80-Year-Old Edison Recording Resurrected

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.

Comments

Re:Link to actual project at General Electric

[RodRooter]

Let me guess, it's him ranting on about the "great jewish conspiracy" for half an hour.

Him and Ford were quite the pair.

Its Edison.. who cares?

[nurb432]

Edison was a scam artist that took credit for other peoples work. His own personal work was mediocre at best. Now, if this was a lost Tesla recording or something, THAT would be news worthy.

And ya, i expect to be modded down, but if you are objective and do some research, you will see I'm right.