I think that it's really sweet that the first thing in human history Édouard-Léon decided to record was a song. There's something touching about it, as if he was trying to capture something beautiful.
Not to be a downer but it is a pretty obvious choice, recognizable, indexable, etc. The first Edison recording was also a song. Most of these "first" recordings were songs, because, again, it's an obvious choice Even in the visual microphone experiment from the modern day, they use a song as the example!
Hearing the first recording of a human’s voice actually makes me super emotional. It’s strange to feel such a connection to someone who lived so long ago.
if you think about it we are at the beginning of the era when modern technology is available in about a couple of hundreds of years the internet will be full of inputs from people who died long ago and it will be a much more common occurrence
Weird trivia : in the french dub of "2001 : a space odissey", HAL sings "Au clair de la Lune" while Dave is turning it off. It's a strangely great choice done without knowing it's the first voice ever mechanically recorded, while in the original version the song is "Daisy", chosen because it was the first song performed by a computer at Bell labs in 1962...
1. **Cultural Localization**: The choice of "Au clair de la Lune" in the French dub is an example of cultural localization in film. It shows how adaptations can be sensitive to the cultural and historical context of the audience, even if the original significance related to "Daisy" is lost in translation. 2. **Emotional Resonance**: Both songs are simple and childlike, which adds an emotional layer to the act of shutting down HAL, a highly advanced AI. The juxtaposition of a machine capable of complex tasks singing a simple tune as it "dies" adds a poignant touch to the scene. 3. **Technological Milestones**: Both songs serve as markers for technological progress in their respective fields-sound recording and computer science. Their inclusion in a film that explores the relationship between humanity and technology is a subtle but powerful thematic reinforcement. 4. **Narrative Foreshadowing**: In both versions, the choice of song foreshadows the film's deeper exploration of the relationship between humans and technology. The songs serve as a metaphor for the innocence and potential dangers inherent in technological advancement. 5. **Musical Motif**: Music plays a significant role throughout "2001: A Space Odyssey," from the iconic use of "Also sprach Zarathustra" to the "Blue Danube Waltz." The songs sung by HAL fit into this broader musical tapestry, each contributing to the film's complex interplay of sound and visuals. 6. **Historical Irony**: There's a certain irony in using songs that marked historical "firsts" in technology in a scene that depicts the "end" of a technological entity. It's as if the film is coming full circle, from the dawn of technological innovation to its potential dusk. 7. **Interdisciplinary Connections**: Both the original and the French dub versions create a bridge between the worlds of art and science. They show how technological milestones can be integrated into artistic expression to create a richer narrative experience. Each of these points adds another layer of complexity and interest to what is already a deeply layered and iconic film.
8:38 Omg, using a tuning fork is a real stroke of genius when you think about it. This had never been done before, dude had to come up with some way to ensure regulation, and using a tuning fork meant ANYONE could reinterpret the sounds precisely. It got me thinking "Did we put a tuning fork-like sound on that gold record we shot into space?" The first guy to record sound had the best fidelity idea ever
I think there are some sounds on there that signify that you are doing it the right amount of times--and the images on the record do include a calibration circle as well. The first note, I think, is about 250 Hz.
this reminds me of some very old teletypewriters were adjusted using a tuning fork. I'm just fascinated of the liminal space between simple, analog things and digital data.
It's like watching those AI-enhanced clips of video footage from the late 1800s. Something equally eery and beautiful, like a glimpse into an actual stargate of some kind.
It kind of feels almost like hearing a ghost, tbh. Creepy and fantastic, almost impossible, yet this guy plus people today achieved it, together through time.
@@WillShackAttack Whenever I watch silent films, that’s actually how it feels. Probably every person, no matter how young they were then on that film has now at best died of old age.
