With the completion of the
Phonograph at Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory on December
6, 1877 the idea that sound was fundamentally ephemeral needed to be qualified. Edison had
captured his spoken words and then played them back, word for word. Even the dead could now be heard again-- if they had been recorded.
In 1857
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville had recorded
sound with his Phonautograph, however, Scott did not conceive
or design his machine to speak back the recordings. (2)
Likewise, French poet and
inventor Charles
Cros had described his concept of such an invention
and intended to give it the Greek name 'Paleophone' (Fr. 'voix du passe', En. 'voice of the past').
Cros submitted his concept in a sealed envelope to the French
Academy on April 30, 1877 but it was not read in public
until December 3, 1877. Cros never built a successful working
model of his Paleophone. Nevertheless, Cros deserves credit and can be recognized for being the first person to conceive a method for reproducing recorded sound.
The first public demonstration
of a machine that recorded the human voice and played it
back was Edison's Phonograph taken to the office of Scientific
American in New York City on December 7, 1877. That
demonstration resulted in the publication of "The
Talking Phonograph," an article which explained
how the phonograph worked but also included the writer's
reaction to a machine that was changing the perception of
ephemeral sound.
"It is impossible to listen to
the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea
that his senses are deceiving him." (Scientific American, December 22, 1877.
The revolution of recorded
sound in popular culture had officially begun. Its evolution
continues in the 21st century.
