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Hear the World’s First Recording

It turns out that Thomas Edison was not the first person to record sound. In 1860, about twenty years before Edison’s phonograph, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made a recording of the French folk song “Au Claire de la Lune.” The device he used to do this was known as a phonautograph, which utilized paper blackened with smoke in order to make a pictorial representation of sound. Martinville believed that one day humans would be able to figure out how to derive sound from his smoky scratchings.The best article on this topic can be found at the New York Times:

The April 1860 phonautogram is more than a squawk. On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody — a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk.

The Phonautograph Recording from 1860 of “Au Clair de la Lune”

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An Audio Excerpt from a 1931 Recording of the Same Song

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Oh Boy! By Buddy Holly

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Absolutely one of the most creative and original innovators of Rock ‘n’ Roll was a kid from Texas named Buddy Holly, who tragically was killed in a plane crash on this day in 1959, along with Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper.” It was a day that’s come to be known as The Day the Music Died. Before Buddy, there was NOBODY who wrote his own songs, arranged them, performed them, produced them and promoted them. Buddy did ALL of that, all by himself, which showed groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones that THEY could do it too.

John Lennon once said of Buddy Holly and The Crickets:

EVERY GROUP TRIED TO BE THE CRICKETS. The name BEATLES was directly inspired by CRICKETS (DOUBLE ENTENDRE / INSECTS etc…) I think the greatest effect was on THE SONG WRITING (ESPECIALLY MINE AND PAUL’S)

Gettysburg Address

This is the only known photograph of President Lincoln at his Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863. This photo wasn’t properly identified until 1952. In it Lincoln is seated and hatless, and to his right is his personal bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon. Some historians think that it would be another three hours before Lincoln gave his famous speech, which at the time everyone thought was too short. The Ken Burns film states that he had just sat down after delivering it.

The following is an audio-visual montage of the Gettysburg battlefield with Johnny Cash reading Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words.

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