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Smithsonian Releases 128-Year-Old Recording of Alexander Graham Bell
redletterdave writes "Thanks to a newly developed audio extraction technology called optical scanning, the Smithsonian was able to recover the voice of Alexander Graham Bell from one of his hundreds of discs he donated to the museum, which were once considered 'mute artifacts.' Since many of the collected recordings are very fragile due to their age and experimental nature, optical scanning is a non-invasive procedure that creates a high-resolution digital map of the disc or cylinder, which is then reconstructed and used to simulate the motion of a stylus moving through its grooves to reproduce the original audio content. Bell, who created this recording on a wax and cardboard disc on April 15, 1885, can be heard clearly saying, 'In witness whereof — hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.'"
Disregard that last post, I suck cocks.
Did they secure the rights and pay the royalties on this recording? Someone call the RIAA. I smell a copyright lawsuit!
It's a nice improvement on what was posted on here in 2002. http://news.slashdot.org/story/02/09/05/1814203/ripping-vinyl-via-your-scanner Much better quality scan, but the idea has been around a while.
RIAA issued a DMCA take down notice and they had to take it down.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
March 2003
you got some gibberish in your article, you had my wife and I both scouring the internet trying to figure out what the eff the word âoeage means
We need legislation to restrict the sale of this laser scanner machine ASAP: It's obviously being used as a circumvention device.
I remember years ago on /., there was an article where a guy claimed he had done this, but the slashdot pitchforks were raised while chanting fraud.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/02/09/05/1814203/ripping-vinyl-via-your-scanner
There it is.
Nice to know the guy's technology actually worked.
The link in the summary goes to the International Business Times, which links to a copy of the 11-second audio clip on Soundcloud that requires flash to run. The IBT article links to the original articles at the Smithsonian. Here's a direct link to the MP3 file on the Smithsonian site.
"God, I hate what AT&T has become!"
Sounds like Bell was liquored up when he recorded that. Barely make anything out. I appreciate the effort that went into recovering that sound bite, but let's be honest - it's pretty disappointing.
And Philo Farnsworth and Rosalind Franklin...
though not as old (124 years?), a gramophone image printed in a book was restored last year.
Being able to extract the information from the disc without using its native interpreter in order to preserve it, is just brilliant. Then we just use our smart computrons to simulate it being played and voila.
We're seriously badass... I wonder if Mr. Bell was thinking the same thing!
I remember reading about this technology 10 years ago: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/
From the article: "The audio was recovered by a team of scholars consisting of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist Carl Haber, National Museum of American History curator Carlene Stephens and Library of Congress digital conversion specialist Peter Alyea, among others." See also here: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/science-shorts/2013/04/25/alexander-graham-bell/
I don't know about anyone else, but I found the clip unintelligible. The number of syllables doesn't even seem to line up.
call me FOSS im the boss with the sauce and the source
first post is a troll... check
all of the "jokes" are about copyright... check
the accomplishment is shit on... check
oh slashdot... never change.
From a comment in a Washington Post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/04/24/what-did-alexander-graham-bell-sound-like-now-we-know/
"Actually Bell didn't invent the telephone, so probably not the voice recorder either.
In 2002 the US Congress recognized an Italian immigrant named
Antonio Meucci as the inventor, 16 years prior to Bell.
He demonstrated his 'teletrofono' in NYC in 1860.
Bell had access to his research materials and took out a patent on them.
Read about it here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews"
So... Bell was like Apple.
Come here. I need you to issue a take-down notice.
Have gnu, will travel.
For crying out loud why the heck did they not at least give a link to the original uncompressed audio file? Or at least in FLAC format? I had some trouble understanding what he was saying in the MP3 file then I looked up the details in Mediainfo....
Overall bit rate mode - Constant
Overall bit rate - 96.0 Kbps
Track name - Hear-my-voice-DCFIR
Writing library - iTunes 11.0.1
Seriousely if they wanted to release a better sounding clip they should not have used iTunes to encode this in MP3. They would have been much better off having two samples one in uncompressed FLAC and another in Ogg Vorbis format which would have sounded better then the MP3. Maybe this is why so many people are having issues understanding the entire clip because of how MP3 adds in those lovely sound distortions, hisses, and sizzles.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Actually Bell didn't invent the telephone.
In 2002 the US Congress recognized an Italian immigrant named
Antonio Meucci as the inventor, 16 years prior to Bell.
He demonstrated his 'teletrofono' in NYC in 1860.
Bell had access to his research materials and took out a patent on them.
You can read about Meucci and the story of it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews
Yes, but the latency is a bitch!
I was reading the above quote in TFA and hmm... I just had to find out what is that "newly developed technology"
Here's the link ... http://irene.lbl.gov/3D-Scanning.pdf
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This isn't exactly new technology... it's been around for over a decade now.
I'm a bit disappointed with the forum tonight. I have held a Reader card at LOC for years and it's funny folks would make fun of this discovery and release. :-(
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
Here:
http://media.smithsonianmag.com/audio/alexander-graham-bell.mp3
They should have just taken some grainy photos of the disc and let Reddit sort it out.
[Seriously though, this is awesome.]
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Direct link to audio: http://media.smithsonianmag.com/audio/alexander-graham-bell.mp3
I'm waiting for his first ever recording to be found.. "testing.. testing.. 1.. 2.. 3... err, is this thing on?"
Could we please stop linking to ibitimes.com? Am I the only person here to be so annoyed by their automatic audio on the site that I never want to go there again?
www.clarke.ca
so... it finally expired?
Sometimes it's better not having signature
Sweet.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Something isn't right. The pictured disc looks like a CD with wax on it, not cardboard and wax. Furthermore, the writing in the wax on the lower side labels it as "Disk A.G.B No. 1." with a "K" in the word "disk".
In the 1800's, as today, disc is spelled with a "C". Disk is a modern-day computer specific contraction of diskette. It would not have been used at the time of this recording.
This smells fishy.
According to this piece, I am required to Install Adobe flash to hear a public domain recording. This should have gone to Archive.org instead, the site posted a Soundcloud interface. Naughty-naughty. I can understand a rock band who does not know any better, but the Smithsonian? Make public domain media Libre friendly please.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Bell must have had a little more future view than we thought!
To quote a breaking bad meme/quote, SCIENCE, BITCHES!
Not exactly new. New application, maybe.
Expected soon? ;-)