s recordings could be understood upon playback. This confirmed Scott as the initial inventor of sound recording and called upon historians to re-examine and reframe Edison’s 1877 invention of the phonograph. As of 2017, researchers have access to a much fuller, clear picture of Scott’s history, and a better understanding of how it relates to Edison’s first phonograph.

  Thomas Edison NHP