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

Link to the video

[endikos]

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

Re:Link to the video

[LoRdTAW]

Where is the audio of Edison, the last few seconds? What about Einstein were his recordings ripped too?

Re:Link to the video

[PRMan]

Cue Edison's estate's lawyers in 3, 2, 1...

Re:Link to the video

[manofyunk]

Link to actual recording that was recovered:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1407952373?bctid=96943642001

We couldn't get it to play from the Times Union...

[Anonymous Coward]

You need the Flash 10.2 beta which accelerates pallophotophone files.

phallophotophone???

[Black Parrot]

Weren't we talking about this in the chatroulette story a few days ago?

Re:phallophotophone???

[Dishevel]

Were you holding your dick at the time. If so then yes that was Chatroulette you were on.

Working Video Link

[GoblinSoul]

http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title=Preserving+history&vidid=96943677001&bccapt=Freeing+Thomas+Edison's+voice.+(Paul+Grondahl+%2F+Times+Union)

Re:Working Video Link

[nschubach]

That's great and all, but I wanted to hear Edison...

(The video is a short clip of the story on what it took to create the machine and there's about 3 seconds of the radio program at the end.)

Re:Working Video Link

[Darth Sdlavrot]

There's a lot more than three seconds---

Re:Working Video Link

[likerice]

The longer recording is available at:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1578001794?bctid=96943642001

Video Link

[Fwonkas]

http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title=Preserving+history&vidid=96943677001&bccapt=Freeing+Thomas+Edison's+voice.+(Paul+Grondahl+%2F+Times+Union)

Neither Only nor Best

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Neither Only nor Best

[Anonymous Coward]

Even so, they mentioned seven canisters. Assuming 1000 ft canisters at what would be 24 FPS, we get approximately 77 minutes of audio? I don't know how long the broadcast was, but if that is longer than the broacast, perhaps it has additional material.

If not, there still could exist other audio reels in this format someplace or other, which could benefit from the machine designed to recover the audio.

Re:Neither Only nor Best

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Neither Only nor Best

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, correct URL, wrong paragraph:

10/21/29--Light’s Golden Jubilee Celebration. NBC Blue network. WJZ aircheck recorded by the Edison Company on "Rayediphonic" discs. The fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the light bulb is observed in this special program from Dearborn. Michigan. An array of luminaries including President Hoover pay tribute to Edison and his invention. Edison himself also speaks, and participates in a re-enactment of the first lighting of the electric lamp. Albert Einstien speaks by shortwave from Berlin, but reception is extremely poor. The recording includes the earliest surviving version of the NBC chimes -- a five note progression very much unlike the standard G-E-C. The complete one-hour program was recorded, but a tape copy is in circulation via the National Archives which has been edited to approximately 32 minutes.

There are some valuable one-of-a-kind recordings in this newly-restored group. It's just that the Edison one isn't among them.

Re:Neither Only nor Best

[negRo_slim]

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.

So I guess there is no value in having a different format and a different physical object with which to gauge the recordings against one another? There is no value in the recreation of a long dead invention of a fabled inventor? Is there no value in restoring one more part of our ever fading past?

Re:Neither Only nor Best

[spqr0a1]

The film has multiple (8-10) tracks per roll. This would account for the 20 hours of audio recovered.

Old technology more lasting

[Gazoogleheimer]

In some ways, it is interesting to think that it is technically easier to recover data from this sort of recording (and likewise, other analog systems like magnetic reel-to-reel tape and records) long after the means to recover the data are lost compared to more modern, computerized formats. I sometimes worry about the 'lasting-ness' of all my JPEG photography compared to my film negatives through this same issue.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[Urban Garlic]

It's probably true that analog formats are more lasting if they're forgotten about for a while, as in this case, because they degrade relatively gracefully.

Digital media will be saved by digital virtues, principally the ease of making many perfect copies. You back up your JPEGs, right? Robust digital data is data for which there are many copies.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[MoeDumb]

Very true. One need only think reel-to-reel audio tapes. Try finding a deck to play them other than refurbished units on Ebay. I'm currently converting my tapes to lossless audiofiles and storing them on an external HDD. Then back ups of that.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[phantomfive]

That is a silly worry. All you have to do is keep on top of it, and make sure you have a backup. You can change from tape to disk to usb key to whatever else comes along and not lose a single byte of data.

