Long before Edison’s phonograph, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville captured sound visually in 1857. His phonautograph, though unable to play back, created the first physical records of human sound. Remarkably, a 1860 recording of “Au clair de la lune” was finally made audible in 2008, revealing a human voice after nearly 150 years, correcting historical records and highlighting the foundational nature of his scientific, albeit commercially unsuccessful, invention.
