Was Edison really the first ?

[chunnybh]

. Cros never built his version, even though we know he wrote a detailed description of his concept months before Edison built his first tinfoil phonograph

Edison would have been one of the first Americans to read Cros's concept. Infact he must have been the first to scoured all scientific journals of the time.
All he would have had to do was tell one of his minions to build it. And so it was.

[FloridaClay]

I gotta say..Edison is really an unsung hero people think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are important these days.

Time moves on, but I am not at all worried about Edison's place in history. He was "the rock star of his day" and his breadth of knowledge is just amazing.

Clay

[VintageTechnologies]

. Cros never built his version, even though we know he wrote a detailed description of his concept months before Edison built his first tinfoil phonograph

Edison would have been one of the first Americans to read Cros's concept. Infact he must have been the first to scoured all scientific journals of the time.
All he would have had to do was tell one of his minions to build it. And so it was.

Cros written description, which was sealed and delivered to the French academy of sciences, was not opened and published until after the announcement of Edison's invention. Cros was a only a thinker, Edison was a man of action. "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

[phonojim]

Agreed. AFAIK, there is no historical evidence that Edison ever heard of Cros or his concept until after his (Edison's) phonograph had been built and publicly demonstrated.
It seems to me that someone (Bell & Tainter or Berliner maybe) tried the method detailed by Cros and found it to be unworkable.

Jim

[Lucius1958]

The recording was of an adolescent French girl singing a lesser know second verse of a folk song. Jerry Blais

Actually, it turns out they had misjudged the recording speed: the voice was actually male - most likely Scott himself.

Bill