Today started out pretty typically– a stroll to the boulangerie for a baguette to eat with breakfast. Jessie had given up on the smelly cheese from yesterday, so I also picked up some Camembert for her. With our bellies full, we headed to the PHONO Museum.

This museum had been on our must-see list, but was open only on Fridays and Sundays. When we got there, we almost walked right past it. It is a very small space— little more than one large open room and perhaps an office and bathroom.

Once inside, the staff kindly walked us through their various artifacts. I’m tempted to use the word “relic” here, but with something so recent as the development of recording technology, I’m not sure what the best word is. Despite my interest in music and recording, it’s history and development is not something I was terribly familiar with.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not an expert, and this is my understanding based on what I was told by somebody whose first language is not English, cross referenced with what I can find online… I could certainly be mistaken about some of the details.

First, we were shown a model of a Phonautograph, which was a one of the first ways of recording audio. A membrane, functioning as a microphone, would vibrate from soundwaves in the air, vibrating a stylus against a rotating piece of smoked paper, which would etch the audio waveform into the paper.

The second model was the next stage, swapping out the smoked paper for foil. Foil was soon replaced by wax cylinders, wax cylinders turned into wax discs. Over time, the wax discs were replaced by the standardized vinyl records that we know today.

The staff showed us many different types home phonographs. I guess I had never seen one up close until now, but was amazed to see the whole bell moving (video) as the needle moved across the wax cylinder. I was also impressed by how loud these could be, powered only by a hand crank. In some cases, more than one needle and bell were attached to double the audio output (albeit with a noticeable delay between the two bells) (video).

The museum ended with a hallway full of electrical record players, without the hand crank, and now with volume control! They had a few different experimental concepts, including a record that could function as a zoetrope (video) (if you have the right piece, though many have been lost over the years), as well as one that worked with a makeshift TV which projected images, à la a projected viewfinder (video).

After our time at the museum, we wanted to hit up a few things that we had so far missed. The first stop was the obligatory Wall of Love, a wall containing the phrase “I Love You” written in many languages. Generally, the goal is to find your language and take a selfy in front of it. We had been told by a tour guide on our first night, “You’d think English would be easy to find, like right in the center, but it’s surprisingly difficult”. After scouring the wall, we found it almost exactly in the center. I think we were intentionally mislead!

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From there, we stopped at a tiny crêperie to get what had been told was the best crêpe in town. I can’t say for certain if it was the best, but it was very good! Jessie got a Nutella and coconut, I got ham, cheese, and mushroom. Pretty good eats!

The next stop was to visit the Montmartre cemetery. After walking around a wall for a while with no sign of how to get in, we gave up our quest. It was starting to get cold out, so we wandered back to our block.

For dinner, we went to the pizzeria down the street from us, recommended by our AirBNB host. Apparently, it had won some awards as the best pizza in Paris in 2020, though I don’t know by whom. The pizza itself was great. No complaints, but their Mezcal Negroni cocktail was life changing. The menu said the sweet vermouth they used was infused with cajun spices. That could mean a lot of things, but I may be getting out the Old Bay when I get home.

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