For some perverse reason, I’ve always disliked Thomas Edison. Probably it’s because people insist on calling him a genius, rather than merely an intelligent and very successful businessman/inventor. (It’s the same reflex I have when someone calls Bill Gates a genius rather than an intelligent, scarily successful businessman and oh-by-the-way one of the richest men on earth.) So I was secretly pleased when I read that some researchers this month found a recording of a human voice that predated Edison’s by nearly two decades.

On April 9, 1860, Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded sound via a phonoautogram machine, which depicted the sound as a bunch of pen squiggles on paper. The squiggles—a phonoautograph—were a visual representation of the sound only, and never meant to be played back, but through the magic of modern computers were converted into a recognizably human voice singing the first line to “Au Claire de la Lune”.

The 1860 Phonautograph Recording of “Au Clair de la Lune” (mp3)

Edison still gets credit for producing the first sound recording that could be reproduced, but it’s nice to see Scott—the man who managed to actually record sound first—get his due.