Analog data, including your film negatives, degrade over time, and can never be recovered. If people care about your stuff, it's much more likely to be around a hundred years from now in digital format than in analog format.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[josath]

It's a valid worry. Imagine someone famous today made a recording of someone, but it was lost in a closet/attic/junkpile for 80 years. What are the chances of any DVD-R, USB flash drive, HDD made today having any chance of working in 80 years?

Re:Old technology more lasting

[phantomfive]

The chances are low. In fact, a DVD-R would almost be guaranteed to have been ruined by then. But really, the chances of something of any importance being stuck in an attic somewhere and not backed up somewhere are pretty low, too.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[smellsofbikes]

I sometimes worry about the 'lasting-ness' of all my JPEG photography compared to my film negatives through this same issue.

What you need is a distributed, persistent, peer-to-peer file system. Luckily, just such a thing can be built cheaply, using commodity hardware and software. Include a 19 year old woman who isn't wearing a shirt in each of your photographs, and you can be guaranteed that you will have 100% retention and worldwide availability of your photography hundreds of years into the future.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[phantomfive]

Did you listen to it? It didn't seem particularly important to me.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[Doctor_Jest]

I think it's the context of the recording. Edison's pretty old in that recording, and since it's been lost for 80 years, it's like finding a photo of your grandad in his New Year's hat that was long since thought lost.

The recording content is of little value, but like the first words uttered through the telephone, it's the context that matters. (And just between you and me, I think AGB said "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" after the initial message.)

Re:Old technology more lasting

[fast turtle]

Teac and Crutchfields for Reel to Reel units. Yes they are still being made.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[sjames]

It happens all the time. Part of it is that something that seems unimportant at the time becomes considerably more valuable in retrospect. Just off the top of my head, such things have included a Benny Goodman album (wax cylinders found in a box in the attic), NASA space probe data and moon footage, and all of the early Dr. Who episodes (deliberately erased to save tape!).

Add to that the army of attack lawyers that have sprung up since that time, all ready to sue anyone who even thinks about copying anything even if it's long out of print (just in case they MIGHT make a nickle more on it one day) and it becomes a real problem.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[adolf]

Maybe.

In support of your point: One of my prized archives is a CD, cut from a cassette tape, cut from a wire recording of my dad's family when he was young.

I remember being young myself as we all gathered around the old wire recorder that Grandpa had produced from the nether regions of the basement. He turned it on, and we waited a few minutes for the tubes to warm up, and then he engaged the play mechanism. Lo! Sound came forth from 40 years prior. As far as anyone could remember, nobody had ever listened to that recording before, but there it was, preserved as little magnetic nuances on a reel of steel wire.

The next playing happened at an audio shop, where it was transferred by a very skilled (and much later a very good friend of my own) person to a cassette.

A decade or so later, I transferred that cassette (myself having gained some skill in the audio field) to CD-R. I gave copies to everyone living whose voice was heard on the recording.

Presumably, that old recording still exists. But there any playback gear that can play it? Who knows -- I haven't seen the recorder that made it in 20 years, myself, but if it's still around it'd be straight-forward to rejuvenate it, and I'm reasonably sure that the recording itself would play just fine. So, yeah, the recording is fine, but the playback gear is (at best) rare. In order to play back that old Edison recording, they had to build a machine basically from scratch, which does not speak highly of the useful longevity of the format.

In attack of your point: That wire recording was only about 40 years old when I heard it the first time. I'm 30, now, and I have many recordings older than me that I can easily listen to using modern gear. It's just not a big deal to spin 40 or 50-year-old vinyl on a modern turntable.

Likewise, with compact discs. The format is creeping up on having 30 years of use, now, and is showing no signs of being unplayable any time soon. I'd bet my hat that a little more than ten years from now, I'll still handily be able to play CDs that are 40 years old using cheap off-the-shelf gear, in complete contrast to the wire recorder, which was a fancy bit of antiquity 40 years hence.

