Scientists Play World's Oldest Commercial Recording 105
sciencehabit writes "The scratchy, 12-second audio clip of a woman reciting the first verse of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star doesn't sound like much. But the faint, 123-year-old recording—etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional (3D) optical scanning technique—appears to belong to the first record intended for sale to the public. Made for a talking doll briefly sold by phonograph inventor Thomas Edison, the early record is the oldest known American recording of a woman's voice and may be the oldest known record produced at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey."
RIAA to sue scientists for copyright infringement (Score:5, Funny)
This unauthorized duplication and public performance of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is in clear violation of the "Copyright Lasts For Fucking Ever Act of 2009" and we insist you pay residuals to the Sony/BMG Music Group, which has acquired copyright to all songs written or recorded before 1923.
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Actually, RIAA would like to.. (Score:3, Funny)
I would think RIAA would demand 3D scanner be illegal to own or operate as it is a device designed to circumvent "copy protection" known as "obsolescence."
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I would think RIAA would demand 3D scanner be illegal to own or operate as it is a device designed to circumvent "copy protection" known as "obsolescence."
Past DMCA rulemakings by the Register of Copyrights show a pattern of deeming obsolescence a valid exception to anticircumvention laws.
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I would think RIAA would demand 3D scanner be illegal to own or operate as it is a device designed to circumvent "copy protection" known as "obsolescence."
Past DMCA rulemakings by the Register of Copyrights show a pattern of deeming obsolescence a valid exception to anticircumvention laws.
Is this the legal basis for NES/SNES emulators, for example?
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I would think RIAA would demand 3D scanner be illegal to own or operate as it is a device designed to circumvent "copy protection" known as "obsolescence."
Past DMCA rulemakings by the Register of Copyrights show a pattern of deeming obsolescence a valid exception to anticircumvention laws.
Is this the legal basis for NES/SNES emulators, for example?
I would agree, which would also explain why the mad dash to get all old, worthwhile games, onto paid Virtual Console type offerings from the company. It's hard to argue the obsolescence is a valid excuse when it's still being sold, digitally, from an infinite supply.
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That only applies to the act of circumvention; making the circumvention device is still a violation. So back to PMITA prison with them, only with one less charge.
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"I would think RIAA would demand 3D scanner be illegal to own or operate as it is a device designed to circumvent "copy protection" known as "obsolescence.""
Not to mention circumventing Edison's original media lock technology:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/yourmoney/11edison.html?pagewanted=2 [nytimes.com]
"An adapter permitted Victor records to be played on an Edison Disc Phonograph, but Edison forbade the sale of an attachment that permitted his records to be played on competitorsâ(TM) machines."
Of cour
Derivative work... (Score:3)
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And the alphabet song. Now it's copyright infringement to use any letters between A and Z (inclusive).
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Bruce Perens commented on this development, "this is a rootkit!!, my American Graphophone(tm) was totally pw3n3d!!"
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Edison probably stole the recording in the first place, much like he stole many other ideas and "IP".
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Every time someone is successful with an invention or innovation, you get a million blowhards and runners-up shooting their mouths off to their buddies "He stole that shit from *ME* man!" But it really only goes to show that an invention is only as good as the much harder work that goes into taking that invention and making it useful and practical, then effectively deploying it so that it actually gets USED.
So you get ten different people working on inventing a light bulb. That doesn't mean all ten are goin
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Rights & Access
This recording is protected by state copyright laws in the United States. The Library of Congress has obtained a license from rights holders to offer it as streamed audio only. Downloading is not permitted. The authorization of rights holders of the recording is required in order to obtain a copy of the recording. Contact jukebox@loc.gov for more information.
The funny part is that you didn't own that record, according the label it was leased to you for the purpose of producing sound directly from the record [loc.gov]. And that was the state of the nation in the year 1900 A.D.
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That's because with enough legal wrangling, you can actually claim copyright on the MP3 itself. The original phonograph and recording isn't copyrighted, but the *MP3 version* is. It's absolutely bizarre, but such is the state of copyright in a country where Disney gets to write our copyright law.
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but such is the state of copyright in a country where Disney gets to write our copyright law.
Yeah, I and so many others wish that instead they would right our copyright laws...
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If people back in 1888 were debating if people in the 21st century would be even able to playback their records or not?
They weren't sure if people in the 20th century would be able to play back their recordings. No new technology is a sure thing in the marketplace, and without an accepted industry standard a "Beta Max" compatible version could have been produced but lost to the ages because it didn't win its format war.
Now in a 123 yrs will they be able to recover mp3s (Score:1)
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Re:Now in a 123 yrs will they be able to recover m (Score:4, Informative)
No one in their right mind wants to recover anything with "microsoft" in the name.
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Sure. Now send me a computer with a parallel port...
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Try digging in the junk bins at thrift stores or recycling centers for a USB model?
