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5000 Cylinder Recordings Placed Online
Jon Noring writes "The Department of Special Collections at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) Davidson Library recently placed online, with free access, over 5000 sound recordings as part of its Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. These recordings date from the 1890's to the 1920's, all transfered from Edison cylinders using state-of-the-art equipment. The restorations are first-class, using CEDAR tools. Besides MP3 and streaming audio, the raw transfers are also available for diy'ers to try their own hand at audio restoration. For those who like their music 'hot', there's not much there since most of the cylinders predate the start of the Jazz Era (ca. 1917), but there is some early 'mouldy fygge' dance-type jazz, like 1920's 'Peggy' by Lopez and Hamilton's Kings of Harmony Orchestra."
Oh man, as if having Sony on their asses wasn't enough, these guys are going to bring the wrath of Edison down on themselves!
Well, I guess a recording of this one won't be there...
The Amberoll cylinders were tough, too. They had to be, to survive repeated mechanical playback, with a stylus pressure of about a pound. So they're much tougher than vinyl records.
There's now optical equipment for reading damaged or fragile cylinders and records. UCSB isn't using it, but it's available for the tough cases.
Some of these recordings are a century old. The original media are still playable. It's sad that we don't have something to transcribe them to that will be playable a century from now. All we can do is hope that someone will recopy the files periodically.
Seriously, though, I've always thought that was an interesting song. Remember that the Wright Brothers flew only in 1903, so the whole concept of "flying machines" was incredibly new and exciting. There's a certain innocent romance to the song that's so... impossible to recapture today.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Fortunately, the U.S. Government, via the National Park Service (I believe) are the owners of the Edison masters, and so the recordings appear to be public domain. Or at least the U.S. Government won't attempt to claim state-level copyright on the recordings (which I suppose they could.) Note that sound recordings made before 1972 are NOT covered by Federal Copyright Law, rather they are covered by a patchwork of state copyright laws (both common and statutory), anti-competitive laws, etc. It's a mess. Pre-1972 recordings (other than those whose ownership is lost) will not come under Federal Copyright protection (and thus, hopefully, public domain status) until 2067! There are some early Columbia cylinder recordings from 1890 (technically owned by Sony-BMG) which will not become public domain until 2067, a whopping 177 years after they were 'waxed'.
I remember when I was a young whippersnapper, I listened to the Sony cylinders and it loaded a rootkit on my Babbage Calculating Machine. It took forever to calculate 12 + 15...that is if the infernal machine wouldn't jump up by itself and crash on the floor.
The velocity of the "needle" across the surface is inherently constant with a cylinder. With a disk the RPMs are constant but it spirals in so you have to compensate for this frequency drift when recording. I wonder how well that worked? I've heard that when cylinders competed with disks they were regarded as having higher fidelity. The reason they failed is eerily similar to the beta vs. VHS debate: cylinders couldn't record as long. Also, if you do the math you find it's much harder to pack the same ammount of surface area into a box of cylinders than it is for disks. So cylinders were more expensive and could hold less music. The difference in quality wasn't enough to overcome that, and disks won.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Actually, in this case, had there been Federal Copyright law applied to sound recordings as it was to other types of creative works (like books), the pre-1923 sound recordings would all be public domain.
But they are not the kind of example you are talking about. It is worse than that! Why? Because pre-1972 American sound recordings are NOT covered by Federal Copyright Law. Yes, you heard me right, Federal copyright law does NOT apply to pre-1972 sound recordings, and according to Title 17 of the U.S. code won't apply until 2067. In the meanwhile, then, sound recordings are covered by a patchwork of state copyright laws (both statutory and common law), plus other mechanisms. The Capitol vs. Naxos case was filed in the State of New York under New York copyright law, for example (Google that for more information).
What does this mean? State copyright laws, by and large, have no limits. So, for example, Columbia cylinders recorded back in 1890 (technically owned today by Sony-BMG) are still copyright protected (at the state level), and won't revert to Federal protection until 2067 (if the copyright terms remain the same as today, all pre-1972 sound recordings will then revert to the Public Domain in 2067). This means that these earliest cylinders will, unless Congress acts, have at least 177 years of copyright protection.
Most of the UCSB collection is from Edison cylinders. Edison is a unique case in that the ownership of the Edison recordings is the U.S. Federal Government (via the National Park Service), and I believe they are not claiming any state copyright protection of them (but they might be able to). So UCSB felt free to go ahead at least with the Edisons. There are a few other early labels whose ownership is totally unknown and likely abandoned, such as the Grey Gull "group" of labels of the 1920's. These are very interesting to transfer as well. There are some really oddball stuff from before World War I, too, that are probably abandoned.
They'll still be around in another 100 years.
Yeah, but if you ever do lose or damage the wax cylinder, the EULA means you'll have to delete your MP3s as well...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Imagine if they had the equivalent of DRM and/or EULAs in the 1900s...
Each cylinder would come with a warning
This cylinder may only be played using a licensed RCA needle. Using any other needle is a violation of the Pony Millenium Rights Act and is a federal offense. By removing this cylinder from its box, you agree to be bound and gagged by the terms of this End-User License agreement. You may not play this music before a publicly audience without expressed written consent of RCA. Within 30 days of purchase, you must write RCA via pony express to "activate" your cylinder. Failure to do so is a violation of this agreeement and is punishable by hanging. After 5 different people have heard playback (or any portion thereof) this cylinder, you might re-activate it by submitting a written request to RCA. Failure to do so is punishable...
Boston Tea Party? Nah. What were they thinking???????????
I used to work in Special Collections at UCSB. It's a nice facility and my boss was really cool. (He introduced me to Mogwai and Do Make Say Think.) He was responsible for getting some (all?) of the cylinders being presented online. He really went out of his way, too. Some of the cylinders he got were turn-of-the-century recordings from some middle eastern country (Afghanistan? I forget which). The labels were all in Arabic. It was really neat to see them up close! I got to play with some nice reel-to-reel players too.
The sibling post has it right. There would have been different settings for every cylinder. And the less you process the sound, the less of a chance there is of worsening the distortion. It might sound cleaner, but you might have messed up the signal a little while clearing out the noise. It was for this reason that when we made CDs of our old acrylic and aluminum 78s, the only processing done was to amplify it as much as possible without letting it clip.