The oldest recording of a human voice was made in 1860 but first heard in 2008.
Scott de Martinville's phonautograph traced sound on sooty paper and could not play it back at all; computers finally did.
More amazing facts
- 1859 · 1869 Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and Mendeleev's periodic law (1869) are just ten years apart.
- 1859 Big Ben is still regulated with old pennies.
- 1859 · 1872 The only casualty of the Pig War between the US and Britain was a pig. The border dispute that began with a farmer’s shot in 1859 dragged on for 13 years and was settled by an arbitrator: the German Kaiser.
- 1859 In 1859 telegraph operators sent messages without batteries; space supplied the power.
- 1859 In 1859 the aurora was so bright that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke in the night and began making breakfast, thinking it was morning.
- 1860 · 1861 The legendary Pony Express lasted only 18 months.