So, in conclusion: Come 2030, I sincerely doubt that I will have to re-invent a CD-playing machine in order to access CD recordings from the early 80s. Therefore, I must suggest that more modern record methods involving physical media have greater longevity than older methods, even if it always seems like "they sure built things to last" in yesteryear.

(Case in point: I recently bought a CD player for $10. It works fine, and sounds good, and has the functions that I wanted. It is already 20 years old. But, meanwhile, I have no problem playing CDs on the myriad of computers and DVD and Blu-Ray machines that litter my house, and that's not likely to change as long as optical formats are both useful and CD-shaped...)

Re:Old technology more lasting

[mcrbids]

Analog data, including your film negatives, degrade over time, and can never be recovered. If people care about your stuff, it's much more likely to be around a hundred years from now in digital format than in analog format as long as it isn't locked up in DRM.

Re:Old technology more lasting

[MoeDumb]

Nobody makes 2-track mono anymore, everything is quarter track. My tapes were recorded on 2-track mono heads in the 1950's, before quarter track was invented. Crutchfield doesn't carry reel-to-reel tape recorders as far as I can tell. A website search for reel-to-reel, and the synonymous "open reel," returned nothing. Ebay remains the best source for refurbished decks. Thanks.

Scanner

[grahamsz]

Is there any reason you wouldn't just make a high resolution scan of the film and attempt to process it from there? Certainly I understand the satisfaction in making a physical machine, but doesn't that risk a lot more damage to the original media?

Re:Scanner

[slimjim8094]

My thoughts exactly. IIRC, for the old wax-cylinder recordings that wouldn't survive a playback, they used a laser "stylus" to measure the exact depth and variation of the grooves down to fractions of a mm, and were able to play it back no problem. They got a higher-quality sound off the drum then even the destructive stylus would've managed.

That's the thing about digital formats going obsolete - as long as the information can be represented as a series of bits on whatever the current computer is, anybody can build or recreate a software 'machine' to decode/convert them. And any guy with a computer can do that... it doesn't need the resources of a couple of engineers from GE.

Re:Scanner

[grahamsz]

Yes and no. While you can do it with a $200 laptop, the skills required to decode something like an mp4 file are going to be far in excess of what these two guys needed.

Fortunately the file specificiations will hopefully be preserved digitally too

Re:Scanner

[c 0xFF]

So ... put it on the internet. Somebody will probably do it for free, open source.

A $100 prize to the first person or best reproduction wouldn't hurt, either.

On the other hand, building the machine was probably the whole point, and hopefully quite rewarding for these engineers. That's the same reason someone would probably decode a digital version for free: it's a challenge that's very unique and fun to solve.

Re:Scanner

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any reason you wouldn't just make a high resolution scan of the film and attempt to process it from there? Certainly I understand the satisfaction in making a physical machine, but doesn't that risk a lot more damage to the original media?

I used to live down the street from John Schneider (one of the engineers who worked on this). He's actually a multi-millionaire who started his own company a few years back and it's pretty cool that he's still getting his hands dirty with things like this.
Here's a bio.. http://www.spoke.com/info/pOzZMi/JohnSchneiter

Although he's a really smart guy, he's not really super computer savvy - as is common for a lot of MechEs so it makes sense that he would try to solve this problem using hardware since that's what he knows. Naturally myself (and likely most software guys) would get a high resolution scanner out and write some code to "playback" the stored audio. I've seen similar applications for playing old records that don't require actually touching the record with a needle. Regardless, you really only need to play it once and digitize the audio so the concern of multiple playbacks ruining the film isn't that big of a concern.

All in all a really cool hack!

Re:Scanner

[dubbreak]

Exactly. It's optical. If it was magnetic you'd probably need some specialized head to read it, but since it's optical you can just use a scanner then go straight to processing it with software. Seems like the most cost effective and easiest solution. Not as cool as building a machine, but what's the point?

