About Us
First Sounds is an informal collaborative of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists, scientists, other individuals, and organizations who aim to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.
Founders
The broad goals of First Sounds were established in 2007 by David Giovannoni of Derwood, MD; Patrick Feaster of Indiana University, Bloomington IN; and Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey, owners of Archeophone Records of Champaign, IL.
Achievements
In the twelve months since First Sounds' inception, collaborators have undertaken extensive original research; assembled searchable on-line libraries of early recordings and references for the use of collaborators; forged partnerships with, and preserved recordings in, public and private archives; and brought together experts to accomplish significant technological firsts.
The most newsworthy feat accomplished under the First Sounds banner was when collaborators succeeded in playing a sound recording made in 1860 - 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Roughly ten seconds in length, the recording is of a person singing the French folksong "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit." It was made on April 9, 1860 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on his "phonautograph" - a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. Scott made the recording to analyze sounds visually, not to play them back. (Edison retains the distinction of being the first to reproduce sound in 1877.)
Rationale and Mission
Humanity's earliest sound recordings constitute a rich sonic heritage of inestimable value to historians of science, media, and expressive culture. These artifacts rank among the rarest and least accessible recordings in our audio legacy. To a greater extent than later recordings, they are more widely dispersed across institutions for which they are not the primary focus, and more heavily concentrated among individuals for whom they are. While many of these institutions and individuals earnestly desire to preserve their recordings and make them generally accessible, they commonly lack the means and expertise to do so, and their archives remain dark against their wills. We believe that new logistical approaches can harness marketplace, institutional, and avocational forces to accelerate the preservation of and access to these recordings.