Experts find oldest voice recording, from 1860

[xendrome]

So I just read this story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23835160/

"WASHINGTON - U.S. audio historians have discovered and played back a French inventor's historic 1860 recording of a folk song ? the oldest-known audio recording ? made 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.

"It's magic," audio historian David Giovannoni said on Thursday. "It's like a ghost singing to you.""

But after reading on... It began to dawn on me that if I am understanding this correctly... this is not even a recording of sound at an audio level, but rather a recording of sound at a visual level of what the sound would look like.. similar to musical notes.

device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp

and

The U.S. experts made very high-resolution digital scans of the paper. First Sounds said that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California converted these scans into sound using technology developed to preserve and create access to a wide variety of early recordings.

So my question is, anyone tired of these mis-leading articals? I mean shouldn't the title say

"Experts find oldest visually recorded representation of voice recording, and use technology to convert it into what they think it would sound like?"

Or am I totally missing something?

[sundayx Veteran]

Well technically it's a recording, just not directly audible.

[xendrome]

Well technically it's a recording, just not directly audible.

True, I agree it is some type of recording. But the title says "voice" recording.... it's a bit misleading if nothing at all.

[Nathanael]

True, I agree it is some type of recording. But the title says "voice" recording.... it's a bit misleading if nothing at all.

It's a recording of a voice?

Or is voice a type of a recording for you? Like magnetic, mechanical, etc.?