Thomas Edison Did NOT Record The First Sound!
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
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The first sound recording is often credited to Thomas Edison, but in 1857, a typographer named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville actually beat him by inventing the phonautograph, a device designed to capture sound waves on paper. It was never meant to be heard, but more than 150 years later, researchers were able to reproduce the sound and bring it back to life. It’s an amazing story - and it happened almost on accident.
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LINKS LINKS LINKS
www.oxfordreference.com/displ...
americasbesthistory.com/abhti...
www.thoughtco.com/inventions-...
gratefulamericanfoundation.or...
americasbesthistory.com/abhti...
editions.covecollective.org/c...
americanhistory.si.edu/docume...
www.firstsounds.org/research/s...
www.napoleon.org/en/history-o...
www.npr.org/templates/story/s...
time.com/5084599/first-record...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89d...
www.nps.gov/edis/learn/histor...
www.napoleon.org/en/history-o...
www.npr.org/sections/alltechc...
www.laphamsquarterly.org/roun...
www.napoleon.org/en/history-o...
www.firstsounds.org/sounds/Sco...
www.laphamsquarterly.org/roun...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ly...
www.phonozoic.net/
www.firstsounds.org/sounds/Sco...
www.napoleon.org/en/history-o...
www.firstsounds.org/sounds/186...
www.nps.gov/edis/learn/histor...
scihi.org/charles-cros/
www.loc.gov/collections/ediso...
www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/history/...
museumofmagneticsoundrecordin...
lemelson.mit.edu/resources/va...
victrola.com/blogs/articles/b...
www.timetoast.com/timelines/h...
djmag.com/news/new-technology...
www.noveto.com/
news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-r...
people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/Visu...
• Reconstructing Sound F...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_re...
recording-history.org/history...
INTRO
0:00 - Intro Sketch
1:25 - The 1860s Technologically
4:40 - The Phonautograph
6:21 - The Phonograph
8:38 - Tuning Fork Timecodes
9:14 - Oldest Human Voice Recording
10:17 - Au Clair de la Lune vs The Oldest Recording
11:16 - Audio Advancements
15:30 - Sponsor - Nebula - Věda a technologie
I think that it's really sweet that the first thing in human history Édouard-Léon decided to record was a song. There's something touching about it, as if he was trying to capture something beautiful.
Would have been wild if he came out with the Summers hottest jam tho.
Not to be a downer but it is a pretty obvious choice, recognizable, indexable, etc. The first Edison recording was also a song. Most of these "first" recordings were songs, because, again, it's an obvious choice
Even in the visual microphone experiment from the modern day, they use a song as the example!
@@HuckleberryHim didn't Edison record a poem?
@@svetlanakholmetskaya6282 "Mary Had a Little Lamb"? I think it counts as a song, no? Maybe not, idk
@@HuckleberryHim well, it kinda does, but he wasn't singing it, that was my point
Hey, his invention may not have worked in the immediate, but he’s still quite possibly the oldest human voice we’ll ever hear. Beautiful.
It's like watching those AI-enhanced clips of video footage from the late 1800s. Something equally eery and beautiful, like a glimpse into an actual stargate of some kind.
What about those pottery recordings?
@@sonorangaming449 I think they determined those to be a modern hoax?
@@sonorangaming449😂
timestamp for when its played?
Hearing Edouard-Leon's voice gave me chills. This is a guy that's now so long gone and here is his voice. It really sounds like a recording that could have happened last week over a cheap microphone or a baby monitor. It reminds me of how some time back, some archeologists were exploring a tomb in Egypt. It was pretty unperturbed and there were beautiful pristine murals on the walls. But amongst them, on one wall, one of the frescoes had an imperfection. In a small part of the fresco they found the imprint of one of the workers' finger. His finger print. They believed that while the plaster was still fresh and the paint was drying, the worker had carelessly put too much pressure on the plaster, leaving his print behind. This was an amazing discovery maybe more valuable than all the treasure in the tomb because it gives us a reminder that these ancient tombs and monument that - for us and many before us - seem to have always existed; they weren't there once. But not only that, it also puts real humanity in it. Worker, real people like you and me built them. People who had lives, loved ones, cried and laughed, had real thoughts and emotions, that were tangible like your own family and friends, people who once had names and memories - now completely loss to time and forgotten. Millions have come before us that are gone and forgotten and feels like they never existed. One day most us will face the same faith. -- This man, whose fingerprint is in this tomb, had that same happen to him. We will never know his name, anything about his life or his family, not even whether his descendants are still alive. But his print is still there, two thousand years later and for eons to come - immortalizing a man nobody will ever know but making human as any of us. - Sometimes I wish I could feel his print and see what he saw so long ago, if not to just know his name.
The age of that tomb: maybe more like 4000 years. Or 4500.
That's beautiful. Thank you.
@@davidkantor7978 I wasn't so sure about the time frame, but I think you just pointered my point.
I don't even care about the finger print guy, I do hope he was fired for being so messy on the job tho. I can't stand sloppy work.
@@Broken_robot1986 bruh
Hearing the first recording of a human’s voice actually makes me super emotional. It’s strange to feel such a connection to someone who lived so long ago.
if you think about it we are at the beginning of the era when modern technology is available
in about a couple of hundreds of years the internet will be full of inputs from people who died long ago and it will be a much more common occurrence
I felt the same way. This dude had no way of knowing 160 years later millions of people all around the world would be hearing this.