Re:Scanner

[CohibaVancouver]

the skills required to decode something like an mp4 file are going to be far in excess of what these two guys needed

Yes and no... In 100 years it will probably go something like this:

"Hey, Computer."
"Yo."
"I found this 100 year old computer file. Can you decode it for me?"
"Sure, just a second."
"Done. It appears to be a video of a caucasian human singing a song from the year 1987."
"Really? What song?"
"Never Gonna Give You Up..."

I suspect 100 years from now reading the data off a thumb drive, CD or DVD will be a bigger challenge that actually decoding the file...

Re:Scanner

[Dishevel]

Not much fun for a Mechanical Engineer though.

Re:Scanner

[mangu]

I suspect 100 years from now reading the data off a thumb drive, CD or DVD will be a bigger challenge that actually decoding the file...

100 years from now we will probably have desktop universal disassemblers that can record the position of every atom in an object. That will take care of thumb drives. CDs and DVDs will be even easier, use that high-resolution ultraviolet scanner to read the surface.

Re:Scanner

[jnaujok]

The machine they built winds the film onto reels, and then plays it back in front of a light source, that's shining onto some sort of photocell that re-creates the sound. The sound is clearly put into a digital computer feed (note the obvious sound wave on the monitors in the background of the video.) Likely, each reel was only run through once, or maybe twice, and converted into a useful, digital version.

In other words, they scanned the film and then decoded it.

In fact, I wouldn't doubt that they duplicated it from the 80 year old film to fresh film before running the fresh film through the playback machine. That would be a typical archival move to save the original.

Re:Scanner

[Bryan3000000]

My thoughts as well. However, judging by the opinions of the archivists at the Library of Congress, photographic media are a terrifically better long-term preservation strategy than magnetic tape or magnetic media of any variety: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/09/gallery-digitizing-t.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing/iBag+(Boing+Boing)

It seems to me that you could get incredible fidelity and preservation characteristics for audio recordings by using photographic media, which could then be played back either with a machine or as you suggest, by scanning. I'm sure it would be possible to construct a continuous feed scanner that could output either to an image file or process directly to an audio stream.

Either way, it seems like these guys took the long way through the problem, essentially trying to re-create an original machine rather than using modern technology to read what was on the tape. I'm guessing a continuous-feed scanner with reels attached could be hacked relatively quickly from mostly commodity parts, and the doing the rest in software would be far more interesting and hold far more long-term usefulness. I'm betting you could get it to produce an image plus simultaneous analog and digital data-streams from one sensor.

Re:Scanner

[Trisha-Beth]

You still need all the mechanism of the machine to transport hundreds of feet of film past the scanning head at a constant speed without breaking it and keeping it nicely spooled. If the 35mm film had sprockets perhaps they could have used the mechanism from an existing 35mm film projector instead of having to make their own constant speed mechanism for the sprocketless film.

The phototransistor (photodiode, CCD etc) method is a long established technique for playing back an optical analog sound track from film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-on-film and I can't see any particular need to reinvent the wheel for this. If they considered that the film was too fragile to pass through the machine more than once, it would not be difficult or expensive to have 8 phototransistors so that all the tracks could be played back and recorded digitally at the same time.

go kdawson

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why am I not surprised that kdawson wasn't able to figure out how to take the javascript popup link and add it to the base url of the Times Union site?

Wait thirty years...

[John3]

and you'll be reading a story about engineers building a machine to play old 8-Track recordings, or old CD's they found in the bottom of a desk in a museum.

Re:Wait thirty years...

[grahamsz]

I doubt that. The widescale use of technology will pretty much ensure it can be read well into the future.

Granted i have nothing in my house that would play an 8 track recording or a vhs tape, but I could find one in a day or two on ebay or craigslist.

I'm sure in 30 yrs, CD players will be far more obtainable than 8 tracks are now

Re:Wait thirty years...

[Cwix]

Dont worry, those engineers obviously spent two years working on breaking Edison's DRM, I hear hes planning on returing from the dead, and suing for 150k.

Re:Wait thirty years...

[rattaroaz]

I believe that is quite possible. When you play his recording backwards, I'd swear I hear Edison saying "worship the devil!" I could be hearing things, but you never know . . .

Re:Wait thirty years...

[Ogive17]

150k per person who listened to it

Re:Wait thirty years...

