News Flash: Waveform display invented BEFORE sound playback.

[ElMosca]

Breaking news: A French scientist invented a recording device that etched a visual representation of sound on a flat surface. This happened 20 years before Edison invented the phonograph.

Unfortunately for this French guy, he had to wait 150 years for science to figure out how to play back the sounds recorded on his etchings. That's the actual breaking news. According to this article from US News and World Report:

Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville never intended for the soot-lined imprint of the sound waves to be played back, the historians reported. But the inventor hoped the visual patterns of the sound waves he had recorded using a hornlike device with the stylus attached resembling an artificial ear — called a phonautograph — might one day be read like sheet music to recreate a singer’s voice or the timbre of a musical instrument.

A bit ahead of his time, Mr. Scott de Martinville believed you could look at sound in lieu of listening.

Cheers,
++aldo