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 -
19 comments
So maybe you've caught
some recent iPhone commercials and wondered, "Is that Philip Glass? Surely Glass wouldn't do an Apple commercial, would he?" Well, not yet (although he did
appear at the Manhattan Apple Store a while back).
That piece you hear in the commercials, which sounds a lot like
Truman Sleeps, but faster and tinklier, is by
Keith Keniff. But if you want to hear
Truman Sleeps covered a little faster and and a lot tinklier, you have to go to Carlo Castellano, a guy with a studio, a glockenspiel, and lots and lots of
ping pong balls.
posted by maudlin
on Nov 12, 2011 -
34 comments
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that a rubbish dump being created would, in the space of a century, become a protected area. Yet that is exactly what happened to what has come to be known as
Glass Beach, just outside Fort Bragg in California."
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Sep 1, 2011 -
20 comments
Politicians who live in glass houses, etc. ... The Canadian House of Commons is in need of repair, and while it's being done, a
dome will cover the elected gabbers. It might cost as "little" as $42 million or as much as $1 billion. The pre-construction
vacuuming has already begun.
posted by anothermug
on Feb 19, 2011 -
29 comments
If you live in a sufficiently old city in the U.S.,Canada, or the UK you've probably seen
these set into concrete sidewalks or the panels of cast iron steps. Termed
vault lights in the U.S., pavement lights in the UK, and sidewalk prisms in Canada, the glass insets were originally clear and intended to produce
daylighting in subterranean spaces. The
ethereal purple color results from the glass's
manganese content being exposed to ultraviolet light over time. Many vault lights or sidewalk prisms are in
poor condition, but some are being
repaired.
posted by bad grammar
on Jan 19, 2010 -
46 comments
Glass Microbiology "These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the doctoring of scientific imagery affects our visualization of phenomena."
posted by dhruva
on Sep 3, 2009 -
9 comments
In the early 1980s,
Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (
supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract
encyclopedia of the country [flash navigation] which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of
hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made
a library of water in
a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit
an exhibition in Tate Modern.
[more inside]
posted by paperpete
on Apr 4, 2009 -
7 comments
Mingei is a transcultural word which combines the Japanese words for all people (Min) and art (Gei). The site has a flash interface and features over 5,000 high resolution, zoomable objects. More information on the
Mingei Movement.
posted by tellurian
on Jan 27, 2009 -
13 comments
Anything but clear.
It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries. Well known, yes, but long known to be
wrong. Scientists still disagree about the nature of glass, and researchers continue to try to understand its
dual personality .
[more inside]
posted by amyms
on Jul 29, 2008 -
15 comments
Kim Neely has enjoyed a very rich professional life already. A writer for Rolling Stone for fifteen years, she also penned the
Pearl Jam biography. These days find Kim involved in an entirely different pursuit.
Lampworking is a type of glass work that uses a gas fueled torch to melt rods and tubes of clear and colored glass. At her mom's unused workshop Kim created
Bluff Road Art Glass.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 15, 2008 -
7 comments
A day by day account of the progress of the manufacturing of 12 Glass Windscreen panels by artist Mario Muller. The pieces are a commission by the MTA Arts in Transit program for Kingsbridge Road station in the Bronx. The work is being done at Franz Mayer of Munich in Germany.
More on the artist
here
and
here.
posted by pt68
on Oct 14, 2007 -
6 comments
At one time or another you've probably rubbed your finger along the rim of a glass to produce a note. In 1761
Ben Franklin took the idea further with the invention of the
glass (h)armonica. The instrument enjoyed some popularity, but is believed to have caused health problems due to lead content in the glass. Performers complained of loss of feeling in their hands, some even suffered nervous breakdowns. People became very frightened of the armonica, and by 1830 it was all but extinct. But there's been some renewal of interest: they're being
played, and they're being
made. You can play a surprisingly good-sounding
virtual version. Or
listen to a charming rendition of a seasonally appropriate tune.
[more links inside] Oh, and: [previously]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 23, 2006 -
15 comments
