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
FT changes headline on Blair's statement. This morning, I picked up the paper copy of the
Financial Times, scanned the headline, and harrumphed, remarking that "I had seen something like this before". Yesterday, the FT website had the same title - "Blair rejects calls for probe into bombings." Today, however, the headline has been changed to
"Blair promises to hunt down bombers". (BTW, it's UK conservatives calling for a probe). Not only that, but the text in question is purged:
Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators.
Gentlemen,
prepare your tinfoil hats!!
posted by rzklkng
on Jul 11, 2005 -
19 comments