Hearing Edouard-Leon's voice gave me chills. This is a guy that's now so long gone and here is his voice. It really sounds like a recording that could have happened last week over a cheap microphone or a baby monitor. It reminds me of how some time back, some archeologists were exploring a tomb in Egypt. It was pretty unperturbed and there were beautiful pristine murals on the walls. But amongst them, on one wall, one of the frescoes had an imperfection. In a small part of the fresco they found the imprint of one of the workers' finger. His finger print. They believed that while the plaster was still fresh and the paint was drying, the worker had carelessly put too much pressure on the plaster, leaving his print behind. This was an amazing discovery maybe more valuable than all the treasure in the tomb because it gives us a reminder that these ancient tombs and monument that - for us and many before us - seem to have always existed; they weren't there once. But not only that, it also puts real humanity in it. Worker, real people like you and me built them. People who had lives, loved ones, cried and laughed, had real thoughts and emotions, that were tangible like your own family and friends, people who once had names and memories - now completely loss to time and forgotten. Millions have come before us that are gone and forgotten and feels like they never existed. One day most us will face the same faith. -- This man, whose fingerprint is in this tomb, had that same happen to him. We will never know his name, anything about his life or his family, not even whether his descendants are still alive. But his print is still there, two thousand years later and for eons to come - immortalizing a man nobody will ever know but making human as any of us. - Sometimes I wish I could feel his print and see what he saw so long ago, if not to just know his name.
The idea that we wrenched this man's voice from the oblivion in which it rested for over a hundred years is absolutely wild. What a tribute to the power of science and imagination. It's not just inspiring, it's a harbinger of hope. It makes you think that if we can do unimaginably crazy shit like that, then maybe we do have what it takes to overcome our problems and survive past the confluence of self-made calamities with which now we find ourselves engaged.
I agree, friend! Today we look back on the achievements of our ancestors with pride because they contributed to the amazing advancements we benefit from now. Will people in the future look back on this time period in disgust or pride for how bad or how good we did at shifting from unsustainable growth to circular economies that puts value on ecosystem resources/services? Time will tell. Have you seen some of the more recent Star Trek, like I think in year 2450 or so and they reflect on our time: "how did humanity ever survive and get out of their self destructive patterns"! 😅
With how dreary so many things seems to be, it's things like this which brings back that sense of wonder and joy for the enginuity that humans are capable of. To think that I can listen to audio from over 150 years ago is mind boggling.😊
Dinosaurs went extinct, so did large bugs and a trillion other things we have no names for. Humans arent that special. I say this as a sci fi fan. We dont need to be here that long. We are animals. Smart animals, but animals.
Pessimist here:not if we nuke ourselves into nothingness some time into the future.. Which may be the case, if you look into what is happening around the world. Cold war 2.0 but with way more powerful weapons and impossible to intercept delivery systems for those weapons.
The tuning fork idea is brilliant! In fact, audio engineers have historically recorded a 1kHz ‘reference tone’ on the beginning couple of feet of a reel of tape. Its purpose is exactly the same: calibration of audio equipment, to ensure everything is running at the correct speed, etc.
reminds me a little of the rising sine tone that I used to hear a bunch at the start and end of cassette tapes. Not all of them had it, but a good number did. The thing is, those ones weren't a 1Khz tone for calibration, they seemed more like a 20-20k sweep. I still don't exactly know why they were there on consumer tapes (maybe it has something to do with some Dolby noise suppression?), but it was a kinda charming part of listening to tape.
I'm.....actually really emotional about those first recordings. It feels so delicate, so special, to hear the oldest human sound that we have access to. The fact that you have to strain your ears a little bit, to reach past the imperfect recording to hear just the faintest recognizable melodies is so precious and amazing. It feels like I'm reaching backwards in time to catch just a glimpse of this very real, very tactile world which is so similar and yet so different to our own. It's different than listening to a modern recording, which sounds so exact that it's easy to forget that it's a recording and not just a part of our natural environment. But this feels like transportation to me. Time travel. Thanks, Joe.
Oddly enough, I also feel a sense of "you're not supposed to be listening to these" with how distorted the audios are. It's insane to think that that's audio from 1860. Decades past what we were taught.