Weird trivia : in the french dub of "2001 : a space odissey", HAL sings "Au clair de la Lune" while Dave is turning it off. It's a strangely great choice done without knowing it's the first voice ever mechanically recorded, while in the original version the song is "Daisy", chosen because it was the first song performed by a computer at Bell labs in 1962...
Thanks for that bit of cultural information. It is quite a coincidence.
1. **Cultural Localization**: The choice of "Au clair de la Lune" in the French dub is an example of cultural localization in film. It shows how adaptations can be sensitive to the cultural and historical context of the audience, even if the original significance related to "Daisy" is lost in translation.
2. **Emotional Resonance**: Both songs are simple and childlike, which adds an emotional layer to the act of shutting down HAL, a highly advanced AI. The juxtaposition of a machine capable of complex tasks singing a simple tune as it "dies" adds a poignant touch to the scene.
3. **Technological Milestones**: Both songs serve as markers for technological progress in their respective fields-sound recording and computer science. Their inclusion in a film that explores the relationship between humanity and technology is a subtle but powerful thematic reinforcement.
4. **Narrative Foreshadowing**: In both versions, the choice of song foreshadows the film's deeper exploration of the relationship between humans and technology. The songs serve as a metaphor for the innocence and potential dangers inherent in technological advancement.
5. **Musical Motif**: Music plays a significant role throughout "2001: A Space Odyssey," from the iconic use of "Also sprach Zarathustra" to the "Blue Danube Waltz." The songs sung by HAL fit into this broader musical tapestry, each contributing to the film's complex interplay of sound and visuals.
6. **Historical Irony**: There's a certain irony in using songs that marked historical "firsts" in technology in a scene that depicts the "end" of a technological entity. It's as if the film is coming full circle, from the dawn of technological innovation to its potential dusk.
7. **Interdisciplinary Connections**: Both the original and the French dub versions create a bridge between the worlds of art and science. They show how technological milestones can be integrated into artistic expression to create a richer narrative experience.
Each of these points adds another layer of complexity and interest to what is already a deeply layered and iconic film.
👍
@@CWhisperer1all this in a humble CZcams comment. Who says social media is trash? Bravo! 👏
@@CWhisperer1 I think "Baby Got Back" would be a better fit for the movie though. For obvious reasons.
“I am going to record this and go viral on CZcams someday!” - Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville 1860
😂🤣😂🤣
Need a picture & then you can create a meme lol
This ep was superb!❤🎉
damn😂😂😂
Why is no one asking about the privacy sock? I seriously need one of those.
8:38 Omg, using a tuning fork is a real stroke of genius when you think about it. This had never been done before, dude had to come up with some way to ensure regulation, and using a tuning fork meant ANYONE could reinterpret the sounds precisely. It got me thinking "Did we put a tuning fork-like sound on that gold record we shot into space?" The first guy to record sound had the best fidelity idea ever
I think there are some sounds on there that signify that you are doing it the right amount of times--and the images on the record do include a calibration circle as well. The first note, I think, is about 250 Hz.
this reminds me of some very old teletypewriters were adjusted using a tuning fork. I'm just fascinated of the liminal space between simple, analog things and digital data.
The idea that we wrenched this man's voice from the oblivion in which it rested for over a hundred years is absolutely wild. What a tribute to the power of science and imagination. It's not just inspiring, it's a harbinger of hope. It makes you think that if we can do unimaginably crazy shit like that, then maybe we do have what it takes to overcome our problems and survive past the confluence of self-made calamities with which now we find ourselves engaged.
I agree, friend! Today we look back on the achievements of our ancestors with pride because they contributed to the amazing advancements we benefit from now. Will people in the future look back on this time period in disgust or pride for how bad or how good we did at shifting from unsustainable growth to circular economies that puts value on ecosystem resources/services? Time will tell.
Have you seen some of the more recent Star Trek, like I think in year 2450 or so and they reflect on our time: "how did humanity ever survive and get out of their self destructive patterns"! 😅
With how dreary so many things seems to be, it's things like this which brings back that sense of wonder and joy for the enginuity that humans are capable of. To think that I can listen to audio from over 150 years ago is mind boggling.😊
Dinosaurs went extinct, so did large bugs and a trillion other things we have no names for. Humans arent that special.
I say this as a sci fi fan.
We dont need to be here that long. We are animals. Smart animals, but animals.
Great comment Tommy
Pessimist here:not if we nuke ourselves into nothingness some time into the future.. Which may be the case, if you look into what is happening around the world. Cold war 2.0 but with way more powerful weapons and impossible to intercept delivery systems for those weapons.
It kind of feels almost like hearing a ghost, tbh. Creepy and fantastic, almost impossible, yet this guy plus people today achieved it, together through time.
Haha I thought the same thing!
Oh great, now next time I see a black and white movie it's going to feel like seeing ghosts on my TV.
