Posted on ARSCLIST:
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Phonautograph"One of the most interesting variations on the phonautograph was the one
invented by Alexander Graham Bell. In the summer of 1874, one of Bell?s
associates supplied him with the ear and part of the skull of a dead man.
Bell attempted to attach a recording stylus to the ear and use it to
inscribe a line on a smoked-glass plate. But the tympanum and the muscles
that attached to the tiny bones of the inner ear were too dry, so Bell
rubbed them with glycerin. It worked, and when Bell shouted into the dead
man?s ear, the stylus recorded his speech on the glass. Nothing became of
the ear phonautograph, but it may be the only case of a body part being
used in making a sound recording."
