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.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 10, 2012 -
21 comments
Phonozoic, Patrick Feaster's website "dedicated to the history of the phonograph and related media," is an amazing collection of information about historic recordings. Not just early recordings, however, but also
experimental "eduction projects": the "automatic 'playing' of primeval inscriptions of sound."
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posted by litlnemo
on Dec 30, 2011 -
1 comment
Over 143 episodes of audio, Mike Duncan has covered the founding of Rome through the Crisis of the Third Century in his
History of Rome podcast [
previously], having now reached the last pagan Emperor,
Julian The Apostate. Enlivened by drawing on comparisons to popular culture, from
The Empire Strikes Back (when Hannibal makes his appearance) to
The Godfather (as a metaphor for Rome's social client system), Mr Duncan's work makes for fun, informative 25-minute sessions with the greatest empire of the ancient western world. If you're interested in more, the podcasts could be handily supplemented with...
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posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jul 10, 2011 -
42 comments
Hop in the
Video Time Machine and scroll to any year: from
1860 (the first recorded sound) to the
present day to experience video and audio from that time period: most of it iconic, some forgotten, and others entirely random. Results can be filtered for music, sports, movies, current events and more.
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posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jul 5, 2011 -
8 comments
On the 29th January 1942 the first ever
Desert Island Discs was broadcast. Surpassed only by the
Grand Ole Opry it is the second longest running radio show in history. Beautiful in its simplicity - each castaway is asked to choose eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury item for their imaginary stay on the desert island. For those who have not come across it before aquaint yourself with its iconic theme tune 'By the Sleepy Lagoon'
here. Then for newcomers and old hands aquaint yourself with the wonderful new
BBC website with searchable archives of 2852 episodes detailing castaways choices, and
now with more than 500 episodes available for free download.
posted by numberstation
on May 3, 2011 -
23 comments
"If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away."
Audio recordings from interviews with former slaves, conducted by WPA folklorists and others, including the Lomaxes and Zora Neale Hurston. Only these
twenty-six audio recordings of people formerly enslaved in the antebellum American South have ever been found.
posted by Miko
on Feb 7, 2010 -
16 comments
The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko
on Feb 16, 2009 -
27 comments
2009 marks not only the 150
th anniversary of the publication of
Charles Darwin's
On The Origin of Species* but the 200
th anniversary of his birth as well. To celebrate,
BBC Radio 4 presents a special series of Melvyn Bragg's
In Our Time exploring Darwin's life and work:
Episode 1 explores Darwin's unhappy childhood, his time at Cambridge University and his failure to become a priest,
episode 2 focuses on Darwin's round the world voyage on the Beagle and the objects and the ideas he bought back,
episode 3 looks at the publication of Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and the controversy it stirred, and
episode 4 is set in Down House where Darwin lived out the final years of his life and which became both family home and experiment lab.
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posted by Alvy Ampersand
on Jan 8, 2009 -
14 comments
The
recent passing of Studs Terkel sparked a renewed interest in his interview projects, like
Working,
Race, and
Hard Times. But Studs was not just a broadcaster who liked people; he was a practitioner of
oral history, a method of gathering information about the past through preserving individual recollections. It's a
subfield of history, with its own
ethics,
techniques,
professional literature,
uses, and
limitations.
Learn how to
collect and share oral histories yourself, from
interviewing to
recording and getting
clearances to
preserving and disseminating. Oral histories have been preserved as
text transcripts for decades; now digital media is
reinvigorating the form, bringing new ease to recording and
wider opportunities for the public to
see and hear the content. Explore oral history projects on the web with stories of
veterans,
suffragists,
Tibetans,
jazz cats,
Nevada nuclear test site witnesses,
Basque Americans,
rodeo cowboys and cowgirls,
musicians,
Katrina survivors,
ACT UP activists,
Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge,
Native Americans,
women whose lives were affected by the Pill,
survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,
women in World War II,
Hawai'ians,
workers in Paterson, NJ....
posted by Miko
on Dec 11, 2008 -
20 comments
What's the oldest MP3 on the web? Not the first MP3 created by the
Fraunhofer Institute, but the oldest recorded sound that's been turned into an MP3? Audio restorer
Art Shifrin has a
1931 detective show; PBS offers some early recordings, including a
1919 track by Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band; but the reigning champeen seems to be
Tinfoil.com, a website dedicated to early recordings, which features a largely unintelligible recording ripped from an
1878 "talking clock" recording.
posted by snarkout
on Apr 8, 2002 -
15 comments
Initial audio from the WTC. Police, fire, etc. "Please note that these files can be disturbing to listen to..." If your tired of political commentary about this but are hooked none the less, you too can be an audio voyeur (audeur?).
I really only post this for historical reasons.
posted by a_green_man
on Oct 4, 2001 -
5 comments
