NPR: Audio historians David Giovannoni and Patrick Feaster discuss a revision to their discovery last year of the earliest-known recorded sound from 1860. They have determined it was being played twice as fast as it needed to be.
“What we thought was the voice of a young girl was really a ‘chipmunk effect,’” says Feaster."When I imitated the new version during a trip to Paris in April, the response I got was: ‘Ah! That’s how we sing “Au Clair de la Lune” as a lullaby!’ So we may have to give up our romantic notion of Scott recording the voice of his young daughter, but in return we may have a record of the way he sang his children to sleep,” he says.More information can be found at the first sounds website.
