Early recordings for the classical guitar had often have a low or limited audio quality since recording technology was just in its beginning phases, with the earliest known guitar sound recorded in either 1853 or 1854 recorded the phonautograph by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The phonautogram features a snippet of Adolphe Giacomelli playing a few notes on guitar, though it is unintelligible as a result of the recording’s brevity and low quality. A later guitar sound of a few notes was recorded was done by using the phonograph type invented by Thomas Edison on 18 July 1877, which used phonograph cylinders as a recording medium. Classical guitar recording quality greatly improved along with technological improvements to the phonograph and the development of the gramophone record in the 1900s.
