The earliest audio recording - discovered!

In 1860, a French scientist - Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville - recorded 'Au Clair de la Lune' on a piece of paper blackened by oil smoke. Scientists have now reproduced that recording and and the article and the recording is on the NYT

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville has certainly been obscure, at least until now. Researchers say that in April 1860, the Parisian tinkerer used a device called a phonautograph to make visual recordings of a woman singing “Au Clair de la Lune.” That was 17 years before Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph, and 28 years before his technology was used to capture and play back a piece of a section of a Handel oratorio.