Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An instrument for registering the vibrations of a sounding body. That devised about 1858 by Léon Scott consists of a large barrel-shaped vessel made of plaster of Paris, into the open end of which the sound enters; the other end, somewhat contracted in shape, is closed by a membrane with a style attached on the outside, whose point rests against a horizontal cylinder covered with lampblacked paper. If the membrane is at rest the trace of the style is a straight line, but when the sound enters the membrane vibrates, and the writing-point registers these vibrations with great perfection.
- n. Same as music-recorder.
Wiktionary
- n. One of the first phonographic recording devices, consisting of a horn or barrel focusing sound waves onto a membrane to which a hog's bristle was attached, causing the bristle to move so enabling it to inscribe a visual medium, which could transcribe sound to a visible medium but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Physics) An instrument by means of which a sound can be made to produce a visible trace or record of itself. It consists essentially of a resonant vessel, usually of paraboloidal form, closed at one end by a flexible membrane. A stylus attached to some point of the membrane records the movements of the latter, as it vibrates, upon a moving cylinder or plate.
Examples
“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.”
“But the inventor hoped the visual patterns of the sound waves he had recorded using a hornlike device with the stylus attached resembling an artificial ear - called a phonautograph - might one day be read like sheet music to recreate a singer's voice or the timbre of a musical instrument.”
“Another would-be technical breakthrough was the Bell "phonautograph" of 1874, actually made out of a human cadaver's ear.”
“This historic recording was scratched onto a soot blackened piece of paper with a hand cranked device that Scott referred to as a "phonautograph".”
“Back in 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made the first ever recording, using a device called the "phonautograph".”
“I always discover something unusual or odd when browsing, like the fact that the acronym H. A.L, for the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is made up of the letters that precede I.B.M. In the alphabet, and that a sound recording technology, the phonautograph, has been discovered that predates Edison's by two decades.”
“His earliest known work is dated from 1860 and was not an effort to reproduce sound but to represent it graphically on a roll of paper using a device he called the “phonautograph”.”
“Tagged with Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, phonautograph, phonograph, sound recording, Thomas Edison”
“It's a visual record of sound, made by a device called a phonautograph.”
“In the mid-nineteenth century, there were several precursors, including Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph, a device that recorded sound vibrations as a printed pattern.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘phonautograph’.
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 more...
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phono-, phon-, -phony
relating to sound
phonograph, phonics, phonology, telephony, phoneme, phone, telephone, phonautograph, phonetic, phonebook, phonography, phonolite and 107 more...
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graphs
lithograph, homograph, topography, psychogeography, typography, pictograph, polygraph, cinematography, stenographer, cartography, choreographer, oceanographer and 24 more...
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bilby's Words
pandemic, whirl, guffaw, ethereal, feisty, dunt, ephemeral, pule, flipergebet, prink, maunder, gammon and 1023 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for phonautograph.
vanishedone Also termed a phonautogram, apparently. Mar 31, 2008
bilby "The short song was captured on April 9, 1860 by a phonautograph, a device created by a Parisian inventor, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville.
The device etched representations of sound waves into paper covered in soot from a burning oil lamp.
Lines were scratched into the soot by a needle moved by a diaphragm that responded to sound. The recordings were never intended to be played."
- 'Oldest recorded voices sing again', BBC website, 28 March 2008. Mar 31, 2008