World's earliest sound recording

You may have read news accounts today about the world's earliest sound recording: 10 seconds from the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" (mp3 above). Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the folk song on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Academie des Sciences in 1861.

The phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was recently made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

It's certainly a bit scratchy, but fascinating nonetheless. Thanks to FirstSounds.org for the find.