Associations to the word «Phonautograph»

Wiktionary

PHONAUTOGRAPH, noun. One of the first phonographic recording devices, consisting of a horn or barrel focusing sound waves onto a membrane to which a hog's bristle was attached, causing the bristle to move so enabling it to inscribe a visual medium, which could transcribe sound to a visible medium but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded.

Wise words

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
Noam Chomsky