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Unless the disks are damaged, it is not even hard or expensive: you can still use a USB or SCSI (but not parallel) Zip drive with Windows 7, and use SC Audio Converter to convert the files into more accessible formats.
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ADPCM WAV is stupidly easy to decode. The WAV-RIFF container is well documented. ADPCM stands for adaptive differential pulse-code modulation which means it's just pulse code modulation but instead of storing the wave-form (like in raw PCM) it stores the differential. The adaptive part just means that you can scale the size of samples who's differential you are calculating. It's just basic compression techniques applied to PCM wrapped in a very straight forward header. Your only issue is going to come from
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trivial. Maybe if you tried you could get them? did you ever thing of that? trying?
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No format will ever be lost again.
WE have the internet, where migrating from one to a news one is easier, and the old won always lingers around.
in 123 years, there will be 123 year of very accurate history, with all the information we need to use old files.
The Edison Rick Roller Doll (Score:2)
Scientists were surprised to find that the tin cylinder containing the lyrics "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down". Lead investigator Hubert Hvarquhar explained that "the dolls were part of a short-lived gilded-age custom where well-to-do society members would give each other gifts that spontaneously started singing and could not be shut off. Many of the dolls were smashed in rage leading to their comparative rarity today."
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Everyone could. [youtube.com]
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Thanks. Now I have "Never Gonna Give You Up" as sung by a Dalek stuck in my head.
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Never gonna give you up, never gonna exterminate?
And there was ... (Score:2)
"Hello. My name is Teddy Ruxpin."
Cool (Score:2)
Would have been better had they not recorded the cylinder during what sounds like a tornado, though. Also I am not sure I like her voice... seems a bit strained at points -- e.g. about half way through it sounds as though she struggles (possibly forgetting the lyrics)?
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You only get one take per cylinder. So maybe they were just shooting for "good enough".
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She just caught Simon Cowell looking at her, and he wasn't smiling.
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I'm not up on my recording history but if memory serves there was no amplification, so you had to yell into a funnel to make the cylinder etching device leave an impression in the wax master.
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That makes sense... it does sound like she might have been shouting and that would also explain the pause (getting her breath back)
Don't let THIS guy hold it! (Score:3)
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I remember watching that...man, I miss TechTV. G4 blows...everything is video games and cops reruns. What a waste.
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We humans are s
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Or let this guy report on it; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0QTar0MEwc [youtube.com]
Hide the knives (Score:2)
Interesting... (Score:1)
Weird... (Score:1)
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OMG you're right...
I hear the Klaxons... HIDE
What if you play it backwards? (Score:1, Funny)
A Woman? (Score:1)
Thom-A-Eddy-Son...word. (Score:1)
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But listening to the recording by bouncing light off its surface and receiving the reflections is a lot like viewing the real Mona Lisa by bouncing ambient light off its surface and receiving the reflections in your eyeballs. It's your brain's fault that you can't see sound or smell colors or hear scents.
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It's your brain's fault that you can't see sound or smell colors or hear scents.
I hear LSD can help with that.
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But listening to the recording by bouncing light off its surface and receiving the reflections is a lot like viewing the real Mona Lisa by bouncing ambient light off its surface and receiving the reflections in your eyeballs. It's your brain's fault that you can't see sound or smell colors or hear scents.
But bouncing light off the Mona Lisa doesn't require digital signal processing it just occurs. Playing the record with the original stylus also doesn't require any DSP. Bouncing light off of it does require DSP to convert it to sound that you can hear.
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But bouncing light off the Mona Lisa doesn't require digital signal processing it just occurs.
What do you think your brain does with data that comes in via the optic nerves? Just because it's done with synapses doesn't make it any less signal processing.
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Stupid unicode. [facepalm]
When a synæsthete [facepalm]s, which other sense is affected? Do you smell it?
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This made me laugh. I'm glad I went back to check on replies to my old comments.
Re:Wrong title (Score:4, Insightful)
It's exactly like playing the recording, don't be stupid. It's NOT playing the cylinder; which is different.
Why would anyone go through the pointless effort of rebuilding a player? It's not like it's technically new, challenging, or interesting.
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It's exactly like playing the recording, don't be stupid. It's NOT playing the cylinder; which is different.
Why would anyone go through the pointless effort of rebuilding a player? It's not like it's technically new, challenging, or interesting.
It is playing a copy of the recording, not the recording -- just like an mp3 is a copy of a recording and not the original. If it isn't the original, it isn't the oldest commercial recording, just a facsimile of it. Like I said in my original post, still interesting use of modern technology, but not quite what the title says.
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Nice try, but if you want to win this year's "Obvious Pedantic Faggot" award you're going to have to try to bring your pedantry up to the level of your cocksucking. The judges really look for the whole package.
Avoiding damage to historical artifacts (Score:3)
Now, if they had resurrected a recorder/player device that actually "played" the cylinder, that would be different.
