Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville patented the phonautograph in 1857 and recorded the human voice as early as 1857-1860, nearly two decades before Thomas Edison's 1877 phonograph, but Scott's device could not play back what it recorded, while Edison's could both record and reproduce sound, so historians differ on whether true invention of sound recording belongs to the first to capture sound at all or the first to make it audible again.
What would resolve this A settled definition of sound recording from the acoustical engineering discipline itself, stating whether playback capability is a defining requirement, would resolve which of the two deserves the title.
OpenHistory of acoustical engineeringPhonautograph (Wikipedia)