I get that same sort of feeling. Also that demonstration of the computer 'singing' "Daisy Bell" in 1961. (Easy to find on RU-vid, 'first computer to sing - daisy bell' )
Beautifully stated. You managed to eloquently describe a very enigmatic feeling I've felt on several occasions. That peek behind the curtain that we were never intended to see. It's truly something special, and pulls out some really strong yet mysterious emotions. It's such a unique experience, and there are literally only a few things on earth that can invoke those feelings. In a way, it's like ancient art, but if the art wasn't visible to the naked eye and took chemical analysis to reveal it, and it turns out to be a photorealistic depiction of a real persons face staring back at you. Really hauntingly beautiful stuff.
Fun fact, the oldest person to ever be recorded was actually helmuth von moltke "the elder", the prussian field marshal who led the Franco prussian war and helped unite Germany, he was born in 1800 in the Holy Roman Empire, he was ironically also a very quiet person in life even tho we can still hear his voice over 200 years after his birth
that was one of my favourite techniques shown in an episode of "Burn Notice" ,, something he did once, and then never used or mentioned that technique again
I remember a story about recording keystrokes of famous pianists even though they had no way to decode them. Each key had a needle that dipped into mercury to activate a writing pin which was recorded on a moving roll of paper. While this sounds like a player piano. It also recorded how fast and hard each key press was because the signal depended on how far the pin dipped into the mercury, thereby increasing conductivity.
@JoeScott - I'm sure someone has already pointed it out but listening to the first recording, you mentioned that there were no words but the words to the song are clearly audible and you can even make out the rolling-R of "Pierrot". This recording is amazing! Thanks for speaking about this.
I noticed the same thing. They still rolled the R back then. My ancestors came to North America from France in the 1650s and we still roll the R in my dialect of French. I can make out the words in the recording, but I'm not sure that I could if I didn't know the song already.
@@unclesaboin that's not (the one in the recording, I mean) what's generally referred to as a rolled R, it's just a different type of guttural R, like the one of Georges Brassens. The original R was like in Italian,
@@bacicinvatteneaca, it sounded like a rolled R to me at first, but it's so muffled that it's hard to really tell. Now that I listen to it again after you pointed it out, I think you're correct. He does what I call gargling the R. There are some accents around where I live where they pronounce the R that way. We refer to that as "parler gras" (fat speech). Where I'm from we roll the R (pronounced with the tongue like the Italians rather than with the throat like in modern French).
Yes, I can clearly hear "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot". The speed seems way too slow though, and it's much easier to hear it at 1.75x or 2x speed, where the cadence is closer to a normal song.
I get the impression that M. Martinville had a better grasp of the science of sound than Mr. Edison did, but perhaps wasn’t as knowledgeable about mechanical engineering.
I'm not sure what that even means. I guess you're talking about everyone who has an interesting idea that they never work on? How about just being realistic about getting funding and getting enough money to pay people to work on an idea, and not ruin them also, or their lives. I wouldn't say the phonoautograph for example, died because of lack of effort. You're just beating that metaphor to death with "99.999%" bit. Maybe you should've put more "persperation" into it! 😉
Actually, the first reel-to-reel tape recorder was invented in Germany in the late 1920s. It definitely predated the cassette and 8-track tape formats.
yes. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, talks about that in his self biography "made in japan - the Sony way": the tech for such recordings was one of the technological transfers that imperial Japan got from their German allies in WW2. It was used mostly on thin metallic cable, it was after the war that Morita and his buddies were trying to improve upon it, when they realized quality would be improved a hundred times by recording on a tape, rather than a thin cable. They tried it, it worked, and one of Sony's first successful products was born: Japan's tribunals would buy these machines to record the trials uninterrupted and latter the tachygraphers would record everything in the regurar way. This was much needed as after the war Japan had an accute lack of tachygraphers atd this was causing a real bottleneck for justice system. Latter these tapes were used by colleges to teach foreign languages
Was about to say, I have a reel to reel deck my Grandfather bought in the '60s, and reels of tape he recorded in the '50s. Consumer tape machines far predate the 1970s!
