(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-28 13:53

US scientists have found the oldest-known audio, a French inventor's historic 1860 recording of a folk song, 17 years earlier than Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, media reported Friday.

This image provided by Isabelle Trocheris shows audio historian David Giovannoni examining the Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville phonautograms at the French Academy of Sciences on Monday, March 10, 2008 in Paris. Scientists say a recently discovered French recording from 1860 is the oldest known recorded human voice. [Agencies]

Lasting 10 seconds, the recording is of a person singing "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit" ("By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied") -- part of a French song, according to First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists and others dedicated to preserving humankind's earliest sound recordings.

It was made on April 9, 1860, by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp, Giovannoni said.

"It's magic," audio historian David Giovannoni said. "It's like a ghost singing to you."

"It's important on so many levels," Giovannoni said. "It doesn't take anything away from Thomas Edison, in my opinion. Thomas Edison is generally credited as the first person to have recorded sound."

"But actually the truth is he was the first person to have recorded (sound) and played it back. There were several people working along the lines of Scott, including Alexander Graham Bell, in experimenting -- trying to write the visual representation of sound before Edison invented the idea of playing it back," Giovannoni said.