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Finding Lost Recording From the 1880s
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times recently ran a story on the discovery of a cache of wax cylinder records, recorded in Europe in the 1880s, of Otto von Bismarck, Helmuth von Moltke, and various musicians. 'In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that the phonograph at the Paris World’s Fair remained in working order. After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society who were fascinated with the talking machine. Until now, the only available recording from Wangemann’s European trip has been a well-known and well-worn cylinder of Brahms playing an excerpt from his first Hungarian Dance. That recording is so damaged "that many listeners can scarcely discern the sound of a piano, which has in turn tarnished the reputations of both Wangemann and the Edison phonograph of the late 1880s," Dr. Feaster said. "These newly unearthed examples vindicate both."'"
Quick! Adopt the BCTEA! 2012-1880+50 = 182 years of protection! What if everyone is going to copy this wax cylinder?!!
Immediately made me think of this old TechTV segment on one of these cylinders being destroyed on camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8
Paranoid, or not paranoid enough...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/audio-wangemann-1889-1890-european-recordings.htm
... the first actual recordings ever made of sounds and voice can be found there : http://www.firstsounds.org/.
So it was Colonel Mustard in the Billiard room with the candlestick that caused the Great War after all!
I wonder who the first person to say 'shit' was?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Wonder what Brahms would make of the insanity that passes for copyright today.
Dunno about Brahms, but we all know what happened when Bismark found out about Franz Ferdinand's bootleg copies of his hit song "eis eis baby".
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
At the turn of the 19th century, magnetic wire recordings become very popular in Northern Europe (except perhaps in Britain). It was the first widely distributed recording technology of N. Europe and in the 1910's, even relatively poor musicians could afford a machine (they usually started clubs for the purpose of buying and using one). There are lots of Northern European magnetic wire recordings from the late 1890's well into the 1950's. Compared to wax rolls, they have the advantage that the sound quality is good enough that you can actually hear how something sounded, so if you want to get a feeling of how Bismarks voice sounded, listen to one of the electric wire recordings of him, not this crappy recording.
There is an explanation here http://www.archeophone.org/bismarck_moltke_en.php.
In short, scanning works well for flat 2D documents ("lateral cut").
For 3D "vertical cut", laser scanning doesn't work (yet).
Every digital recording of the wax cylinder is probably copyrighted from date of the digital recording :)
They require a log in now to read articles; please either link to an article in a different outlet or drop it.
Were they found on megaupload's seized servers?
... so if you want to get a feeling of how Bismarks voice sounded, listen to one of the electric wire recordings of him, not this crappy recording.
I think some historians would like to know where you found those electric wire recordings of him, as the second paragraph of the article quite clearly states
"The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck."
I would like to humbly introduce ".. in tree rings" as a catch phrase for research that goes into technological wonders of experimental advancement for a dubious cause.
Rejected
It has long been known that Mark Twain dictated part of his novel The American Claimant onto Edison cylinders. It was an experiment that he never repeated. Strangely, for someone whose manner of speaking was celebrated and often described during his lifetime, no one else ever thought to record him for posterity.
The American Claimant cylinders have long since gone missing. Keep your eye out for them in antique shops or your relatives' attics—if found, they would be worth who knows how many thousands or millions of dollars on the open market.
Classical composers were paid for composing; as in "we need a new tune for next sunday's mass, and another completely different tune, which will likely never get played again in your lifetime, for the mass on sunday after that". Kinda like a carpenter gets paid to make a table, not every time someone uses that table. People back then did NOT listen to that music over and over and over again. It was written, it got played, something new was written. Totally different from today, and I'm pretty sure classical composers would be laughing at things like Mickey Mouse Copyright. Also, not few of that music was more or less dedicated to God, not to Mammon. Sure, they liked being well fed, who doesn't... but that's not why they wrote those pieces, that is simply not how they operated. It kinda shows in the music, too. The heart, it cannot be hidden.
According to wikipedia, the wire recorder was invented in the late 1890s, was patented in the US in Nov 1900, and never saw widespread use. Peak use was between 1946 and 1954.
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