Also the "Visual Microphone" isn't exactly the first thing that can pickup sound through things, although it is very impressive. There is a device used by police in movies and tv shows (that turns out to be real) that can record and play audio from a much longer distance than a regular microphone and through a closed window since some sound would travel through that already, it just makes it a volume that can be heard easier. So basically when he says "...does it mean anybody can just point a camera through my window at a plant in the room and hear everything I'm saying?" The answer is yes, but they could already do that with something other than a camera for a while now.
The point in one of the Au Clair De La Lune recordings where it gets fuzzier (probably because he blew harder into the mouthpiece) gave me shivers. I have done pretty much the same thing.
That sine wave from the tuning fork is more akin to something called pilot tone rather than time code. Pretty remarkable how stable the reproduction is.
I seem to remember hearing a story several years back, where they were able to recover audio from scratches had been made with a stylus like tool in ancient Greek pottery. So the record may actually be thousands of years older.
9:56 There are words ! 'Au clair de la Lune, mon ami Pierrot. Prête-moi (cut)'. 'La Lune' and the rolled R of Pierrot are quite clear (for a native French speaker's ear)
its crazy how clear the recording is. even if you hadn't said what song that was i could 100% make it out as "au claire de la lune". i grew up with my mom singing that lullaby nearly every day.
9:26 "...now considered to be the oldest recording ever made of the human voice, it was recorded on April 9 1860 and it sounds like this: " *Yoda* "Always two there are, a master and an apprentice" Best timing for an ad, ever
The more I think the more I'm super happy in fact that the first human voice ever record could also be the first human singing music that ever record as well. Art really something that stay with us since the very beginning.
I love how he figured out that he needed to add the tuning fork. That alone was an amazing achievement. He had absolutely no way of knowing this ahead of time and never got a chance to use it, yet came up with a perfect timing device for play back.
One cool advancement you didn't cover was a recent study mapping the audio cortex of patients with metal probes in their brain. I think they were already there for their epilepsy but the researchers used it to map what they heard and recreate it. They had them listen to Pink Floyd and recreated the song based on brain activity. They literally read their mind. It's wild.
@@vyor8837 no not at all. You could barely tell what it was. But you could tell. Like the first recordings in this video they didn't sound clear but they are still impressive
@@vyor8837 well no, every person's brain is unique and learns how to process audio information in its own way. More sensors isn't the right approach but we probably will figure out ways to improve the clarity. Although I'm not sure that's actually a good thing lol
Hey Joe The technique of using a light beam to remotely record sound probably originated with Léon Theremin in the Soviet Union at or before 1947, when he developed and used the Buran eavesdropping system.[1] This worked by using a low power infrared beam (not a laser) from a distance to detect the sound vibrations in the glass windows.[1][2] Lavrentiy Beria, head of the KGB, had used this Buran device to spy on the U.S., British, and French embassies in Moscow. From Wikipedia. Also see the Laser Doppler vibrometer for similar.
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Is that what James Bond used in a Spectre movie (scene on a rooftoop, just after openning scene)?
As I recall, the CIA imbedded a small prism into the panes of glass that were supplied to the Soviet Embassy in DC. From some distance away they pointed an invisible laser at the prism and - because the plate of glass vibrated whenever there was talking inside the room it was installed for - they could record conversations without being in or near the room. The visible microphone seems to just be an improvement on that idea.
@@davidmcgill1000 I remember Soviets in late ussr also built whole embassy as a giant listening device. A structure of a building was a resonator for sounds that was collected in a foundation by wireless devices.
the story that i read was that a passive resonator was put into a sculpture/envraving that was hung on a wall, and there was/is also the use of lasers to read audio off of windows. in the video, they step it up and focus on an object beyond the window, which is apparently designed to deter laster listening off of the window itself.
The first I ever heard of laser recording was in a Tom Clancy novel some 30ish years ago speaking of how they had to develop special curtains to keep the Soviets from recording secret meetings off the vibrating glass panes. It's one of the reasons why the most secret meetings are held in windowless interior rooms now.
Hi Joe, Offering a minor correction to this excellent work: Alexander Graham Bell’s cousin was named Chichester Bell (not Chinchester Bell), and their invention was named the Graphophone ( not Gramaphone) Source: worked for Dictaphone Corporation, which evolved from Bell’s Volta Laboratories.
