Who invented talking clocks and watches?
Around 1878, Frank Lambert invented a machine that used a voice recorded on a lead cylinder to call out the hours. Lambert used lead in place of Edison’s soft tinfoil. In 1992, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized this as the oldest known sound recording that was playable[1] (though that status now rests with a phonautogram of douard-Lon Scott de Martinville, recorded in 1857). It is on display at the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Although there have been rumors that other talking clocks may have been produced afterward, it is not until around 1910 that another talking clock was introduced, when Bernhard Hiller created a clock that used a belt with a recording on it to announce the time. However, these belts were often broken by the hand-tightening required, and all attempts to reproduce the celluloid ribbon have so far failed. Over twenty years later, the first practical use of talking clocks was seen when Ernest Esclangon created a talking teleph
