Towards the end of the 1800s, there were three primary American groups competing to invent technology to record and play back audio.
Alexander Graham Bell worked with with Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester Bell in at their
Volta Laboratory in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., while
Thomas A. Edison worked from his
Menlo Park facilities, and
Emile Berliner worked in
his independent laboratory in
his home. To secure the rights to their inventions, the three groups sent samples of their work to the Smithsonian. These recordings became part of the permanent collections, now consisting of 400 of the earliest audio recordings ever made.
But knowledge of their contents was limited to old, short descriptions, as the rubber, beeswax, glass, tin foil and brass recording media are fragile, and playback devices might damage the recordings, if such working devices are even available. That is, until
a collaborative project with the Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory came together to make 2D and 3D optical scanners, capable of
visually recording the patterns marked on discs and cylinders, respectively.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 10, 2012 -
21 comments
The concept behind
VoyURL is simple: A browser plugin records your every click, which you can then choose to share publicly in a real-time feed. Their website
analyzes and
shows you your online history in customized infographics, to identify patterns, recommend content and help you learn more about the way you use the internet. You can see the browsing history of all users in one giant timeline or follow a specific user. The service is currently in beta, but you can slip in
here or
here.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 16, 2011 -
35 comments
150 years ago, a primitive Internet united the USA. "Long before there was an Internet or an iPad, before people were social networking and instant messaging, Americans had already gotten wired. Monday marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the
transcontinental telegraph. From sea to sea, it electronically knitted together a nation that was simultaneously tearing itself apart, North and South, in the Civil War. Americans soon saw that a
breakthrough in the spread of technology could enhance national identity and, just as today, that it could vastly change lives."
posted by homunculus
on Oct 23, 2011 -
49 comments
To meet this need for high speed data processing, the scientists and technicians of the Eckert-Mauchly division of Remington Rand have created a miracle of electronic development: UNIVAC! [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Oct 7, 2011 -
8 comments
Museums build some pretty cool websites. To help people find them, use them, and give them props, the Museums and the Web conference has held an annual Best of the Web contest since 1997.
This year's nominees are here. Just a sample:
the MOMA on Bauhaus, the Center for New Media's
Bracero History Archive, the Textile Museum of Canada's
In Touch:Connecting Cloth, Culture, and Art, Perception Deception from The National Science and Technology Center of Australia,
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh from the Van Gogh Museum, the Smithsonian's
Prehistoric Climate Change and Why it Matters Today, and more . If that doesn't wash out the remainder of your Friday, you can always dig into the
past nominees.
posted by Miko
on Mar 26, 2010 -
8 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
It's always a hoot to look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and with
Google Books you can now do just that! But what do you get if you mix an eternally medieval city with eternally hopeful futurists? You get these mags' interesting take on
Venice, Italy! Through their pages, you see the 20th century slowly but surely arrive to the canal city (or not, as sometimes the case may be...)
[more inside]
posted by Misciel
on Aug 19, 2009 -
3 comments
"So, that’s my long and winding history of a little postcard from the Upper West Side of Manhattan!" Suzanne Vega
writes about writing the hit song
Tom's Diner, coping with its numerous remixes, and its part in the birth of the MP3 music compression format.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 24, 2008 -
34 comments
The Victorian Web is your one-stop resource for England in the Victorian era (1837-1901). The site is much too extensive to give but a flavor. It is divided into 20 categories, including
Technology,
Gender Matters,
Economic Contexts,
Authors,
Political History,
Theater and Popular Entertainment,
Science and
Genre and Technique. Here are a few examples of the articles inside:
Inventions in Alice in Wonderland,
The Role of the Victorian Army,
Earth Yenneps: Victorian Back Slang (and a
glossary of same),
Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Philosophy of Androgyny, Hermaphrodeity, and Victorian Sexual Mores,
Evolution, progress and natural laws and, of course,
Queen Victoria.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 28, 2008 -
10 comments
Hellenica is an encyclopedia of Greek culture, from classical Hellas, through the Byzantine Empire until the modern day, though its focus is on antiquity and especially the
science and technology of Ancient Greece. Featuring technical diagrams and explications, there's no better site if you seek information on
gigantic galleys,
now obscure great Greek mathematicians,
the last still working Ancient lighthouse and
gears and how they were used by Archimedes and other ancients. This is not to denigrate other sections of the site, such as the page on the
Olympics (including a
Google Map of the site of the games), biographies of
ancient,
Byzantine and
modern Greeks, the
warring and
healing of the Byzantines or the overview of Greek literature, taking in
antiquity,
the medieval era and
modern times. That said, Hellenica is at its finest when treating science and technology.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 18, 2008 -
8 comments
Hitler Speaks
Using advanced speech recognition technology, researchers and voice-over actors have been able to put a soundtrack to long-silent video relics of Adolf Hitler:
Eva Braun's infamous home movies filmed at the
Berghof, private filmed meetings between Hitler and various Reich cronies, as well as the last known footage of him taped before an awkward bunch of Hitler Youth at the Reichstag in the final days of the war made famous in
Downfall. Chilling stuff.
Via.
posted by auralcoral
on Mar 22, 2008 -
177 comments
History of the Button, a weblog devoted to 'tracing the history of interaction design through the history of the button, from flashlights to websites and beyond'.
This presentation [4.5MB .pdf] provides a quick-fire pictorial history of the things we push to do stuff.
posted by jack_mo
on Sep 22, 2006 -
12 comments