It is amazing how close he was to inventing the phonograph. He just got too fixated on the visual “reading” of the audio waves to have considered reversing the process to recreate the recorded sound Edit: spy agencies invented the vibrating objects method of sound recording decades ago. They used lasers pointed at objects like lamp shades through windows to eavesdrop on their subjects from nearby buildings or bushes.
Didn't the Russian's spy on the American embassy using the vibration of the glass in the windows? Also, my dog can hear every word I say in the house when she is outside, I think it is because of the glass vibrating, but I can't verify that.
The Soviets invented a " bug " they put inside a U.S. Seal as A gift to head guy in U.S. Embassy in Moscow?? Maybe another city..... But anyway it took no battery or electricity.... Just sound vibration somehow caused to to send the sound to where ever KGB was recording it. Took awhile to locate it after US figured out the reds had to be money them cause they kept heading us off on stuff us was doing
The first reel to reel decks were much earlier than 1972. My mother worked in the late 1940's for a man named Charlie French at a studio with the first Ampex reel to reel recorder in Boston. I also had a friend who had a large tube amplified reel to reel that he got from his grandfather that was probably made in the 1950's so I'm not sure where you got your info for that. Even the Beatles recorded on an early 4 track reel to reel before 1972. Otherwise, this is an very interesting video.
Yea, reel-to-reel decks have been around since WWII. It was invented by the Germans - the AEG Magnetophon. From Wikipedia: Magnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Show.
I went down a big rabbit hole on this a few years back, became just obsessed with the earliest sound recordings, photographs and films for a solid couple of months. When this recording was first revealed it would nearly always get played at 2x speed, and most people would then assume that's how it sounded. Glad to see you didn't fall into that trap.
I wonder if there is some way for nature to record soundwaves from our enviroment, that would then be somehow "frozen" like an audio fossil? Probably not, but the video reminded me of the cosmological soundwaves, which is one way nature preserves a recording.
@@VikingTeddyI feel like I remember something like ancient pottery that had recorded vibrations from a reed that was in contact with it, but that likely wouldn't have saved any useful information
@@calebmcnevin Yes back in the 80s there was a hypothesis that a cetrtain vase with a spiral pattern that was created with a reed, and that maybe the sound could be heard. I turned out that it was not possible, but a ScienceFiction author wrote a short story based on the idea, and people got all "Mandela Effect" with it, so it became urban legend.
@@VikingTeddy interesting idea, have a similar idea that atoms maybe have subatomic particles that possibly keep track of a limited number of past atomic states that the particle has been in. If such a thing was true, it would in the VERY far future be entirely possible to reconstruct a limited amount of the past via digital reconstruction of atoms in past atomic states. You could directly view the past through atoms themselves. You could reconstruct people, you could do a lot theoretically, practically what you could do with it, is another matter. Too far into the future for us to really understand or even posit anything of value beyond this in my mind.
I think Nature has done something like this in Birds. Many birds can reproduce sounds they have heard - I don't think the mechanism has been deeply investigated.
i got sick in 2019 and have sort of deteriorated slowly ever since. Your videos have been some of the most pleasant experiences I have had during this time and I am very grateful, and very proud of you for your work and dedication. Watching you and learning new things or exploring some of my interests has helped distract me from the less bearable things I am dealing with, and for that I will always be happy to see you succeed. Your videos are not only entertaining and educational, but they are very well made, and you make it look easy despite the quality proving it must be very hard work. Thank you, Joe, for being a light in the dark.
It's astonishing that the actual timbre and presence of a human voice was recorded so long ago and can now be heard. It's rough, but it's unmistakably a human voice.
For anyone who doesn’t understand the genius idea of the tuning fork, depending how fast you play it back will change the pitch of the sound. So anyone in the future trying to listen can tell if they are playing it back correctly because the tune will be the proper music note.
