Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An instrument for registering the vibrations of a sounding body.
- noun Same as
music-recorder .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (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.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun 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.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Here's how the Times describes the phonautograph, which is illustrated in the article:
Archive 2008-03-01 Lisa Hirsch 2008
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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.
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Here's how the Times describes the phonautograph, which is illustrated in the article:
Whoa. Lisa Hirsch 2008
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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.
JMH Techtronics 2009
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"phonautograph" - a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.
URLwire - News of Useful and Unique Web Launches Since 1994 2009
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Another would-be technical breakthrough was the Bell "phonautograph" of 1874, actually made out of a human cadaver's ear.
The Hacker Crackdown Sterling, Bruce 1992
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Back in 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made the first ever recording, using a device called the "phonautograph".
SocialTimes.com 2010
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This historic recording was scratched onto a soot blackened piece of paper with a hand cranked device that Scott referred to as a "phonautograph".
Word Magazine - Comments Fraser Lewry 2010
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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.
Jillian Burt: The Concept of Reuse Is Regenerating the Arts and Culture in Australia 2010
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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”.
2008 March 2008
bilby commented on the word phonautograph
"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.
March 31, 2008
vanishedone commented on the word phonautograph
Also termed a phonautogram, apparently.
March 31, 2008