80-Year-Old Edison Recording Resurrected 133
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.
Link to the video (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the video of the people, machine, and recording [timesunion.com]
Working Video Link (Score:3, Informative)
Neither Only nor Best (Score:5, Informative)
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:Working Video Link (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
Link to the audio (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gereports.com/edison-speaks-cracking-the-pallophotophone-code/ [gereports.com]
Re:Neither Only nor Best (Score:4, Informative)
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."
Thanks! (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, the full audio. Really exciting to think of all the audio they can save this way, and bring forward for more permanent storage.
Re:Zippity do dah gone forever! (Score:2, Informative)
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:Neither Only nor Best (Score:3, Informative)
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.
In other news ... (yes, cue lawsuit) (Score:4, Informative)
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:Zippity do dah gone forever! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Working Video Link (Score:3, Informative)
The longer recording is available at:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1578001794?bctid=96943642001 [brightcove.com]
More Informative Video (Score:2, Informative)
A more informative video can be found here [youtube.com] with one of the engineers describing its function while it plays back some old recordings.
Re:Link to the video (Score:3, Informative)
Link to actual recording that was recovered:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1407952373?bctid=96943642001
Re:Zippity do dah gone forever! (Score:1, Informative)
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:Link to actual project at General Electric (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps something kind to the 9-11 truthers. Wow Slashdot, you've gone crazy yo.