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80-Year-Old Edison Recording Resurrected

Posted by kdawson on from the wizard-of-menlo-park dept.

embolalia writes "An 80-year-old recording of a live radio broadcast featuring Thomas Edison has been uncovered and reconstituted. The recording was done on an obscure technology called a pallophotophone — Greek for 'shaking light sound' — that uses optical film to reproduce sound. The archivists who uncovered the canisters tucked away on a bottom shelf in a museum in Schenectady, New York (the city where Edison's General Electric was founded), did not have any machine to replay the films. Two GE engineers — working nights and weekends for two years — were able to construct a machine to replay the old tapes, recorded only two years before Edison's death." There's a video at the link, which may or may not contain some of the resurrected recording, but we couldn't get it to play from the Times Union site.

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Link to the video by endikos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the video of the people, machine, and recording

  2. Neither Only nor Best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is neither the only recording of the broadcast, nor the best. A recording of the broadcast made by Edison's own technicians on his then-state-of-the-art 30 RPM radio transcription system was restored by Professor Mike Biel and released by Mark 56 Records three decades ago.

    1. Re:Neither Only nor Best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      And the link to this story/media would be where???

      http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/earlyradio.html

      "2/11/29--Thomas Edison Birthday Tribute. NBC Blue Network. WJZ aircheck recorded by the Edison Company. Another recording unearthed by Dr. Biel at the Edison Site. According to radio listings of the day, this was an hour-long tribute to Edison on his 88th birthday intended as the first in a series of Edison-sponsored programs. The climax of the program was a short talk by the inventor himself. Approximately forty minutes of the program were recorded on two "Rayediphonic" discs, but an electronic failure in the recording amplifier made it impossible to record the entire program."

  3. Link to the audio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.gereports.com/edison-speaks-cracking-the-pallophotophone-code/