The World's Oldest Recording: Frank Lambert's Amazing Time Machine – Part 1
By Aaron Cramer with Allen Koenigsberg

The name of Frank Lambert appears in no reference book and if you were to mention him to any phonograph or record collector, you might get the response: "Didn't he make those bright pink celluloid cylinders?" But that was, of course, Thomas Lambert! If you tried again, perhaps with a more advanced collector, you might learn that Frank was the inventor of the device which gave the G&T record company its expanded name from 1900-1907 (Gramophone and Typewriter). And that would be at least partly correct. But this isn't an article about his typewriters - it's about an unknown machine that he built, years before Bell and Tainter, which was able to preserve sound on the first permanent removable record. And in one of the most remarkable tales of chance discovery and subsequent sleuthing, the original machine has been found, and the recording, maybe the world's oldest, has been played and can be clearly understood! But let us begin...

Little is known about the life of Francois Lambert (for that was his original name) before he arrived in the U.S. in 1876. A small clue found in the postmark on a relative's letter has now been verified: he was born in Lyons, France on June 13, 1851, and was given the same name as his father, a maker of shawls; his mother's name was Vincelette Fayard. Lyons was a center of textile production (especially silk) and it was there that the Jacquard loom had been first invented. But it seems more likely that Frank, as he would soon become known, was apprenticed to a local machinist.

When he arrived in the U.S., the country was celebrating its first Centennial, and among the new devices exhibited in Philadelphia were Bell's telephone and the first practical typewriter. We can not yet prove that he attended the Philadelphia Exposition, but the inventive bug soon bit, and in a remarkable coincidence, he applied for his first patent (on a "Striking Mechanism for Clocks") the same week as Edison applied for his phonograph and received it (200,518) on the same day as Edison, Feb. 19th, 1878. Lambert shared this first patent with Walter Davies of Brooklyn, NY, who himself would gain a series of patents on striking mechanisms with others in his family, Henry and Edward. As a result of his affiliation with Davies, Lambert soon relocated to Ansonia, CT, a center of clock manufacture, but then moved back to Brooklyn by June 1880.

Sometime in 1880, while living on Grant Street as a boarder, Lambert met and soon married Jeanne-Marie Donval, a woman a few months older than himself. She already had a daughter, Julia Ida (born Dec. 27, 1876), a son Alexander (b. 1879), and may have been widowed from a furrier named John Simonet (the legal question of Julia's "adoption" came up years later in a court battle over his will). Frank and Jeanne-Marie had five children of their own: Eugenie, Frank jr, George, Martha, and Jeanne. Only Jeanne, who died childless in 1965, survived her parents.

While Lambert was living in Ansonia, he met a man who would have a profound influence on his life - John Thomson. In 1883-1884, Lambert assigned one half of his first typewriter patent to Thomson (who had originally been a clock inventor) and more prophetically, shared a patent with him on water meters in 1887. Lambert continued to improve fluid-measuring devices and together they formed the Thomson Water Meter Co., whose facilities were located at 100-110 Bridge Street in Brooklyn (now torn down). When Thomson was ailing in May 1925, the company was sold outright to the Neptune Water Meter Co. and Lambert received $800,000 in cash.

The invention for which he was best known, at least to modern collectors, was the typewriter that bore his name. It did not use a standard keyboard but was rather classified as an Index style (typewheel). An American company was organized in early 1900 (Lambert had become a U.S. citizen in 1893), but the foreign rights (except for North and South America, the Philippines, and the Sandwich Islands) soon went to The Gramophone Co., Ltd. of London, in an idea of Wm. Barry Owen who planned to sell them at the same price as the "trademark" Gramophone; the company was renamed to include the typewriter. Despite the precaution of patenting it in Sweden, India and New South Wales (among other places), the well-made machine was not widely successful although Lambert did receive $20,000 in advance royalties. G&T discontinued regular sales by 1904 (after making approximately 10,000 units in England) and reverted to their old name in 1907.

The mid-twenties were pivotal years for Lambert; his invalid wife died on Sept. 20, 1925 and Thomson would die in June 1926. However, for a 74-year old, he bounced back with a great deal of vigor: on Jan. 13, 1926, he married (at the NYC Municipal Building) Jeannette Justine Lawson Ebbets, who was 44 years his junior; she had originally sold sheet music in his son-in-law's office and learned the real estate trade. He then left on almost a year's honeymoon throughout Europe. When he returned, he appeared to throw off his Brooklyn roots, and at his wife's urging, moved from his large house (not standing today) at 192 Prospect Park SW to the 22nd floor of the Savoy Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Her mother and two brothers accompanied them. His final years (after 1932) were spent with his second wife at the elegant Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue.

Although there is no record of any invention credited to him after 1925, his other interests continued. He had long been an avid collector of shells, gems, and minerals. He owned several rental properties in Brooklyn, and some undeveloped land on Long Island, and when he died in 1937, his estate amounted to over a million dollars. He may not have been well-known (no obituary appeared), but he was certainly not the stereotype of the impoverished inventor.

Several years after Lambert started his new life at 74, he apparently rewrote his will, leaving the bulk of his estate to his second wife. Only the income from a $20,000 trust was left to his daughter Jeanne and the interest on $30,000 to his only grand-daughter Martha Emily Gillott. This aspect of his life gained journalistic attention as the NY Times trumpeted (8/19/1937): "Lambert's Millions in Will Contest." Jeanne and Martha were each offered a small outright settlement in addition as a result of the legal action.

Apparently the widow (who never remarried) had a head for business, for when she died in 1975 (but without a will herself), her estate was valued at over $15,000,000 (at least on paper)! She had been something of a recluse at the end and court documents speak of wading through piles of papers "several feet deep". Her niece, Jeannette Veronique Minturn (a landscape designer at Rockefeller Center), would eventually die in reduced circumstances (ca. 1991), leading to the curious events surrounding his lost invention.

The machine in question (see illustration) was acquired from an antique dealer who had bought the contents of a sealed storage room (at auction) from the Public Administrator when the fees could no longer be paid. Most of the contents, ranging from a grand piano to letters, paintings, and books, had been placed there between 1927 and 1937. And most enticing of all, according to his niece's diary were the models of his inventions - water meters, typewriters, gyroscopes, etc.

At first, I thought the heavy, oddlooking machine ….. [continued in part 2]


Illustration: At first thought to be an interchangeable sleeve for tinfoil sheets, the 2-5/8” engraved lead cylinder was found to contain the world’s oldest playable record. The recording head is visible at left front, the reproducer at the rear.

Article and image courtesy of Antique Phonograph Monthly, Vol.X No.3.