Scientists Play World's Oldest Commercial Record-123years with audio

[Ichingcarpenter]

This scratchy, 12-second audio clip of a woman reciting the first verse of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star doesn't sound like much. But the faint, 123-year-old recording—etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional (3D) optical scanning technique—appears to belong to the first record intended for sale to the public. Made for a talking doll briefly sold by phonograph inventor Thomas Edison, the early record is the oldest known American recording of a woman's voice and may be the oldest known record produced at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey.

"The talking doll cylinders are evidence of both efforts to further refine recorded sound techniques that were still primitive and in the experimental state, and to develop commercial uses for sound recordings," says Samuel Brylawski, a sound archivist affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not part of the study.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/scientists-play-worlds-oldest-co.html?ref=hp


LISTEN TO THE AUDIO which sounds extremely scratchy;


http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/tenhp_edison_c_E-821-8_edis-1279_20110523_minus-5-semitones-and-eqd.mp3

[Poll_Blind]

1. That's awesome!

Something about a sound whose long-ago vibrations science tells me still leave information encoded in our universe, however diluted.

PB

[MineralMan]

2. Only 123 years. That's just yesterday, really.

Before that time, we have no recorded sound. It would be very interesting to be able to listen to speeches made by people like the Founders, I think. What did George Washington's voice sound like? What sort of accent did he have? Sadly, we will never hear those voices.

Technology, as we know it today, is very, very recent.

[Fumesucker]

6. The first known example of a computer is over 2,000 years old..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism ( /ˌæntɨkɨˈθɪərə/ ant-i-ki-theer-ə or /ˌæntɨˈkɪθərə/ ant-i-kith-ə-rə) is an ancient mechanical computer<1><2> designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck.<3> Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BC.<4> The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock.<5> Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks were built in Europe.<6>

Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited the wreck for the last time in 1978,<7> but found no additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the most recent study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."

[rug]

3. First sound ever recorded (1860)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vqvq-f-UtU

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. This is the first commercial use still in existence

it didn't take them long did it from 1860?

[laconicsax]

5. Pigeons in the park?

:shrug:

[rug]

7. It's a woman reciting Twinkle,Twinkle Little Star.

But you're right, it does sound like pigeons.