So interesting and amazing to hear voices from so long ago. I had a crazy theory that we could perhaps cut open a stone that had been in a stone-age fire, the last time it was lit before they moved on, and measure nano-scale deviations in the crystal formations caused by ambient sound (e.g. speech) disturbing the molecules as it was cooling down. This would be linear, as the heat escaped the stone, and thus provide a soundtrack for a number of minutes. Not sure what the resolution would be, nor whether the sound waves would carry enough energy to cause detectable deviations. ;-)
Small correction - reel-to-reel 1/4" tape decks were made for home use starting in the 1950s. My dad had one before I was born (1967) and they’d been around for quite a long time before that. Your 1972 date might be for the first quadraphonic deck. Reel-to-reel decks for home use were monophonic at first, then stereophonic by 1957 or 1958. Quadraphonic came along in the early 1970s.
Reel-to-reel was the 40s, what he's referencing is what immediately preceded 8-track and "compact cassettes". As a means of mass distribution, reel-to-reel only ever had a small niche, and it's a complex one relative to other mediums the public would recognize. Most of us don't know or remember "tape decks", but it does fit next to other tape mediums.
Joe, I was in the French Foreign Legion. We had to celebrate that war every year. There is a famous battle that took place in Camaron. It's similar to the Alamo in that people (legionnaires) were trapped in a fort and they held out until their ammo was spent, then they fixed bayonnets and charged to their deaths. But Mexicans captured a couple of them and let them go, saying "these are devils not men!", there is a famous wooden hand from the captain that fought there, which is like the holy grail of the Legion. Thought you might find that interesting.
Respect pour avoir servi dans la légion. I looked up at this battle and it seems the French army returned to the same place one year later and inflicted a harsh defeat onto the Mexicans.
There is a short story by Gregory Benford from 1979 called "Time Shards" where a researcher recovers thousands-of-year-old sound from a piece of pottery thrown on a wheel and inscribed with a point as it spun. If I remember correctly they hear the potter and another person speaking.
11:55 translation error: the French verb “repasser” literally means “to pass again”. It is also used for ironing, but that is certainly not what Cros meant.
As always, great video! Being a french speaker, I can confirm that you can indeed hear the words Au....clair....de....la...lun-e...mon...ami...Pierrot. He's singing very slowly, but the words are distinct. So cool!
Yeah I was surprised when he said there weren't any words, when I could pick up everything he said. Maybe it's a brain filling in the gaps because I know what it's meant to sound like, but I think that still counts.
During the scale, I couldn't really put my finger on it, but if I am not mistaken, it almost sounded similar to a modern microphone clipping (too much input). It seems like it happens at vocal peaks much like clipping would happen today, kinda nifty!!
That's why I have those speakers that you stick to walls and surfaces to turn them into speakers, and stick them to the windows and have consistent tone running to make the reflection incoherent
You missed out my favourite audio recording medium, MiniDisc. The first widespread audio format utilising lossy digital compression, 3 years before mp3. And it sounded better at similar compression ratios. There's just something awesome about the compact electro-mechanical devices, utilising rewritable magneto-optical disc technology to record a real-time compressed digitial audio signal that was remarkably close to CD quality. In 1992.
Just wanted to comment to say I appreciate all of the videos. I have been going through a lot of stressful stuff lately and these videos are a nice break. They're always entertaining and I get to learn so many cool new things. Thanks 🙂
Assange mentioned, in an interview back in 2010, that the US government had a device that could read a conversation in a room from outside of the house, by capturing the window's vibration. So yes, they are probably already using this technology.
That has been publicly known since at least the 80's. The Puzzle Palace came out in 1982 (I read it in the late 80's) and explained how the NSA could basically eavesdrop on any electronic communication in the world. It let me down a rabbit hole of spy technology books and I read about the laser on the window bug. I can't remember if that was in the Puzzle Palace or another book but it would have been prior to 1990.
Not sure why Assange mentioned it... Those are "laser microphones" and are an old tech, the Soviets started usin them it from the 50's, and you can make one for a few bucks and 0 electronic knowledge. You just need a laser pointer, a photoelectric cell and a earphone. Is that easy. They only work in flat surfaces and are not very sensible, but they were enough to get conversations that happened in front of a window. "The Bug" that was planted on USA embassy in Moscow, worked in a similar way, but using radio waves instead of light.
