Oldest ever recorded sounds?

aja

What is that, Edison you say? Bah! He was late to the game...

Gramophone you say? Nope, think older...

1920's? 1900's? 1890's???

Nope, go all the way back to 1860!

Sure, you can convert pictures of gramophone records that were made before gramophone players were built, like this:

http://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-audio-from-pictures/

But the really old stuff was done like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html?_r=1&

AlanRatcliffe

Very cool info. Thanks!

shaundtsl

Very interesting!

DrGonzo

Ha awesome man thanks for that brought a smile to my dial... ?

My how far we have come since then...

Heath

very cool indeed

but how about sound in old clay pots

singemonkey

Tailon. wrote: very cool indeed

but how about sound in old clay pots

It's a myth, sadly. Or a hoax, to be more accurate. But it does make me wonder if there are any surfaces that may somehow have captured and retained ancient human sounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics#Past_interpretations

This seems to suggest that it may be possible. But I guess, from what's said here, you have to think about signal-to-noise ratio. The sound of a potter's wheel and the scrapings of his/her tools are going to be far louder than any human speech for example.