Romald_Duhh

📖 You know what’s goin’ around today? The word is… Phonautograph (noun)

Definition: An instrument for registering the vibrations of a sounding body. That devised about 1858 by Léon Scott consists of a large barrel-shaped vessel made of plaster of Paris, into the open end of which the sound enters; the other end, somewhat contracted in shape, is closed by a membrane with a style attached on the outside, whose point rests against a horizontal cylinder covered with lampblacked paper. If the membrane is at rest the trace of the style is a straight line, but when the sound enters the membrane vibrates, and the writing-point registers these vibrations with great perfection.

Example: "I always discover something unusual or odd when browsing, like the fact that the acronym H.A.L, for the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is made up of the letters that precede I.B.M. in the alphabet, and that a sound recording technology, the phonautograph, has been discovered that predates Edison's by two decades."