By a strange coincidence, 'Claire de la lune' is remarkably similar to an early music pavane written in the 16th century -- and also the first piece of music I learned when I was learning to read music in the fourth grade, in the mid 1960's. I've been playing music for nearly sixty years now, play at least a dozen instruments, and have studied French traditional music (of the Auvergne) for years -- but I never knew it was a popular (children's?) song! Thanks, Joe! I always learn something weird from you -- but this time it was weirder than usual!
I remember seeing those visual microphones in spy shows about a decade ago. If TV is to be believed, the spy can listen to conversations from across the street by aiming at a window, even if the curtains are drawn.
I'm quite sure that reel to reel recording predate cassettes. Is Joe talking about something else? By the way I love that a French organization was called "S.E.I.N." as "sein" is "woman's breast" in french.
That Au Clair de le Lune recording probably had words that got mangled by the low fidelity. (I'm French) I recognize the rolled Rs of "Pierrot" (the last word of the recording)
13:20 "First reel to reel deck showed up in 1972" surprised me because I thought it predated cassette tapes and Google tells me the first reel to reel was developed in the 1920's.
1) That skit had me in stitches. I had to go back to watch it twice. 2) For some reason it blows my mind that recorded sound started that long ago. I thought it was in the 20th Century. 3) I couldn't stop giving your plant side eye towards the end ...
There is a possibly apocryphal story of a vase from mesopotamia (or - you know - "way back then") that LOOKS like it had a leaf make "squiggles" on it's surface as the vase spun (you know, as it picked up vibrations in the air). Audio engineers have tried to 'decode it", but it looks like there is not enough fidelity. but this may actually be the FIRST recording of sound - despite the fact that it's not recoverable.
Ah... Sumerian potter's wheel... I knew my silly Beethoven joke came from something I read... Lacking the "tuning fork", if the cadence/frequencies over time of the wheel could be deduced maybe they'll crack the code and hear some choice Sumerian cursing and swearing about art teacher thought about the sgwiggly line. 😁
It's theoretically possible that people accidentally recorded sound all the way back to ancient times. Potters work with spinning soft clay, which is capable of recording sound. If someone used just the right tool to work on the clay, it may have vibrated and accidentally recorded sounds. It's a very remote possibility, but billions of clay jars were made, so it could have happened. It would be really cool to hear ancient conversations.
It should be how the ancient Greeks spun already glazed and fired ceramics on a wheel with a hard graver against them to cut accurate lines of decoration through the glaze. I read a short story where some researcher played back the groove and hear some sounds.
14:40 your plant turned to look at you and, being clearly concerned for it's safety lest it be deemed a snitch, started to slowly shake it's head in a long 'nooooo'
It transitioned to an ad right after you said “sounds just like this:” so in my head it will forever be canon that the oldest recording ever made was a dude trying to sell me an air conditioner lol
The "visual microphone" general concept has been used for governmental spying purposes for quite a while, but the ability to remotely scan individual objects as described in the video here is relatively new, especially the algorithm processing speed and sensitivity. Very cool, and very scary at the same time.
@@Coconut-219 There have also long been laser-based monitoring systems that can covertly "read" the vibrations from things like window glass and hard paneling etc. from a distance.
It's incredible that the level of understanding of sound and audio relay/perception was so advanced in a time where amputation with unsteralized tools was normal to cure wounded feet. This guy understood how sound worked well enough for his ideas to be proven right 130yrs later, all 30yrs before the era famous for getting cocaine as a headache medicine or drinking irradiated water as a health cure. Plus I love that now Edison gets the boot from history for being the first to do something. I don't think he knew about this, but that makes it even better. One of his few original ideas, ironically, isn't originally his.
One can argue that maybe the boom from a superpowerful volcanic explosion, maybe caused damaged to the environment (trees, etc.) One could argue that that tree “recorded” the sound of that boom.
