If sound has existed since the primordial vibrations of matter billions of years ago, it was the first living beings, including dinosaurs, who could enjoy it.
Then, our ancestors used these vibrations to understand their world, communicate, and entertain themselves. Humans created speech and made music.
This History can be divided into four main periods:
- The Acoustic Era (1877-1925)
- The Electrical Era (1925-1945)
- The Magnetic Era (1945-1975)
- The Digital Era (from 1975 to today)
As any good sound engineer knows, it was with the advent of the first recording that sound became truly interesting, when it became a material that could be replayed, manipulated, and transmitted.
This is the "History of Sound" that I will tell you through a few important dates.
By dates
1552
François Rabelais, a French writer, mentions in his novel "Quart-Livre" frozen words, then thawed.
"Then in the air froze the words and cries of men and women, the clash of masses of arms, the clinks of armor, breastplates, the neighing of horses, and all the terror of battle. Today, with the rigor of winter past, with the serenity and sweetness of fair weather, they melt and are heard. [...] He then threw onto the deck handfuls of frozen words that resembled sugar-coated pearls of various colors. We saw red words, green words, azure words, black words, golden words. Which, being somewhat warmed between our hands, melted, like snow, and we actually heard them. [...] I wanted to preserve some angry words in oil as one keeps snow and ice, and in clean straw. But Pantagruel would not allow it, saying it is folly to preserve what one never lacks and always has at hand." - François Rabelais
1650
Cyrano de Bergerac, a French writer, suggests in his book "Les États et Empires de la Lune" (published in 1657) a system similar to portable music players, used for listening to recorded books.
"Upon opening the box, I found therein something metallic, much like our clocks, full of an infinite number of small springs and imperceptible mechanisms. It is a book indeed, but it is a miraculous book that has neither leaves nor characters; finally, it is a book where, to learn, the eyes are useless; only the ears are needed. When someone wishes to read, he winds up, with a great quantity of all kinds of keys, this machine, then he turns the needle to the chapter he wishes to listen to, and at the same time there issues from this nut, as from the mouth of a man, or from a musical instrument, all the distinct and different sounds which serve, among the great lunarians, for the expression of language." - Cyrano de Bergerac
1856
Giovanni Caselli develops the first successful prototype of the "Pantelegraph." This process allowed the line-by-line reproduction of a drawing made with a special pencil on special paper, remotely via telegraphy.
Although non-sonic, since it was visual, this is the first appearance of the concept of sampling, which paved the way for television as well as sound recording.
Indeed, it is thanks to this concept that sound could be simplified for easier storage a hundred years later.
1857
Frenchman Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the first device to write sound: the phonautograph. Technically, it consists of a rotating small cylinder covered with soot on which a stylus writes the vibration of sound emitted into a horn. Entirely graphical, it was impossible to replay these recordings at the time.
1860
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville records "Au Clair de la Lune" on his phonautograph. Thus, in addition to being the first in history to record a sound, he also created the oldest preserved recording (he probably made some older attempts, but they have disappeared). It wasn't until 2008 that a team of researchers succeeded in playing this recording, which you can listen to here:
1877
Frenchman Charles Cros describes the principle of a sound reproduction device: the "Paleophone" to the Academy of Sciences. His document suggests that sound vibrations could be engraved into metal using a stylus.
A few months later, Thomas Edison's "phonograph" recorded sounds on a tin cylinder. This engraved "in depth," meaning the modulations were deeper or shallower in the tin. It was the first device capable of recording and playing back a sound. Indeed, the passage of a needle over the engraved groove made a diaphragm vibrate, allowing the faint playback of the recorded sound.
1878
Invention of the carbon microphone. Initially used in telephony, David Edward Hughes, Thomas Edison, and Emile Berliner independently claimed the invention of the principle.
1887
Émile Berliner, a German scientist based in the United States, developed the flat disc, initially made of zinc. Measuring 24 or 30 cm in diameter and rotating at 78 rpm, such a disc could only record 3 to 5 minutes of sound. He called it the "gramophone." This process was the first to engrave "laterally," which was much more accurate. This medium facilitated storage and especially mass reproduction.
1898
Danish Valdemar Poulsen invents the "Telegraphone": the first sound recording system on magnetic wire; he demonstrated his invention at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
1899
The "Phonogrammarchiv" is created by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It is the oldest sound archive in the world, originally recording the voices of German-speaking poets using phonographs.
1900
First wireless transmission (TSF) of the human voice by Canadian engineer Reginald Fessenden.
1904
Commercialization of the first double-sided records by the Odeon label.
1906
Invention of the "triode" and the first electronic amplifier by American inventor Lee De Forest.
Named "Audion" by its inventor and later "triode" by William Eccles, this vacuum tube is an active electronic component that paved the way for the use of electricity in the field of sound.
1910
Standardization of disc diameters: 30 cm for large discs and 25 cm for small ones.
1919
In Montreal, the first radio station (XWA) to broadcast content on a regular schedule.
1920
Stereophony
American Samuel Waters patents a stereophonic process. The idea was to create two grooves to be read by two separate playback heads.
Dynamic Microphones
During this decade, the dynamic microphone (or "moving coil" microphone) was developed.
