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Please Click Small Images to Enlarge This wooden and plaster barrel horn Phonautograph design dates from July 1859. (The above pictures and drawings are courtesy of Jean-Paul Agnard). |
The pictures of Phonautograph with a metal horn. |
Please Click Small Images to Enlarge The above pictures and Instruction Manual are courtesy of Musee de la civilisation, depot du Seminaire de Quebec (Museum of Civilization, from the Seminary of Quebec). |
    
Koenig catalog in 1859. (The above catalog is courtesy of Julien Anton). |
Leon Scott's ambition was to produce an oral shorthand. Thomas Young's apparatus (1800), even when improved by other workers mentioned above, provided no means of translating human speech into graphs.
Starting from the anatomy of the ear, Scott designed a device consisting of a horn (auricle) that terminated in a thin membrane (tympanum) the size of a shilling.
At the centre of this membrane, on the outside, was fixed a hog's bristle. This was the world's first soundbox. A graph of the vibrations would be traced by the bristle, first on to a lamp-blacked glass plate (1857) and later (1859) on a lamp-blacked white paper fixed on a drum or cylinder.
The year 1857 was a crucial one for Scott:
- On 26 January, he lodged a sealed envelope with the Academie, containing the principles of Phonautography, with details of a phonautograph.
- On 25 March, Patent No. 31470 was granted for a method of drawing or writing by sound, and for multiplying the result of this graphically with a view to industrial applications.
- On 16 November: Scott read a paper to the Societe d' encouragement (corresponding to the British Association for the Advancement of Science) expounding the principles and applications of his invention. His talk was accompanied by a series of phonautographic illustrations.
Two years later, in 1859, Scott placed a contract with the German manufacturer, Rudolf Koenig, to market the phonautograph; he made no money from it, but his name at least goes down as a pioneer of the talking-machine.
Who then was this Leon Scott de Martinville? Although of good family (his grandfather was a baron) Leon was born without a silver spoon in his mouth; luck had deserted the previous generation, and as sonn as he was old enough, the boy was apprenticed to a printer. Straight away he showed an interest in the books being printed, and soon he reached the stage of reading and correcting proofs.
He was especially excited by the Transactions of the Academie des Sciences, and engineered opportunities to meet the scientists concerned.
Soon the self-taught compositor was holding discussions with Ampere, Arago, Biot, Regnault and other great men.
Probably the phonautograph idea came to him after reading Traite de Physiologie by Dr. Longuet in 1853.
The analogy between the human ear and the young printer's invention is obvious.
Much disheartened by Koenig's failure to exploit his invention, and with no resources apart from his meagre wage, Scott abandoned the exact sciences and turned to the history of art.
He obtained a post Firmin Didot, as librarian. Largely self-taught, Scott de Martinville wrote books on a variety of literary and scientific subjects, including: a working-man's criticism of novels and serials, a work on names, another on courtly romance and many others.
In 1877, on the invention of the phonograph, Scott claimed recognition of his own preliminary work which had made it possible. At that time he was dealing in prints from a stall in the yard behind No.9 rue Vivienne, Paris. On 26 April, 1879, he died in Paris, a poor and forgotten man.
BY DR. JEAN-PAUL AGNARD |