@@WillShackAttack Whenever I watch silent films, that’s actually how it feels. Probably every person, no matter how young they were then on that film has now at best died of old age.
i find it kinda funny rather than creepy but aside my broken humor it is pretty amazing after all
Fun fact, the oldest person to ever be recorded was actually helmuth von moltke "the elder", the prussian field marshal who led the Franco prussian war and helped unite Germany, he was born in 1800 in the Holy Roman Empire, he was ironically also a very quiet person in life even tho we can still hear his voice over 200 years after his birth
any way to listen to it on youtube?
@@kooolainebulger8117if you’d typed his name into the yt search function, you would’ve had an answer which would’ve taken less effort than typing that
Copy/paste his name into the search box.@@kooolainebulger8117
that was one of my favourite techniques shown in an episode of "Burn Notice" ,, something he did once, and then never used or mentioned that technique again
@@kooolainebulger8117Yeah I found it
That sine wave from the tuning fork is more akin to something called pilot tone rather than time code. Pretty remarkable how stable the reproduction is.
@JoeScott - I'm sure someone has already pointed it out but listening to the first recording, you mentioned that there were no words but the words to the song are clearly audible and you can even make out the rolling-R of "Pierrot". This recording is amazing! Thanks for speaking about this.
Exactly.
I noticed the same thing. They still rolled the R back then. My ancestors came to North America from France in the 1650s and we still roll the R in my dialect of French. I can make out the words in the recording, but I'm not sure that I could if I didn't know the song already.
@@unclesaboin that's not (the one in the recording, I mean) what's generally referred to as a rolled R, it's just a different type of guttural R, like the one of Georges Brassens. The original R was like in Italian,
@@bacicinvatteneaca, it sounded like a rolled R to me at first, but it's so muffled that it's hard to really tell. Now that I listen to it again after you pointed it out, I think you're correct. He does what I call gargling the R. There are some accents around where I live where they pronounce the R that way. We refer to that as "parler gras" (fat speech). Where I'm from we roll the R (pronounced with the tongue like the Italians rather than with the throat like in modern French).
Yes, I can clearly hear "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot".
The speed seems way too slow though, and it's much easier to hear it at 1.75x or 2x speed, where the cadence is closer to a normal song.
I'm.....actually really emotional about those first recordings. It feels so delicate, so special, to hear the oldest human sound that we have access to. The fact that you have to strain your ears a little bit, to reach past the imperfect recording to hear just the faintest recognizable melodies is so precious and amazing. It feels like I'm reaching backwards in time to catch just a glimpse of this very real, very tactile world which is so similar and yet so different to our own. It's different than listening to a modern recording, which sounds so exact that it's easy to forget that it's a recording and not just a part of our natural environment. But this feels like transportation to me. Time travel. Thanks, Joe.
Oddly enough, I also feel a sense of "you're not supposed to be listening to these" with how distorted the audios are. It's insane to think that that's audio from 1860. Decades past what we were taught.
I get that same sort of feeling.
Also that demonstration of the computer 'singing' "Daisy Bell" in 1961. (Easy to find on CZcams, 'first computer to sing - daisy bell' )
@@IstasPumaNevada I get that exact same feeling with that song. It's like hearing someone sing for the first time ever after being taught how to sing.
A physical memory of a sound. It's beautiful. A strange kind of art. Like cave paintings. The audio equivalent of "I was here". ❤
Beautifully stated. You managed to eloquently describe a very enigmatic feeling I've felt on several occasions. That peek behind the curtain that we were never intended to see. It's truly something special, and pulls out some really strong yet mysterious emotions. It's such a unique experience, and there are literally only a few things on earth that can invoke those feelings.
In a way, it's like ancient art, but if the art wasn't visible to the naked eye and took chemical analysis to reveal it, and it turns out to be a photorealistic depiction of a real persons face staring back at you. Really hauntingly beautiful stuff.
There is a possibly apocryphal story of a vase from mesopotamia (or - you know - "way back then") that LOOKS like it had a leaf make "squiggles" on it's surface as the vase spun (you know, as it picked up vibrations in the air). Audio engineers have tried to 'decode it", but it looks like there is not enough fidelity. but this may actually be the FIRST recording of sound - despite the fact that it's not recoverable.
This is what I wanted to mention, but I thought I remembered listening to it and it being intelligible... guess not?
The Smithsonian has a few of this sort of recreated recording though
Yet...
I know that was something that happened in an episode of the X-Files.
Ah... Sumerian potter's wheel... I knew my silly Beethoven joke came from something I read...
Lacking the "tuning fork", if the cadence/frequencies over time of the wheel could be deduced maybe they'll crack the code and hear some choice Sumerian cursing and swearing about art teacher thought about the sgwiggly line. 😁
The more I think the more I'm super happy in fact that the first human voice ever record could also be the first human singing music that ever record as well. Art really something that stay with us since the very beginning.
I love how he figured out that he needed to add the tuning fork.
That alone was an amazing achievement.
He had absolutely no way of knowing this ahead of time and never got a chance to use it, yet came up with a perfect timing device for play back.
As I recall, the CIA imbedded a small prism into the panes of glass that were supplied to the Soviet Embassy in DC. From some distance away they pointed an invisible laser at the prism and - because the plate of glass vibrated whenever there was talking inside the room it was installed for - they could record conversations without being in or near the room. The visible microphone seems to just be an improvement on that idea.
