Seven Sound Recordings Made Before Thomas Edison

In 1877 Thomas Edison made the first audio recording with the intention of playing it back, but people had been capturing sound for centuries. School taught us that Thomas Edison was the first person to create a sound recording that could be immediately played back.

But school didn't mention that people had been rendering music on paper for centuries, using graphic representations of frequency and duration that could be used to reproduce the sound. Listen to music dating back to 980 A.D.