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”
An Audio Excerpt from a 1931 Recording of the Same Song