And the Soviets gave the US "The Thing", an unpowered wireless listening device.
@@davidmcgill1000 I remember Soviets in late ussr also built whole embassy as a giant listening device. A structure of a building was a resonator for sounds that was collected in a foundation by wireless devices.
the story that i read was that a passive resonator was put into a sculpture/envraving that was hung on a wall, and there was/is also the use of lasers to read audio off of windows. in the video, they step it up and focus on an object beyond the window, which is apparently designed to deter laster listening off of the window itself.
Oh Joe scott.... we need more like you. Never stop doing what you do. The "privacy" sock bit was great.
Not quite the Get Smart Cone of Silence, but better looking.
I love how he's always so woke and politically correct.
Getting click baity. Where is the creepy part in this video??? Very misleading
@@tomatoisred6966 woke and politically correct = not racist or homophobic
@@tomatoisred6966 Dude "PC" is dead, have you been living under a rock?
The first I ever heard of laser recording was in a Tom Clancy novel some 30ish years ago speaking of how they had to develop special curtains to keep the Soviets from recording secret meetings off the vibrating glass panes. It's one of the reasons why the most secret meetings are held in windowless interior rooms now.
The tuning fork idea is brilliant! In fact, audio engineers have historically recorded a 1kHz ‘reference tone’ on the beginning couple of feet of a reel of tape. Its purpose is exactly the same: calibration of audio equipment, to ensure everything is running at the correct speed, etc.
reminds me a little of the rising sine tone that I used to hear a bunch at the start and end of cassette tapes. Not all of them had it, but a good number did. The thing is, those ones weren't a 1Khz tone for calibration, they seemed more like a 20-20k sweep. I still don't exactly know why they were there on consumer tapes (maybe it has something to do with some Dolby noise suppression?), but it was a kinda charming part of listening to tape.
Hi Joe,
Offering a minor correction to this excellent work:
Alexander Graham Bell’s cousin was named Chichester Bell (not Chinchester Bell), and their invention was named the Graphophone ( not Gramaphone)
Source: worked for Dictaphone Corporation, which evolved from Bell’s Volta Laboratories.
The point in one of the Au Clair De La Lune recordings where it gets fuzzier (probably because he blew harder into the mouthpiece) gave me shivers. I have done pretty much the same thing.
I remember a story about recording keystrokes of famous pianists even though they had no way to decode them. Each key had a needle that dipped into mercury to activate a writing pin which was recorded on a moving roll of paper. While this sounds like a player piano. It also recorded how fast and hard each key press was because the signal depended on how far the pin dipped into the mercury, thereby increasing conductivity.
I seem to remember hearing a story several years back, where they were able to recover audio from scratches had been made with a stylus like tool in ancient Greek pottery. So the record may actually be thousands of years older.
True. I think the first one was reel to reel and made by 1972
I went down a big rabbit hole on this a few years back, became just obsessed with the earliest sound recordings, photographs and films for a solid couple of months.
When this recording was first revealed it would nearly always get played at 2x speed, and most people would then assume that's how it sounded. Glad to see you didn't fall into that trap.
I wonder if there is some way for nature to record soundwaves from our enviroment, that would then be somehow "frozen" like an audio fossil?
Probably not, but the video reminded me of the cosmological soundwaves, which is one way nature preserves a recording.
@@VikingTeddyI feel like I remember something like ancient pottery that had recorded vibrations from a reed that was in contact with it, but that likely wouldn't have saved any useful information
@@calebmcnevin Yes back in the 80s there was a hypothesis that a cetrtain vase with a spiral pattern that was created with a reed, and that maybe the sound could be heard. I turned out that it was not possible, but a ScienceFiction author wrote a short story based on the idea, and people got all "Mandela Effect" with it, so it became urban legend.
@@VikingTeddy interesting idea, have a similar idea that atoms maybe have subatomic particles that possibly keep track of a limited number of past atomic states that the particle has been in. If such a thing was true, it would in the VERY far future be entirely possible to reconstruct a limited amount of the past via digital reconstruction of atoms in past atomic states. You could directly view the past through atoms themselves. You could reconstruct people, you could do a lot theoretically, practically what you could do with it, is another matter. Too far into the future for us to really understand or even posit anything of value beyond this in my mind.
I think Nature has done something like this in Birds. Many birds can reproduce sounds they have heard - I don't think the mechanism has been deeply investigated.
Small correction - reel-to-reel 1/4" tape decks were made for home use starting in the 1950s. My dad had one before I was born (1967) and they’d been around for quite a long time before that.
Your 1972 date might be for the first quadraphonic deck. Reel-to-reel decks for home use were monophonic at first, then stereophonic by 1957 or 1958. Quadraphonic came along in the early 1970s.
Yes. Reel-to-reel recorders were around a long time before 1972!
DECK, he used the term, deck, basically the precursor to standard tape cassettes. That's what came along in the 70s.
Reel-to-reel was the 40s, what he's referencing is what immediately preceded 8-track and "compact cassettes". As a means of mass distribution, reel-to-reel only ever had a small niche, and it's a complex one relative to other mediums the public would recognize. Most of us don't know or remember "tape decks", but it does fit next to other tape mediums.
That's what I thought because my grandpa had one in the 1960s for sure... possibly earlier.
