<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Au Clair de la Lune This 1860 phonautogram by Édouard - Léon Scott de Martinville is the earliest known recording of a person singing . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Problems playing this file? See media help . </Td> </Tr> <P> The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them back--the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor Édouard - Léon Scott de Martinville . The earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called "phonautograms", made in 1857 . They consist of sheets of paper with sound - wave - modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it . An 1860 phonautogram of Au Clair de la Lune, a French folk song, was played back as sound for the first time in 2008 by scanning it and using software to convert the undulating line, which graphically encoded the sound, into a corresponding digital audio file . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> "Kham Hom" ("Sweet Words") Phonograph cylinder recording of Siamese (Thai) musicians visiting Berlin, Germany in 1900 . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Problems playing this file? See media help . </Td> </Tr> </Table>

When was sound captured for the first time