[camperdave]

My parents have both, but the 8-track player has been sitting in my dad's shop office for a few decades. It may need to have a couple of kilos of sawdust and spiderwebs blown out of it.

Oct 21, 1929

[smitty97]

And a week later, the markets crashed.

Content still under copyright?

[linebackn]

1929? So the entirety of the content from those things would still be under copyright, right?

Eh, torrent link plz.

Re:Content still under copyright?

[sorak]

I own a few music CDs, and some of them sold less than a million copies...I'm glad to hear that I'm the copyright holder.

Re:Content still under copyright?

[armanox]

Nope. Copyright was 28 years after the date of publication back then.

Re:Content still under copyright?

[johnlenin1]

Depends. Use this handy tool to find out: http://www.librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

Re:Content still under copyright?

[operagost]

It was extended before 1958, so unfortunately any corporate-owned works published after 1924 will still be in copyright for a few more decades. If it's owned by Edison's estate, then it would be in copyright until 2021 (death+90).

Re:Content still under copyright?

[armanox]

Disagree. Source

Re:Content still under copyright?

[Smallpond]

Copyright of a radio interview is more likely owned by the radio station.

Re:Content still under copyright?

[John Hasler]

> Copyright of a radio interview is more likely owned by the radio station.

By whoever made the recording.

Zippity do dah gone forever!

[erroneus]

It is during instances and moments like these that we should be reminded of exactly how bad it is to protect content and patent data processing methods. These are the surest ways for us to lose the historical data we are creating today. Already, losses of great works have been lost due to lack of republication because copyright has not expired before the last copies were lost forever. If it were not for a few brave individuals, Disney's "Song of the South" would be lost forever today as they will never EVER publish it again and it is not available for sale anywhere.

And more and more, we are seeing technologies phasing out... floppy disks... anyone got an 8" floppy drive laying around? What about 5 1/4" No? I still have a few USB 3.5" floppy drives but that was only to make a floppy disk RAID for fun. We might find some paper tape somewhere in an archive out there in a dark closet, but will we find a reader for it?

The push for "open formats" is precisely about better guaranteeing that data will be available in the future and so few people are willing to listen or understand. "DOC" is the standard right?

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[kommisar]

Patent rights only last 20 years from filing. Copyright however, is much longer. Don't get your IP protections schemes all tied in a bunch!

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[Jason Levine]

Old file formats are a problem for individuals too. I booted up an old computer and copied some old stories and papers I had written which were in Multimate or ProPrint format. I was lucky enough to be able to recover the text of one of them, but some of the others might take a lot more effort. If these were in OpenDocument format, I'd be able to decompress them and pull the XML-text (worst case scenario). Since they are long-forgotten proprietary formats, though, I'm forced to piece together what text I can see and hope that the gobbledygook is just formatting information being lost. (Of course, if someone knows how to import Multimate or Proprint into OpenOffice.org, I'd love to hear it.)

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[kevinmenzel]

Song of the South was released commercially in the UK on PAL VHS. So by brave souls do you mean "the people who bought it when it was commercially released on home video who happen to not be American?"

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[noidentity]

Already, losses of great works have been lost due to lack of republication because copyright has not expired before the last copies were lost forever.

Wouldn't losing a loss be a good thing?

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Old file formats are a problem for individuals too. I booted up an old computer and copied some old stories and papers I had written which were in Multimate or ProPrint format. I was lucky enough to be able to recover the text of one of them, but some of the others might take a lot more effort. If these were in OpenDocument format, I'd be able to decompress them and pull the XML-text (worst case scenario). Since they are long-forgotten proprietary formats, though, I'm forced to piece together what text I can see and hope that the gobbledygook is just formatting information being lost. (Of course, if someone knows how to import Multimate or Proprint into OpenOffice.org, I'd love to hear it.)

I believe that Multimate was one of the filters supported by StarOffice 5.2. You should still be able to find a version of it as Sun offered it for free (as in beer). You can then save it as a star office format file which openoffice can read in directly.

This is how I was able to bring in my wife's Masters Thesis which was written in Word Star.

