When was sound captured for the first time?
The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them back—the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called "phonautograms", made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it. An 1860 phonautogram of Au Clair de la Lune, a French folk song, was played back as sound for the first time in 2008 by scanning it and using software to convert the undulating line, which graphically encoded the sound, into a corresponding digital audio file.
When was sound captured for the first time but not able to be played back?
1857
Sound recording and reproduction
The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, could both record sound and play it back. The earliest type of phonograph sold recorded on a thin sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder. A stylus connected to a sound-vibrated diaphragm indented the foil into the groove as the cylinder rotated. The stylus vibration was at a right angle to the recording surface, so the depth of the indentation varied with the audio-frequency changes in air pressure that carried the sound. This arrangement is known as vertical or "hill-and-dale" recording. The sound could be played back by tracing the stylus along the recorded groove and acoustically coupling its resulting vibrations to the surrounding air through the diaphragm and a so-called "amplifying" horn.
When was sound captured and able to be played back for the first time?
1877
History of sound recording
Sound recording and reproduction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound%20recording%20and%20reproduction
History of sound recording
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20sound%20recording
The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air, but could not play them back, was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, could both record sound and play it back.