The Germans had tape recordings during WW2. Ampex copied it after the war and introduced reel to reel tape recorders in the US.
That first sound recording is something else, you can even hear him rolling his R when he says Pierrot, just wow!
So the first recorded sound was a podcast. Great to see how far we've come since then
i got sick in 2019 and have sort of deteriorated slowly ever since. Your videos have been some of the most pleasant experiences I have had during this time and I am very grateful, and very proud of you for your work and dedication. Watching you and learning new things or exploring some of my interests has helped distract me from the less bearable things I am dealing with, and for that I will always be happy to see you succeed. Your videos are not only entertaining and educational, but they are very well made, and you make it look easy despite the quality proving it must be very hard work. Thank you, Joe, for being a light in the dark.
I hope you'll find a path to recovery soon ❤
I hope the coming months bring you good health and happiness.
its crazy how clear the recording is. even if you hadn't said what song that was i could 100% make it out as "au claire de la lune". i grew up with my mom singing that lullaby nearly every day.
10:45 being a francophone, actually, although muffled we can clearly hear the words "au clair de la Lune", then "mon ami Pierro"... Fascinating, thank you !
10:05 Scott was trying to record when a fly buzzed by….
Actually, the first reel-to-reel tape recorder was invented in Germany in the late 1920s. It definitely predated the cassette and 8-track tape formats.
yes. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, talks about that in his self biography "made in japan - the Sony way": the tech for such recordings was one of the technological transfers that imperial Japan got from their German allies in WW2. It was used mostly on thin metallic cable, it was after the war that Morita and his buddies were trying to improve upon it, when they realized quality would be improved a hundred times by recording on a tape, rather than a thin cable. They tried it, it worked, and one of Sony's first successful products was born: Japan's tribunals would buy these machines to record the trials uninterrupted and latter the tachygraphers would record everything in the regurar way. This was much needed as after the war Japan had an accute lack of tachygraphers atd this was causing a real bottleneck for justice system. Latter these tapes were used by colleges to teach foreign languages
Exactly my thoughts
Exactly my thoughts
Was about to say, I have a reel to reel deck my Grandfather bought in the '60s, and reels of tape he recorded in the '50s. Consumer tape machines far predate the 1970s!
Also the "Visual Microphone" isn't exactly the first thing that can pickup sound through things, although it is very impressive. There is a device used by police in movies and tv shows (that turns out to be real) that can record and play audio from a much longer distance than a regular microphone and through a closed window since some sound would travel through that already, it just makes it a volume that can be heard easier. So basically when he says "...does it mean anybody can just point a camera through my window at a plant in the room and hear everything I'm saying?" The answer is yes, but they could already do that with something other than a camera for a while now.
It is amazing how close he was to inventing the phonograph. He just got too fixated on the visual “reading” of the audio waves to have considered reversing the process to recreate the recorded sound
Edit: spy agencies invented the vibrating objects method of sound recording decades ago. They used lasers pointed at objects like lamp shades through windows to eavesdrop on their subjects from nearby buildings or bushes.
But they don't even need lasers now
Didn't the Russian's spy on the American embassy using the vibration of the glass in the windows? Also, my dog can hear every word I say in the house when she is outside, I think it is because of the glass vibrating, but I can't verify that.
The Soviets invented a
" bug " they put inside a U.S. Seal as A gift to head guy in U.S. Embassy in Moscow?? Maybe another city.....
But anyway it took no battery or electricity.... Just sound vibration somehow caused to to send the sound to where ever KGB was recording it.
Took awhile to locate it after US figured out the reds had to be money them cause they kept heading us off on stuff us was doing
Did the 1860's lasers use a 9volt?
No, they used lightning jumping off a key tied to a string.
HOLY CRAP AT 10:25 MY DOGS LOOKED UP
I really love how he says yeah Ike's and immediately after the plant starts wiggling back and forth
130 years from now, the patent for that privacy tube will still be under Joe Scott's name.
Because nobody else will want it?
9:26 "...now considered to be the oldest recording ever made of the human voice, it was recorded on April 9 1860 and it sounds like this: "
*Yoda* "Always two there are, a master and an apprentice"
Best timing for an ad, ever
Listening to those recordings is really interesting because of how imperfect they are. It's like, even back then we were all still human.
By a strange coincidence, 'Claire de la lune' is remarkably similar to an early music pavane written in the 16th century -- and also the first piece of music I learned when I was learning to read music in the fourth grade, in the mid 1960's. I've been playing music for nearly sixty years now, play at least a dozen instruments, and have studied French traditional music (of the Auvergne) for years -- but I never knew it was a popular (children's?) song!
Thanks, Joe! I always learn something weird from you -- but this time it was weirder than usual!
I figured the first recording would be someone asking someone about their stagecoach's extended warranty.
Lol why is this funny to me
"This notice serves to inform you that the factory warranty on your 1860 Stagecoach is expired or is due to expire based on date or mileage." 😅
@josephdavis9204 they had a "horse fault" clause. "I do apologize for rear-ending you sir, my horse is quite rambunctious today."
