No auto tune back then, just raw talent.

Please someone remind the young audience that cassette player is not the ancient recording device from 1860s.

The first play was better than the second.

Incredible. A long dead voice being exhumed after almost 170 years.

All the way from recording audio on a metal sheet to now streaming it on the internet throughout the world. What an astonishing feat of humanity.

I was expecting, "Your call is very important to us. You are currently number 29 in the queue. Please wait 170 years for the next operative."

Play it backward and see if you can hear, "Paul is dead!"

And now we can play it back. [pushes record]

It sounds like a wasp trapped inside a jam jar desperately trying to get out.

Their A&R man said, "I don't hear a single." The future was wide open.

The syncing with the tuning fork is very clever

...i don't think you have to be over 30 to realize that the the guy presses record on the cassette deck at the end, and in fact you would hear nothing.

Fascinating. Standing in my kitchen eating dinner in San Francisco, California 7/16/2024. Listening

this never fails to bring tears to my eyes - can you imagine? of all of the powerful voices of the 1860s - all of the politicians and generals and celebrities - the one voice that has been saved from that time isn't the voice of someone powerful. It's the voice of an ordinary man singing claire de la lune. The first recording we have and it''s a song.

you dont press record on a tape recorder to play

Man. I wish I was that encouraged to explore a topic enough to realize an unknown fact of a matter. Bravo to these people.

@3:12 - someone accidentally pushes the "RECORD" button and erases the tape...

This should be no 1 in the charts.

Why was I expecting the voice to say "We've been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty"

Sounds like an angry bee.

That's incredible! As a recording engineer and music producer I have seen the evolution of audio technology in the past 30 years but to think it all started here makes me understand and marvel at how far the technology has come. Thanks for making this piece.

Summary: Édouard-Léon Scott recorded his voice in 1860 by marking the vibrations (caused by his voice) onto a cylindrical surface. There was no way to play it back, so thanks to this guy in the interview, Patrick Feaster, in 2008 he managed to decode and read from it, resulting in hearing the recorded sound from 1860 for the first time. That's amazing tech, and what is even crazier is knowing it has not yet been 200 years since that discovery. Stories like these really baffles me in how far technology has gone the past few centuries since the industrial revolution.

It is wild as one can hear the "big bowl" sound that the chamber he crafted introduced into the "output transducer". That would qualify as the first audio transducer, in fact. A transducer is a device which converts one form of energy into another. In this case sinusoidal auditory vibrations against a flat membrane "drum head" which then 'transduces' into linear mechanical motion set up to cause a 'stylus' to engrave the vibrations onto a linear 'tape', appearing again to match the sinusoidal signature of the original stimulus. Now we do it with electrons, just like Antonio Meucci did.

Somehow that second version of the recording is harder to understand.

I think BBC should really learn improving memory techniques, if you look at the title.

How many of the commenters here actually got that we may have been been "Listening to the oldest known recording of a human voice" ??

People ’feel’ a voice. It’s vibratory. Hearing aids went from hon-looking funnels to digital. They weren’t capturing noise, they were capturing vibrations on a grand scale. Bravo.

That is truly astounding. Like listening to the voice of a ghost

You can even hear him rolling the r's when he says 'Pierrot'.

The background music is absolutely unnecessary. It is annoying

Gave me chills. Wow.

3:14 Just pushed ‘Record’ There goes THAT historic recording.

I remember hearing this some while ago on a Radio 4 programme. The presenter couldn’t stop herself laughing about it sounding like a bee trapped in a jam jar.

Brought to you by the same technology used at drive through windows across the US.

'Recognizable' is a very generous description of that recording

Now they need to digitally enhance that recording to reveal the undistorted voice.

Still better than most modern music.

This is a wonderful story, which I have followed for years. But I have a question: what's the point of the clip with the cheapo cassete player in the end? Are we supposedly hearing the voice through this thing? And, if we are, why is the hand pressing the RECORD button?!? Just "play" would suffice...

From the time when BBC was still a quality label.

Little did that guy know that people in the future, all over the planet, could listen to him sing that song, on a small device they could hold in their hand. It would not even have been conceivable to him that would even be a possibility. What is it now - that we cannot even conceive of that will be an everyday thing 100 years from now ?

Interesting short video- but its not about memory?

