Arthur Augustus Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg made the first recordings of bird sound on May 18, 1929, in an Ithaca park.
They used motion-picture film with synchronized sound to record a song sparrow, a house wren, and a rose-breasted grosbeak.
Graduate student Albert R. Brand and Cornell undergraduate M. Peter Keane developed recording equipment for use in the open field.
In 1931, Peter Keane and True McLean (a Cornell professor in electrical engineering) designed and built a parabolic reflector for field recordings of bird songs.
The sales of phonograph records of bird sounds remained a key source of income for the Lab of Ornithology since these days.