Hey Joe The technique of using a light beam to remotely record sound probably originated with Léon Theremin in the Soviet Union at or before 1947, when he developed and used the Buran eavesdropping system.[1] This worked by using a low power infrared beam (not a laser) from a distance to detect the sound vibrations in the glass windows.[1][2] Lavrentiy Beria, head of the KGB, had used this Buran device to spy on the U.S., British, and French embassies in Moscow. From Wikipedia. Also see the Laser Doppler vibrometer for similar.
Is that what James Bond used in a Spectre movie (scene on a rooftoop, just after openning scene)?
Is that the guy who also invented the theremin musical instrument?
@@samuelgonzalez8480yes. Later in life he was coerced for working the Soviet Union.
If these walls could talk...🤔
Is this the same Theremin as “guy who invented the Theremin” instrument?
14:45 Fun fact, highly secure facilities (like Lockheed Skunkworks, etc) have devices mounted to exterior windows to introduce random vibrations in the glass as well as tinting to reduce/distort one-way light transmission specifically to avoid this method of attack. Some secure government facilities also pump white noise into the interior space that is inaudible to humans and has randomly variable frequencies.
This attack vector is old, like 50s old.
I'm not sure the camera attack vector is 50s old, but using a laser to detect vibrations off a window is definitely old, and technologically incredibly simple.
I am a musician, audio engineer and producer and I live for recording and listening to music, so really I have these guys to thank for so much! Eduoard-Leon Scott De Martinville is a legend and It's really incredible to learn about him!
Holy moly that's the third video I've seen today that mentions the ability to record sound from video, insane!
There is a short story by Gregory Benford from 1979 called "Time Shards" where a researcher recovers thousands-of-year-old sound from a piece of pottery thrown on a wheel and inscribed with a point as it spun. If I remember correctly they hear the potter and another person speaking.
Ooh, glad you mentioned this. I will look up that short story.
Well, i just read it, and it kinda made me want to cry. thanks for mentioning it :^)
I've heard that that story wasn't actually true
It was later confirmed as Tony Bennett's earliest known recording.
@@nik_cageYes: It's a work of fiction later passed on as fact. It's not true.
9:56 There are words ! 'Au clair de la Lune, mon ami Pierrot. Prête-moi (cut)'.
'La Lune' and the rolled R of Pierrot are quite clear (for a native French speaker's ear)
Your best one in a while: so well crafted, written, and paced. Hats off! Super interesting too of course.
The first reel to reel decks were much earlier than 1972. My mother worked in the late 1940's for a man named Charlie French at a studio with the first Ampex reel to reel recorder in Boston. I also had a friend who had a large tube amplified reel to reel that he got from his grandfather that was probably made in the 1950's so I'm not sure where you got your info for that. Even the Beatles recorded on an early 4 track reel to reel before 1972. Otherwise, this is an very interesting video.
Yea, reel-to-reel decks have been around since WWII. It was invented by the Germans - the AEG Magnetophon.
From Wikipedia:
Magnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Show.
also there were wire recordings to using steel wires on a reel
One cool advancement you didn't cover was a recent study mapping the audio cortex of patients with metal probes in their brain. I think they were already there for their epilepsy but the researchers used it to map what they heard and recreate it. They had them listen to Pink Floyd and recreated the song based on brain activity. They literally read their mind. It's wild.
Sadly it wasn't super accurate
@@vyor8837 no not at all. You could barely tell what it was. But you could tell. Like the first recordings in this video they didn't sound clear but they are still impressive
@@1three7 yeah, but the main problem is that, unlike this technology, more sensors and even more *accurate* sensors don't help fidelity much.
@@vyor8837 well no, every person's brain is unique and learns how to process audio information in its own way. More sensors isn't the right approach but we probably will figure out ways to improve the clarity. Although I'm not sure that's actually a good thing lol
@@1three7 ideally it gets good enough to control a computer by thinking at it, but still requiring putting something on.
11:11 That friend in the discord who won’t buy a real mic and is still using the one that broke weeks ago:
BAHAHAHA
7:44 Is it just me, or is he saying:
"Mary had a little lamb, it squiggled quite at all, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb would shoot us all" ?
“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go”
@@madameghostie I prefer my interpretation. Reminds me of Isabelle and Doomguy.
@@masscreationbroadcasts LOL
Just wanted to comment to say I appreciate all of the videos. I have been going through a lot of stressful stuff lately and these videos are a nice break. They're always entertaining and I get to learn so many cool new things. Thanks 🙂
That clip you played of Edison reciting a Mary had a little lamb was not the original recording but a re-enactment he did several decades later
Correct. None of the recordings made on Edison's first machine exist into the present day, due to both them being on tin foil and due to it being impossible to replace back onto the machine once removed. This is why we have verified accounts of Edison taking his phonograph to the White House and demonstrating it to then-president Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1870s, but the first recording we have of a sitting president is that of Benjamin Harrison from 1889-90.
I can’t stress enough how much I love this channel.
Relax. Try to not stress.
@@SofaKingShit Too late!
Same😂
Really liked this video. I appreciate you, Joe. Love what you focus on and how you do it.
There are laser-based listening devices that can be pointed at an exterior window to hear the sound inside the room. I saw something about it on an episode of the spy show, Burn Notice. I later did some Google searches about laser listening devices & saw that they do exist. By the way, "There Will be Squiggles" is actually the name of my heavy metal Air Supply tribute band. "All Out of Love" takes on an entirely new feeling when played on distorted guitars.
