Oldest recorded voices sing again

In 1860, a Parisian scientist named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville (1817-1879) "recorded" the human voice with a needle on soot-covered paper (a "phonautograph") for visual graphical analysis.

Little did he realize that nearly 150 years later, technology (digital scans of the soot-covered paper and a computerized "virtual stylus") would advance to the point where those recordings could be decoded and brought to life. The recorded voice of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860 has been heard for the first time ever. Here is the article.

And here is a link to the MP3 file itself. It is very crude, but unmistakably a lady's voice singing the folk tune.

Astounding!