A wax cylinder in 1890 captured the first-ever sound recording of a language

In March 1890, anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes used Edison's new phonograph to record Passamaquoddy speakers in Calais, Maine — the first known field recording of any human language. Until then, linguists could only transcribe speech by ear, losing its tone, rhythm and pronunciation. Fewkes's wax cylinders opened a century of field recording that has since preserved the actual voices of thousands of endangered languages.

— Jesse Walter Fewkes, On the Use of the Phonograph in the Study of the Languages of American Indians — American Anthropologist, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1890