I get the impression that M. Martinville had a better grasp of the science of sound than Mr. Edison did, but perhaps wasn’t as knowledgeable about mechanical engineering.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Implementation? Not so much.
@@UncleKennysPlace Exactly. The perspiration part is where 99.999% of people fail.
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017Nah. Most people fail at the funding stage.
I'm not sure what that even means. I guess you're talking about everyone who has an interesting idea that they never work on? How about just being realistic about getting funding and getting enough money to pay people to work on an idea, and not ruin them also, or their lives. I wouldn't say the phonoautograph for example, died because of lack of effort. You're just beating that metaphor to death with "99.999%" bit. Maybe you should've put more "persperation" into it! 😉
@@csweezey18That's nonsense.
As always, great video! Being a french speaker, I can confirm that you can indeed hear the words Au....clair....de....la...lun-e...mon...ami...Pierrot. He's singing very slowly, but the words are distinct. So cool!
And he uses the hard 'r' sound like Edith Piaf
@@ViziviragIn french the r is alway said that way
Exactement!
C’est exactement ce que j’allais dire ! You can hear the words and it’s a impressive for such an old recording. Bien joué Édouard t’étais un bon 🫡
Yeah I was surprised when he said there weren't any words, when I could pick up everything he said. Maybe it's a brain filling in the gaps because I know what it's meant to sound like, but I think that still counts.
Always enjoy the skits you do! They are fun and help me to remember the points the video was getting across. Thanks for all you put into your content.
That was so cool. Thanks for sharing all of that information and making this video. The new tech makes me think of an episode of Fringe where they take recreate a sound recording of what happened in a particular room from the pane of glass in the window. I got shivers when I you talked about it. Excellent video, Joe :)
9:34 thank you so much, joe scott, for sharing with us this historically significant audio.
1) That skit had me in stitches. I had to go back to watch it twice. 2) For some reason it blows my mind that recorded sound started that long ago. I thought it was in the 20th Century. 3) I couldn't stop giving your plant side eye towards the end ...
You can distinctly recognize the notes and rhythm (it's sung slowly) and make out the words. Vowels and voiced consonants (noticably m and n) came through, while voiceless consonnants (l, final r) are completely lost. Consistant with a low resolution recording, I'd say. Amazing 😮
L is a voiced consonant, though. Voiceless L is the one found in Welsh and Mesoamerican languages
There’s something so eerie about listening to these recordings.
The "visual microphone" general concept has been used for governmental spying purposes for quite a while, but the ability to remotely scan individual objects as described in the video here is relatively new, especially the algorithm processing speed and sensitivity. Very cool, and very scary at the same time.
Alot of passive 'bugs' worked using that method - but in electromagnetic rather than visual wavelengths.
@@Coconut-219 There have also long been laser-based monitoring systems that can covertly "read" the vibrations from things like window glass and hard paneling etc. from a distance.
Exactly what I was thinking, I chuckled to myself about how that's been around for decades now.
Did you notice the moving plants at 14:54? Just after he talked about recording voice by monitoring moving objects in the room?
Hehe, I've had to run the A/C because of the extreme heat and it's been blowing the plant around.
They were moving the whole time
This guy kills me ( in the good, laughing way). I love how he uses humor to keep listener's attention and it totally works for me! Keep it up!
Yeah I had a couple of hand-me-down reel-to-reel machines that dated to at least 10 years before 1972, just based on the construction and materials used. One was a large unit for hi-fi systems, and could do 4-track recording. The other was a portable unit that came with its own microphone.
It's astonishing that the actual timbre and presence of a human voice was recorded so long ago and can now be heard. It's rough, but it's unmistakably a human voice.
During the scale, I couldn't really put my finger on it, but if I am not mistaken, it almost sounded similar to a modern microphone clipping (too much input). It seems like it happens at vocal peaks much like clipping would happen today, kinda nifty!!
5:35 French guy here, I feel the obligation to inform non-French speaking people that "sein" means "breast".
For a German guy, this is funny. The word "sein" in German is either a pronoun and means "his" or a verb and means "to be".
So that is why people keep their learning fresh by, keeping abreast (a-sein) of the subject.
I love how every time you said, “It sounds like this…” an ad started playing.
Joe, I was in the French Foreign Legion. We had to celebrate that war every year. There is a famous battle that took place in Camaron. It's similar to the Alamo in that people (legionnaires) were trapped in a fort and they held out until their ammo was spent, then they fixed bayonnets and charged to their deaths. But Mexicans captured a couple of them and let them go, saying "these are devils not men!", there is a famous wooden hand from the captain that fought there, which is like the holy grail of the Legion. Thought you might find that interesting.
Respect pour avoir servi dans la légion. I looked up at this battle and it seems the French army returned to the same place one year later and inflicted a harsh defeat onto the Mexicans.
I don’t know about anyone else but I found that interesting. Thank you!
Texans: Remember the Alamo!
French: Remember the ammo!
It's just amazing how smart people have always been
Smart ppl are immortal and were created during the big bang? Wow.