@@koendos3 imagine a sound so loud that you have to use many multiples of trees in order to record it😅🤣🙃 and then imagine that the sound is so loud that you need to make new technology of some kind of AI that can rebuild the original sound from fallen over trees in the forest inorder to remake it🤣😅🙃
De Martinville didn't want to use his own voice initially, he was afraid the recording would fall into the hands of the British and be used for propaganda reasons. So he bought a trained parrot for the first recordings. It turned out that the parrot had been trained by what must have been a German pirate, as his speech consisted mostly of very angry sounding, foreign shouts. After the third "IHR WOHNSBERECHTIGUNGSSCHEINANTRAG IST ABGELEHNT SIE TAUSENDSAKRAMENTSSCHELM, VERLASSEN SIE MEIN BUREAU!!", de Martinville decided to do it himself. The parrot recordings still exist but the Académie Francaise keeps them in their vault below the Seine to protect the reputation of their country's inventors.
Producing audio from video, as was spoken about at 14:30, is something that would likely be used on space craft someday to help spatial awareness. You would have cameras all around the exterior of the craft that translate what they see in to sound, no more silence in space - photonic audio.
Genuinely fascinating. It's funny thinking about how we edit audio today. We don't really give it much of a second thought when we can perfectly record, edit, and share so efficiently.
That was so cool. Thanks for sharing all of that information and making this video. The new tech makes me think of an episode of Fringe where they take recreate a sound recording of what happened in a particular room from the pane of glass in the window. I got shivers when I you talked about it. Excellent video, Joe :)
10:45 being a francophone, actually, although muffled we can clearly hear the words "au clair de la Lune", then "mon ami Pierro"... Fascinating, thank you !
so wonderful to hear, and see the man in photograph. 1860... 1960... today, I wonder if young people value this information with reverence or... huff at the old men.
The origins of sound recording also resulted in the phrase "wxing up some riffs", which means to play music. The biggest reason that Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville was successful (to a point) is that he didn't know that he couldn't do it. This might sound like double talk, but the point is valid in terms of motivation. If he instead focused on all the limitations and the reasons why it wouldn't work, he never would have achieved what he did in fact achieve (because he didn't know any better in a way).
Dude,! smh! the word "riff" started to be used by jazz musicians in the 30s; wax cylinders stopped being used around 1915. "Waxing up the riffs", isn't a phrase I've heard of, but whoever did make it up long, long after wax stopped being used in recordings. Or maybe you're just making it up... this is the internet. ☹️
Correct. None of the recordings made on Edison's first machine exist into the present day, due to both them being on tin foil and due to it being impossible to replace back onto the machine once removed. This is why we have verified accounts of Edison taking his phonograph to the White House and demonstrating it to then-president Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1870s, but the first recording we have of a sitting president is that of Benjamin Harrison from 1889-90.
Loved this one, finding the "firsts" of things is almost an obsession of mine. I personally think watching your videos is like being in a class taught by that "really cool" teacher. They are hard to come by, hope you keep going as long as RU-vid is a thing!
Reel-to-reel tape recorders were available LONG before 1972! The German magnetophon, which is generally regarded as the original tape recorder, was developed in the late 1930s but was unknown outside Germany until the end of WW2. Recorders recording on steel tape had existed earlier, one example was the Blatnerphone which the BBC used for a while in the 1930s.
Gives new meaning to the term, "If these walls could talk." Well, just point a camera, and you might actually have that if the vibration is strong enough.
Technically speaking, MP3 is the compression algorithm used on Laser Vision. I also remember battery operated tape recorders brought to class by fellow middle school students (to play with, not to avoid notes) in the 1960s. The Soviets used news broadcast software to remove the street noise from IR laser reflections in embassy offices... in the 70s?
Fantastic work, and the playback of the etching from 1860 was eerily haunting. And oh, the device at 14:40...clandestine services across the world have had this tech for years if I'm not mistaken. That might be worth a show in and of itself!
Exactly. Bouncing a laser off of a window can detect the vibrations caused by a conversation in the room on the other side of the window. Spy agencies now use heavy laminated (non-vibrating) glass in their office windows to prevent this type of eavesdropping.