Optical Recording
The film industry develops a process for optical sound recording directly onto film.
Streaming
Scientist George Owen Squier patents a system for transmitting and broadcasting music over domestic power lines.
1925
The electrification of processes allows for the replacement of manual rotation with the use of a motor and the use of electricity as a means of sound transmission.
The advent of electronics in the 1920s also allows for the first captures using microphones, which transform sound waves into analog electrical signals.
1927
Standardization of disc rotation speed at 78 rpm.
1928
Tape Recorder
Invention of the tape recorder, replacing magnetic wire with tape. Editing was done with scissors and adhesive tape.
Electrostatic Microphones
Also, the invention of the first "electrostatic microphone," which became predominant only in 1949.
1931
Invention of the "ribbon microphone."
1947
Invention of the "transistor" by Americans John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, researchers at Bell Laboratories. It is an electronic component that would replace "tubes" in many cases. Advantages: much cheaper, smaller, lighter, more robust, operating at low voltages, allowing battery operation, and functioning almost instantly when powered on. Its use would wait until 1954 in radios and then computers.
Invented simultaneously but independently by German physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker.
1948
Launch of the 33 rpm microgroove record.
1949
Launch of the 45 rpm microgroove record.
Based on Harry Nyquist's work in 1948, American Claude Shannon lays the foundation for the sampling theorem, or "Shannon's theorem," at Bell Laboratories.
Although these works bear his name, similar and independent results were achieved in 1915 by Edmund Taylor Whittaker (in the UK), in 1933 by Vladimir Kotelnikov (in the Soviet Union), in 1939 by Herbert Raabe (in Germany), and in 1949 by Someya (in Japan).
Although obscure to a layperson, these works allowed the statement that "sampling a signal requires a number of samples per unit of time greater than twice the difference between the minimum and maximum frequencies it contains."
After Giovanni Caselli's work in 1856, this is a major advancement for the digitization of sound.
1955
Ampex manufactures the first two-track (multitrack) tape recorder.
Dower Blumlein and the EMI company develop stereophonic recording on a single groove.
1956
IBM publicly unveils the first computer hard drive in history. These 50 magnetic disks are read by a mechanically moving head. The first commercial reference, IBM's RAMAC 305, was a 1-ton cabinet, had a capacity of 5 MB, and sold for $50,000, or $10,000 per MB.
Still widely used today, the price of an HDD hard drive is now around $0.00001 per MB...
1958
Commercial release of the first stereophonic record.
1964
Invention of the Compact Cassette by Philips, commonly called "audio cassette."
1976
The first digital recording is made by the American company Soundstream and their two-channel 37 kHz, 16-bit recorder prototype.
During this same decade, many experiments followed, particularly by Sony and Philips to define standards. Sony chose to record on magnetic video cassettes with their "PCM" adapters.
Without yet establishing technical standards, proprietary sampling frequencies varied between 32 and 50 kHz.
1979
Sony invents the Walkman, the first portable device allowing cassette listening anywhere.
1980s
The "Compact Disc" (CD) is developed by Sony and Philips, standardized, and commercialized.
Based on the work of Claude Shannon and others, the choice of sampling frequency follows the idea that it must be twice the highest frequency present in the signal. Since the human ear can hear up to 20,000 Hz, a minimum sampling frequency of 40,000 Hz is required.
The CD format choice is defined: a sampling frequency of 44,100 Hz with a 16-bit resolution.
Since then, other sampling frequencies have also emerged: 48 kHz for audiovisual, 96 kHz for audiophiles, or even 192 kHz for studios.
New resolutions have also appeared thanks to the evolution of computing, such as 24-bit, 32-bit, and even 64-bit floating-point.
1990
Music Editing Software
The company OSC releases DECK: the first music editing software, on Mac.
MP3
The first work on the MP3 format is published. Between 1990 and 1995, this work progressed significantly. It aimed to standardize an audio compression format that significantly reduced the size of the audio data stream while maintaining an acceptable quality of restitution.
Closely followed by formats like OGG Vorbis, AAC, etc., this is the first time audio recording formats of lower quality than previous ones have been democratized.
Rarely used by sound professionals, it is nevertheless a very common format in the final version of a sound work: music and podcasts, primarily. Indeed, for storing or distributing an audio file, the small size of MP3s allows a good size/quality compromise.
1991
SanDisk releases the first SSD, a mass storage device, digital, without a disk, and without mechanical parts.
Pro Tools and Cubase release among the first software for recording and editing multipoint audio. Indeed, before that, the software only allowed manipulation of the MIDI format.
2000s
MP3 becomes dominant in consumer audio. Indeed, light, this digital format is ideal for transferring over the internet.
Since
Technology has evolved a lot, a lot, a lot, but no major invention has really impacted the history of sound. However, it is possible to cite some important advancements, difficult to date:
- The generalization of streaming services
- The arrival of digital consoles
- Etc.
Resources
- The PHONO Museum in Paris: opened in 2014, this Parisian museum recounts more than 165 years of recorded sound history.
- The book "Les fous du son" by Laurent de Wilde: a very interesting essay that tells the history of sound technologies, especially the electronic and modular synthesizer.
Conclusion
This document is still being written. Please contact me if you have any suggestions or additions.
