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.'"

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[Taco Cowboy]

... a newly developed audio extraction technology called optical scanning ...

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