

Scientists Recover Oldest Playable American Recording - atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/scientists-recover-the-sounds-of-19th-century-music-and-laughter-from-the-oldest-playable-american-recording/264147/

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pronoiac
For anyone wondering, the current oldest playable audio recordings were
produced by the phonautograph (1857)[1], which was made for studying
acoustics. They were write-only until 2008, when they became playable via
computers. There's a sample on Youtube. [2]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0fhEpxrFvo>

~~~
cynwoody
Some of the same people who worked on the Edison audio (Carl Haber) were also
responsible for recovering the phonautograph audio.

The phonautograph was essentially a mechanical audio oscillograph. It graphed
the sound waves on paper by conducting the acoustic vibrations to a stiff
bristle up against lamp-black blackened paper wrapped around a slowly moving
hand-cranked drum. The white traces left behind allowed properties such as
frequency and amplitude to be estimated.

I wonder if its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, ever contemplated
the problem of reproducing the graphed sound.

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ck2
Isn't there a theory somewhere that there have been accidental recordings in
the past when objects vibrate against another and make grooves?

That would be amazing to discover an accidental recording from 1000 years ago
that can be recovered using laser scanning to decode.

~~~
pronoiac
Wikipedia calls it archaeoacoustics [1], and I've seen it called
paleoacoustics elsewhere. There was a hoax in 2006 involving sound from
Pompeii. [2]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics>

[2]
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.html)

 _edit: fixed an autocorrect typo_

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DanielBMarkham
The time between about 1860 and 1910 seems totally magical to me.

For all of history, people lived, loved, and died. Aside from perhaps a few of
them writing their thoughts down, they totally disappeared.

With the invention of still photography, and much more audio and moving-
picture recording technology, suddenly you could see and hear people who were
long gone.

These folks are not just dead. Their kids are dead, their grandkids are dead,
their great-grandkids are probably also gone. Yet we are able to hear them
play music, tell stories, and laugh. They might even tell a joke and we can
laugh along with it.

It's as if mankind suddenly came out of a very dark tunnel. We are finally
able to really coalesce into a multi-generational conversation about what our
humanity means. (A little too poetic. Apologies. I just find it amazing)

~~~
dhughes
I wonder if the late 1990s to roughly now will be seen as a audio, video,
still picture dark ages of sorts.

The average consumer was astounded by low quality mp3 audio over a record,
cassette tape or later on compact disc. Sort of like fast food, convenience
over quality.

It's also the same for photography I remember the first digital cameras and
they had horrible resolution and colour depth but it was amazing to have a
film-less camera. Video being a close cousin to pictures got worse in quality
too but more affordable and convenient no more giant saddle bag and shoulder-
crushing camera.

Looking back years from now family pictures and audio will be great up to
roughly the mid 1990s then from then on until the early 2000s the bottom fell
out.

~~~
Retric
While I know the 1950's had high quality radio all I have heard is recordings
which tend to have all sorts of problems so that's not how I picture it. So,
even though mp3 might seem like poor quality they don't degrade and in 100
years it may seem like we finally got rid of all that hissing and popping. As
to video, home movies have gotten steadily better. A 1990 handycam is in many
ways worse than what you can get from an iPad 3.

PS: Not to mention people tend to compress history as it get's older, out side
of historians who can really separate the 1180's from the 1190's in Ireland?

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wrath
It must have been "magical" to be able to hear your own voice played back
during those times. I wonder if in 100 years from now people will wonder if we
though smartphones were magical.

Does anyone know if the noise in the recording is because the foil is so old
and that's the best they can recover, or if that's how it was played back
originally?

~~~
sejje
I think the whole thing is magic now. That here in my bedroom, this box can
link me 135 years into the past just strikes me as incredible.

~~~
mgkimsal
In some sense I agree with you. Not specifically the 135 years ago, but the
idea of real time global communication in general is magical. But we had that
with radio/tv (mostly) 30 years ago, just without as many channels as today.
The magic to me today is that a) it's something I can contribute to, on equal
footing as anyone else, b) it's done with technology that I can actually
understand and contribute to.

At the same time, much of the 'magic' feeling I used to get has turned in to
'eh', just because it's such an ingrained part of life now. I remember my
grandfather telling a story of taking a polaroid photo of ... his parents? (or
in-laws, I can't remember), then taking the photo to the other room to let it
dry/develop for the 2 mins or so it took, then taking it back to show them,
and seeing how amazed they looked at it. IIRC I think that was the 60s when
that happened. But my memory of the story is now hazy, and I think his was a
bit when he told me it to me :)

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Mr_T_
I don't understand a word, but it must have been funny: I can hear laughter at
0:58

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nate_martin
Did that image remind anyone else of Joy Division?

<http://gothstore.piratemerch.com/images/joy-division.jpg>

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viraj_shah
I had a chance to work with Carl Haber while at Berkeley. He is brilliant and
recovering these recordings is not as trivial as one might think. Kudos to him
and team for this achievement.

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e03179
One day, we'll recover sound from vibrations recorded in paint and mortar.

~~~
derleth
Where's the evidence we'll be able to do that?

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furbo
just amazing. i can only wonder what levels of reconstruction from data the
future holds...

~~~
gwern
When I read

> For years the audio was trapped on the piece of foil you see above. There
> was no device that could play it and even if there had been, doing so would
> have likely ruined it. This summer, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
> in Berkeley, California, physicist Carl Haber and his team were able to
> create a 3D picture of the foil whose topography could then be translated
> into sound using techniques of mathematical analysis and physical modeling
> to calculate how a needle would have played the recording. They were able to
> do so "without physically having to touch them," he explained to me. "And
> that's kind of the key issue, because these things are so old and fragile
> and torn-up, broken, and delicate that in many cases it just would not be
> possible to play them back in any of the more standard ways."

All I could think was "it's like audio cryonics!"

