1850 Tuning Fork Recording

In 1850, French acoustician Claude Pouillet made a brief recording of a tuning fork (here looped about 10 times) by placing a stylus onto a tuning fork, striking it, and placing it onto a piece of lamp-blackened paper wrapped around a rotating drum cranked by hand.

[@orionsuniversepart2932]

Besides the remastered Cornett scale recording, the sub-successful sound recording in history, this recording of the tuning fork at 435 hertz is the first successful sound recording in history.

[@bartthegamer1354]

Incredible

[@tiga4180]

So close to recording music or even voice if he'd realised it.

[@danielcarneiro5483]

was this discovered recently?

[@JimPigMuseumOfSound]

The First Sounds research team first played this back in 2008.

[@bartthegamer1354]

So is this the earliest sound recording of any kind?

[@JimPigMuseumOfSound]

In 1806, British scientist Thomas Young published his theory of sound wave frequencies, the first known representation of sound in waves. Although his well-known graph has recently been converted to sound we can play back today, it was a hand-drawn sound wave, not an actual recording. In 1840, the acoustician Jean-Marie Constant Duhamel published experiments in which he recorded sound by direct contact with tuning forks and bells … but his recordings appear to be lost. In 1842, Guillaume Wertheim recorded the sound of a tuning fork which survives and has been recently been played back, but it seems to have captured more noise than tone frequency and is seen as a failed experiment. Fortunately, the similar 1850 experiment by Claude Pouillet, which captured actual frequencies, still survives as the earliest recording that sounds like what it represents.

[@jacobdietrich4897]

Can you upload the 1842 recording?

[@ThisHandleIsRare]

@@JimPigMuseumOfSound this is wrong, no information online supports this

[@JimPigMuseumOfSound]

@@ThisHandleIsRare Check out FirstSounds.org, see both their posts and videos

[@veronicaellis3072]

The first recording was recorded in 1860, not 1850. "Au clair de la lune" by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was recorded on April 9, 1860.

[@JimPigMuseumOfSound]

Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville was the first to record sound from the air onto a moving surface ; his proof of concept was about 1853, his impractical experiments in 1857, and finally his tuning fork recordings of 1860, of which “Au Clair…” was the first … but others before him made experimental recordings by DIRECT CONTACT with a moving surface, as far back as the 1840s.