@@christophermullins7163no no they caused the big bang for science
I believe the date of 1972 @13:23 for the first reel-to-reel tape decks is incorrect. I was living in Japan in 1958 and we bought a Teac tape deck and a Sony reel-to-reel recorder in 1960 and brought them back to the US in 1962. Smaller portable reel to reel units using approximately 5 inch reels were available in 1958.
For anyone who doesn’t understand the genius idea of the tuning fork, depending how fast you play it back will change the pitch of the sound. So anyone in the future trying to listen can tell if they are playing it back correctly because the tune will be the proper music note.
Oh wow. Great video, Joe. I had no idea who Martinville was.
That Au Clair de le Lune recording probably had words that got mangled by the low fidelity. (I'm French) I recognize the rolled Rs of "Pierrot" (the last word of the recording)
i never realized that that little song i learned at my piano lessons, my guitar classes, my middle school band practices was au clair de la lune. i've grown up with this song and never realized what it was called, or it's significance. i knew it must have been old and important since it was almost always one of the first songs i was taught whenever i picked up a new instrument (which i've done like seven times) and it's so fascinating how we can have something impact us so much and not even realize it
I have watched this about 6 times now. This may be the most interesting video you have made. I love it!
1:25 ...to be fair, the same thing could basically be said about both the 1760s and the 2060s...the horse part makes it even more interesting.
Reel-to-reel tape recorders were available LONG before 1972! The German magnetophon, which is generally regarded as the original tape recorder, was developed in the late 1930s but was unknown outside Germany until the end of WW2. Recorders recording on steel tape had existed earlier, one example was the Blatnerphone which the BBC used for a while in the 1930s.
I was just going to say that. Absolutely correct.
That such a cool episode! Hearing that voice from so long ago for the first time. Wow.
Being able to hear ancient pottery would be the most insane thing I've ever heard of in my life
It's theoretically possible that people accidentally recorded sound all the way back to ancient times. Potters work with spinning soft clay, which is capable of recording sound. If someone used just the right tool to work on the clay, it may have vibrated and accidentally recorded sounds. It's a very remote possibility, but billions of clay jars were made, so it could have happened.
It would be really cool to hear ancient conversations.
The TV show Mythbusters tried to record sound that way and could not do it.
....I see my comment is redundant.
"Ditto"
It should be how the ancient Greeks spun already glazed and fired ceramics on a wheel with a hard graver against them to cut accurate lines of decoration through the glaze. I read a short story where some researcher played back the groove and hear some sounds.
Loved this one, finding the "firsts" of things is almost an obsession of mine. I personally think watching your videos is like being in a class taught by that "really cool" teacher. They are hard to come by, hope you keep going as long as CZcams is a thing!
As a recording, mix and post audio engineer, I found this fascinating! Thank you! :)
❤ from 🇨🇦
This was fascinating. Thank you
Got me thinking about what products infomercials would advertise in 1860s. Thanks again for internal monologue food, Joe!!!
It can't be just me thinking that there has to be a crossover somewhere in the development of these assorted phonautograph devices and seismograph.
It feels almost ghostly pulling his voice back from the dead.
So cool! Great one!
13:22 I was a bit shocked to hear of the "first" reel to reel deck in 1972, because I have clear memories of my parent's TEAC tape deck which they purchased in Taiwan in 1968.
There are several sound technologies that I've seen pop up over the years, but they never seem to make it beyond demos.
I remember that in the 90's, I bought a computer magazine (anyone remember those?) and it came with a CD. Among the stuff in that CD were recordings of what I believe was called holophonic sound. It was amazing. I recall one was the sound of someone shaking a box of matches and moving it around your head, and it actually sounded exactly like someone was doing it for real. Another was the sound as if you were getting a haircut, it gave me chills down my neck because it was so realistic. All over regular, cheap headphones.
A few years later, I remember reading about directional ultrasound technology similar to the one mentioned at 13:35. They were building some sort of displays where people could hear the sound perfectly if they stood in front of the display and within a certain distance, but other people around it couldn't hear a thing.
I don't know why neither of those ever took off.
Great comment!!!!!!!! I remember those mags with the CD’s, although never really played them.
Good video made much more amusing by when the CZcams ad spots were put in. Literally whenever you said this is what that sounds like there was an immediate ad spot 😂
This is probably one of my favorite videos you've made. Definitely consider doing more stuff like this, it's fascinating.
I love the Cone of Silence 2.0 opener! That recording from 1860 is amazing. Sure you can't hear what's being sung, but it's unmistakable as a human voice. That's amazing!
So interesting and amazing to hear voices from so long ago. I had a crazy theory that we could perhaps cut open a stone that had been in a stone-age fire, the last time it was lit before they moved on, and measure nano-scale deviations in the crystal formations caused by ambient sound (e.g. speech) disturbing the molecules as it was cooling down. This would be linear, as the heat escaped the stone, and thus provide a soundtrack for a number of minutes. Not sure what the resolution would be, nor whether the sound waves would carry enough energy to cause detectable deviations. ;-)
This one isn't even that old and I keep coming back to it. I think this video is so interesting
One thing - MP3 was introduced and formally standardized in 1991. It was the .mp3 suffix that was declared in 1995. Before 95, MP3 files typically carried the .bit suffix.
Winamp came out in 97 and I had some edm mp3's back then. Also Napster launched in 1999 which had tons of mp3's.