Effective period / Period of releases: 1860

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (April 25, 1817, Paris, France - April 26, 1879, Paris, France) was a French writer, publisher and inventor.

Formerly a typographic worker, he designed the first device for recording sound, patented under the name of "phonautographe" (n°31470) on March 25, 1857. The scientific principles of "phonautographie" was previously sent under sealed letter to French Académie des sciences on January 26, 1857 as an evidence of his invention.

Conceived as a stenographic device, the "phonautographe" recorded sound through a horn that focused the sound waves onto a membrane to which a wild boar's bristle was attached, causing the bristle to move and enabling it to inscribe the sound onto a lamp-blackened glass plate, later replaced by a lamp-blackened paper mounted on a drum or cylinder.