Combing, wrong focus, low resolution, horrible oversharpening, reels and cassettes to illustrate a 19th-century audio, playback is illustrated by pressing record button? What a mess.

How is you title about memory, any thing to do with recording the voice…

Wow! And that was around 50 years before the advent of the automobile!

In a weird way it worked. It reminded me of Charlotte Green's fits of laughter while reading the news after hearing this recording. So it sort of exercised my memory.

Dude explained it beautifully.

This reminds me of an old Mythbusters episode where they tested the idea that sounds may have been recorded as vibrations on ancient pottery being made. It didnt work but a tantalizing idea.

There's a recording of a Prussian noble who was born in the 18th century.

So that’s what Ozzy 🤘sounded like in the early dayz

Interesting to hear BUT no reel to reel, and no cassette, and NO OTHER magnetic tapes were used. Just some BS in this presentation. Heck, why not show a CD or DVD while they were at it.

I’m confused as to why that tape recorder in the last shot needed to have its ‘Record’ button pressed if all it was doing was playing back the cassette… ?

I was hoping the voice will say "Never gonna give you up"

👎 for the background music.

I forgot what this video was about by the end.

Absolutely amazing! Thanks for sharing this piece of history.

I was hoping the voice will say "is free real state"

Can’t believe we got 1876 “Clair de la Lune” before GTA VI 😔

“Uh yeah it’s gonna be a no for me dog”

Amazing!

I read that Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville visited the white house and demonstrated this device to Abraham Lincoln. This means that the potential exist for there to be a sound wave diagram of Abraham Lincoln's voice. Wouldn't that be something to hear?

So, Edison didn’t invent the phonograph? 😂 Half right. His had playback.

While interesting, this is akin to someone writing a book in ink that can't be seen or read. Edison knew that to be useful, the sound has to come back out and be recognizable.

Glad to see casettes are still being used!

I'm listening to someone dead since 1850+? I need to hear the whole audio

It doesn't sound any different that a typical Taylor Swift recording.

All I really heard was several vibrations rather than a man’s voice

Since the first time I knew about this, in my childhood, this piece of recording gave me goosebumps even before hearing it for the first time. I had to wait for the internet to be a thing to search for it. It's one of very few things in the world that is difficult for me to listen.

I wanted to hear the whole recording!!!

Many things are often attributed to Edison of which he was not the first.

164 years for people to hear that he was singing flat.

How fascinating.. and you can feel all the excitement, glee and joy in Dr Patrick’s voice as he is describing the discovery.. what a smart team of researchers

Mind BLOWN, thank you.

Looks like someone made a woopsie with the video titles and what got uploaded

How does this relate to memory? Has quality control been lost everywhere?

This is beyond amazing. Edouard-Leon must be so proud.

that's eerie

So…recorded on a potato.

Mistitled but very fascinating.

That guy was just 1 step short of creating the 1st record and/or phone. Genius anyway. Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Just can’t escape auto tune these days, lol

Looks like the BBC is capable of clickbait as well

"How to improve your memory" It's a question BBC is asking its viewers, cuz they have absolutely no idea.

This is Beautiful

I missed the voice of my late grand grandma born in 1897 n passed on in 1993

How ironic that the modern audio in this video ìs almost worse than the 1850s recording with the low voice of the presenter making it hard to hear him and the unnecessary and distracting music in the background.

Try AI to remove the noise.

"When played back, is still understandable" Not one single person on this planet could understand a single word of that if you played it to someone who never knew the tune.

Wow - this feels pretty incredible

Fascinating. And still higher quality than 2024 phone calls 🙃

Shame the person at the end did not know how to operate a cassette recorder. You have to press play aand record

Wowow... awesome post! "Sound collector" - GOLD💰💰💰

Nice work.

You can't 'discover' records that were never lost. Achievements don't need to be embellished. Also, magnetic tapes represent neither 1860 nor today.

" Hi this is Alexander Graham Bell .Im not at home right now , but please leave your name and number after the beep and I'll get right back to you " . Beeeeep

How neat. Thank you

Amazing to hear a man from so long ago, singing a good song.

Is it Joe Biden as a teenager?

This is very interesting but I’m not convinced this recording has value other than a a historical curiosity. Or for a country to claim that they have the oldest known recording of a human voice.

that was my great, great grandfather on my mothers side

Fascinating, for sure. Just put that song on my Spotify.