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[swb]

AFAIK it was also released on LaserDisc in Japan. I'm pretty sure I've seen it up on EBay in the past and I'm sure there are people selling laserdisc dubs onto DVD.

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[erroneus]

Yes, I am quite aware of the formats it was released in and where. But it will never be released again. Never on DVD, never on Bluray or in whatever format that may come next. So how long ago was it that it was last published? In that format, how long will a viable copy last or be available for playback? Beginning to see my point?

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[John Hasler]

Do you seriously believe that it has not been digitized by many people and stored in hundreds of different places?

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[erroneus]

I seriously believe it has been. I have it archived myself. But that is an exception, not the rule. And that was my purpose for using "The Song of the South" as an example. If Disney had their way, we wouldn't be able to protect such works through copying in this way. The unfortunate reality is that many other important works are lost.

Re:Zippity do dah gone forever!

[drinkypoo]

AFAIK it was also released on LaserDisc in Japan. I'm pretty sure I've seen it up on EBay in the past and I'm sure there are people selling laserdisc dubs onto DVD.

It's usually fairly easy to find a torrent and it's often posted to that other place we won't talk about. IIRC I have an SVCD.

Link to the audio

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Thanks!

[SuperKendall]

Finally, the full audio. Really exciting to think of all the audio they can save this way, and bring forward for more permanent storage.

A real anolog buff

[kiehlster]

Does this mean that the true anolog audio buff should only listen to pallophotophone film recordings? Because I think exposed film may be the best way to create true anolog audio reproduction. Records probably miss a huge portion of what this film would capture.

Re:A real anolog buff

[u38cg]

Don't joke. Electric recording was invented in 1926, and resulted in reasonable sound which we would consider "not awful" today, but this recording has far superior sound quality to 78 records of that era.

In other news ... (yes, cue lawsuit)

[Lead Butthead]

Law firm representing NBC has filed suit alleging their client's copyrights have been violated for unauthorized rebroadcasting of the film content. "The audio programs recorded on those films are wholly owned intellectual properties belonging to our client, and their unauthorized rebroadcasting over the web is a willful theft of our client's intellectual properties. We fully intend to pursue this matter for the maximum payou... punitive damage under our law... ahm, the law."

Re:In other news ... (yes, cue lawsuit)

[commodore64_love]

But Edison is dead. His copyright should have expired with him. Or 14 years - whichever came first.

And I'm not sure what the big deal is about optical recording on film? That's how most films of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s record their sound and is commonly understood. Maybe it took the engineers two years to decode the precise format.

ancient sounds in dried paint or pottery?

[peter303]

I remember some long-ago speculation that drying paint could capture sounds. Some guy was going find Michaelangelo coughing or something like that. I couldnt find a reference on google.

Re:ancient sounds in dried paint or pottery?

[the_other_chewey]

I remember some long-ago speculation that drying paint could capture sounds. Some guy was going find Michaelangelo coughing or something like that. I couldnt find a reference on google.

I'm pretty sure that's some April Fool's Joke by a scientific journal (Nature?) being run amok by "journalists".

Other Edison recordings

[Powys]

The following are recordings (even older) that Edison made, but not of himself. Still, very interesting:

Ada Jones

Re:We couldn't get it to play from the Times Union

[NeumannCons]

They've pulled the beta off of their website. They received a letter from the lawyers representing the estate of Edison. The lawyers clients are claiming ownership of the ip rights to all pallotophone codecs and pallotophone encryption/decryption algorithms. Said counsel for Bubba Edison - Mr. G. R. White, "Mr. Edison is seeking to ride on his Great Grandfathers coat tails -we aim to help him since that's the right thing to do - and the fact that he's paying us lots of money". Mr. White was not immediately available for comment as he was participating in a feeding frenzy.

Link to actual project at General Electric

[Animats]

Link to actual project at General Electric, including access to the Edison audio.

Re:Link to actual project at General Electric

[RodRooter]

The mods here need to read history. Perhaps I can say something sympathetic to the flat-earthers to get modded up?

Perhaps something kind to the 9-11 truthers. Wow Slashdot, you've gone crazy yo.

More Informative Video

[ryanleary]

A more informative video can be found here with one of the engineers describing its function while it plays back some old recordings.

