What device did French inventor douard-Lon Scott de Martinville patent in 1857?
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (25 April 1817 – 26 April 1879) was a French printer and bookseller who lived in Paris. He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1857. As a printer by trade, he was able to read accounts of the latest scientific discoveries and became an inventor. Scott de Martinville was interested in recording the sound of human speech in a way similar to that achieved by the then new technology of photography for light and image. He hoped for a form of
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville the ability to play back its recordings. Scott de Martinville's device was used only for scientific investigations of sound waves. Scott de Martinville managed to sell several phonautographs to scientific laboratories for use in the investigation of sound. It proved useful in the study of vowel sounds and was used by Franciscus Donders, Heinrich Schneebeli and Rene Marage. It also initiated further research into tools able to image sound such as Koenig's manometric flame. He was not, however, able to profit from his invention and spent the remainder of his life as a bookseller dealing in prints and photographs, at