Publishing date: Feb 03, 2021 • February 3, 2021 • 1 minute read •
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Is there an echo in ‘hear’? Recording sound and word has historically been to the acoustical delight or civic vexation of the listener. It may come as a surprise to some that Thomas Edison was not the originator of sound devices but, in fact, it was Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville who invented the phonautograph in 1857. Instead of playing back soundwaves the device traces them visually onto soot-covered paper. It wouldn’t be until 2008 when the phonautograms were played back using digital imaging. Thomas Edison’s sketches in 1877 were the foundation of John Kruesi’s, an Edison-employed machinist, phonograph built of tinfoil. Reportedly, the first sound impulses to be successfully recorded and played back on the machine were from a verse of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Acoustical recording, simply described, is where the performed sound vibrated a diaphragm connected