Francois Lambert (13 June 1851 – 1937) was a

French American French Americans or Franco-Americans (french: Franco-Américains), are citizens or nationals of the United States who identify themselves with having full or partial French or French-Canadian heritage, ethnicity and/or ancestral ties. ...

inventor. Lambert is perhaps best known today for making the oldest sound recording reproducible on its own device (1878) on his own version of the

phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. Lambert also invented a typewriter on which the keyboard consists of one single piece.

Work

Lambert was born in

Lyon, France Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of th ...

; he relocated to the United States in 1876 and became a U.S. citizen in 1893. Twelve years after arriving in the U.S., Lambert, along with a friend John Thomson, founded The Thomson Water Meter Co. to manufacture their design of a water meter. In 1878 or 1879 he built his own version of Edison's sound recording device, the

Phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

, and recorded himself calling out the hours for an

Experimental Talking Clock The "Experimental Talking Clock" was recorded c. 1878 by inventor Frank Lambert. It was long thought to be the world's oldest playable sound recording and is listed in both the ''Guinness Book of World Records'' and ''The Encyclopedia of Recorded S ...

he was developing for the

Ansonia Clock Company Ansonia Clocks were made by a clock manufacturing business which started in Ansonia, Connecticut, in 1851 and which moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1878. History In 1838, brass movements had mainly replaced wooden and cast iron movements in mo ...

in Connecticut. However, the attempts to make a commercially viable "phonograph clock" proved unsuccessful. After being restored by Aaron Cramer, Lambert's talking clock is currently at the

National Watch and Clock Museum The National Watch and Clock Museum (NWCM), located in Columbia, Pennsylvania, is one of a very few museums in the United States dedicated solely to horology, which is the history, science and art of timekeeping and timekeepers. Like its subsidiar ...

in Columbia, PA, and is listed in ''

The Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

'' and in ''The

Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound The ''Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound'' is a reference work that, among other things, describes the history of sound recordings, from November 1877 when Edison developed the first model of a cylinder phonograph, and earlier, in 1857, when Léon ...

'' as the world's oldest playable recording. Until 2008 it was considered to be the oldest surviving sound recording but a phonautogram of

Au Clair de la Lune "" (, ) is a French folk song of the 18th century. Its composer and lyricist are unknown. Its simple melody () is commonly taught to beginners learning an instrument. Lyrics The song appears as early as 1820 i''Le Voiture Verseés'' with only ...

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (; 25 April 1817 – 26 April 1879) was a French printer, bookseller and inventor. He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1858 . ...

from 1860 has been found to pre-date it. However, Lambert's recording is still the oldest which can be played with its own original device, unlike the phonautogram which was played by optically scanning it and using a computer to process the scan into a digital audio file. Lambert completed his main invention, a typewriter on which the keyboard consists of one single piece. He sold it to the Gramophone Co. Ltd., for which he received US$20,000. Lambert's water meter company was sold outright to the Neptune Water Meter Co. and Lambert received $800,000. During his career he registered over 30 patents for, among other things, typewriters, water meters, a voting machine, and a double-decked car.

References

External links

The Second Oldest Playable Recording

Lambert's Phonograph

Lambert's typewriter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lambert, Frank 19th-century French inventors 1851 births 1937 deaths French emigrants to the United States