Nice recovery job but...

[xs650]

Nice recovery job but some talkie movies were already in theaters by then.

Hello? Hello?

[NetServices]

"Can you hear me now?"

Re:We couldn't get it to play from the Times Union

[X0563511]

The "joke" is getting about as old as the reality. Please don't drag it along.

Re:Its Edison.. who cares?

[Smallpond]

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.

No. If you are objective and do some research, and then make a lot of money from it like Edison did, you can be sure that some worthless troll will come along and claim that you stole their ideas.

Obscure technology?

[hcdejong]

Aren't audio tracks still encoded as an optical trace on 35mm film? I mean, sure, different format, but the basic principle is not that different.

So thats what....

[zerospeaks]

So thats what the guy who screwed over Tesla sounds like.

Re:So thats what....

[John Hasler]

"Screwed over Tesla"? How do you figure that?

Re:So thats what....

[zerospeaks]

"Screwed over Tesla"? How do you figure that?" Now I know that was sarcasm.

My Point

[nurb432]

My point was that Edison was a business man first, and a poor inventor second. Who really cares about the historical impact of a business man's artifact?

That he continues to get direct credit for his employees work is dishonest.

Finding some history for a true inventor like Tesla would be far more news worthy. ( Or a host of others like Bell if you don't like Tesla, its just that Tesla got screwed by Edison so its appropriate to have used his name here )

Re:My Point

[Black Gold Alchemist]

Yes, Edison did steal from Tesla. I would not say he was a "poor" inventor. He had unorthodox methods that worked really well in some fields. He's known for light bulbs and the phonograph, but what he really invented was the Nickel-Iron battery. These batteries are utterly amazing. They have about 2x the energy density of lead-acid (which is not impressive compared to li-ion), but many are still working today (100+ year life times). As you can probably tell, it's likely that NiFe will play a big role in our future. Edison was also give us detailed instructions on reproducing them in his patents, which can be found here.

Even if he screwed people over and was dishonesty, wouldn't it be valuable to recover what he said so we could avoid people like him in the future?

Photo-Audio

[StikyPad]

It's neat and all, but wouldn't it have been much easier to just scan the film and create audio from the waveforms?

Re:Photo-Audio

[John Hasler]

You just don't grasp the concept of a cool hack, do you?

Re:We couldn't get it to play from the Times Union

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You need the Flash 10.2 beta which accelerates pallophotophone files.

That's why I will only buy an Android phone!

Still unplayable due to irony

[gig]

They spent 2 years resurrecting the audio because it was in an obsolete nonstandard format that not everyone can play and then they put that audio on the Internet in an obsolete nonstandard format [Flash] that not everyone can play!

Re:Still unplayable due to irony

[perryizgr8]

everyone can play flash audio. even people browsing from crappy sony ericsson feature phones. its only the icunts who are unable to access the content.

Obscure technology my ass

[tibit]

Obscure technology? HUH? Optically recorded audio tracks have been in use as long as movies with soundtracks have been around. The easiest way to reproduce the soundtrack was to have it on the film - that's why. Surely there have been magnetic strips in use as well, but optical track on the edge of the film is in widespread use. Even for digital sound! Of course the recordings in question weren't in a standard physical format, but I bet you could coax a contemporary movie projector to play those, as long as you could make an adapter to feed the film, and an optical jig to correctly form the sensing beam.

Aliens & Voyager spacecraft

[tnmc]

This bodes well for the prospect of any aliens in future being able to decode the Voyager recordings :)

Two years

[BillX]

Two GE engineers -- working nights and weekends for two years -- were able to construct a machine to replay the old tapes

This surprises me some. At work we have been tasked with retrofitting a device manufactured by GE (technically, a company GE bought), and need to sign an NDA with them to obtain critical specs on the device. So far it has taken 8 months and counting for them to even send the NDA for us to sign, not to mention numerous manhours playing phonetag and going up the chain of supervisors (and even having a Navy technical contact call and turn up the heat). To be fair, they did manage to send one after "only" 6 months of this, but with the wrong company's name filled in, so it's now going back through the system...