The articles doesn't say but they may even have an original player. It doesn't really matter:
1) The cylinder is warped so it may not be possible to play it on the original device without some dubious restoration.
2) Even if it wasn't warped, actually playing the recording with an original or reconstructed device would almost certainly cause further damage to the recording. That may not be a big deal for some old 45 where there may still be thousands of surviving copies but Edison's cylinder is a one of a k
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Now, if they had resurrected a recorder/player device that actually "played" the cylinder, that would be different.
The articles doesn't say but they may even have an original player. It doesn't really matter:
1) The cylinder is warped so it may not be possible to play it on the original device without some dubious restoration.
2) Even if it wasn't warped, actually playing the recording with an original or reconstructed device would almost certainly cause further damage to the recording. That may not be a big deal for some old 45 where there may still be thousands of surviving copies but Edison's cylinder is a one of a kind historical artifact.
The cylinder likely sat around for many decades unplayed, not because it couldn't be done but because the artifact was too precious to subject to that kind of treatment. With the optical scan, we get the best of both world: We get to hear every note and scratch and we get to preserve the cylinder for future generations as it came to our own.
The conservatory in Kansas City has numerous original wax recordings that the students can use and listen too. Not quite as old as this but only short a few years. And, yes, they "play" them on the original machines. Btw, optical scan does not let you hear every note and scratch, at least not the original notes and scratches, it is a digital representation of an analog signal, or put differently, it is a copy.
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Restricting the phrase "play [the] recording" to some arbitrary subset of playback devices is not very helpful, correct, or interesting. Why is this modded up?
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Playing an optical scan of the worlds oldest commercial recording is not the same as playing the recording itself, any more than viewing a scan of the Mona Lisa is the same as viewing the real Mona Lisa, no matter how faithfully reproduced.
... methinks Dcnjoe60 has split an imaginary hair.
sc
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The title says that "Scientists Play World's Oldest Commercial Recording." But actually, that's not true. From the summary: 123-year-old recording—etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional (3D) optical scanning technique
Playing an optical scan of the worlds oldest commercial recording is not the same as playing the recording itself, any more than viewing a scan of the Mona Lisa is the same as viewing the real Mona Lisa, no matter how faithfully reproduced.
Now, if they had resurrected a recorder/player device that actually "played" the cylinder, that would be different.
I don't know. I think, by your logic, CD players don't actually play CD's. It might not play the cylinder the same way the original player did. But it's some kind of music player.
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The title says that "Scientists Play World's Oldest Commercial Recording." But actually, that's not true. From the summary: 123-year-old recording—etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional (3D) optical scanning technique
Playing an optical scan of the worlds oldest commercial recording is not the same as playing the recording itself, any more than viewing a scan of the Mona Lisa is the same as viewing the real Mona Lisa, no matter how faithfully reproduced.
Now, if they had resurrected a recorder/player device that actually "played" the cylinder, that would be different.
I don't know. I think, by your logic, CD players don't actually play CD's. It might not play the cylinder the same way the original player did. But it's some kind of music player.
CD players do play CDs. However, a CD is not the original recording, at least not usually, but a copy of the multi track digital recording that has been mixed down. Even still, if I took an original CD and ripped it to mp3 files, they would be a facsimile of the the CD, but listening to them is not the same as listing to the original recording. It is similar, though. Effectively, they took a tin platter and converted it to a digital representation much like ripping a CD to mp3s.
Think of a movie restorat
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You know, I've never seen someone defend their (wrong) argument so strongly before on /.. However, this reproduction of the recording is likely MORE accurate than could be made by the original device. The needle that recorded this cylinder is quite likely different than any surviving needle that could be used to replay the cylinder. Indeed, the recording needle itself was likely different, if even just slightly when the recording ended than when it started.
An optical examination, later processed - even digi
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No, it's just a different way of playing the same info. It's still an old recording being played back. If they said it was the "oldest playback using original equipment", that would be a different thing.
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Re:URL for MP3 recording (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/talking-doll-record-hear-the-recording.htm [nps.gov]
That's good, except that page contains a Flash-based mp3 player. If you really want to listen to the mp3, follow this link: http://www.nps.gov/media/ner/avElement/edis-tenhp_edison_c_E-821-8_edis-1279_20110523_minus-5-semitones-and-eqd.mp3 [nps.gov]
Then they played it backwards (Score:2)
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*snicker*
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According to the first inflation calculator I pulled up online, $10 in 1890 is roughly $240 in 2010. That sounds about right. I bet there weren't too many of these made. They probably found their way into the homes of some rich kids. Perhaps there were also some collectors that appreciated the novelty and took good care of the lightly-used ones. I wonder how much it would go for on Antiques Roadshow (or in a real auction).
IIRC Grandmother (born 1880) had one of these, but a friend placed it near a fireplace and ruined it. The face was wax.
Accent (Score:1)
I tried hard to discern her accent. I'm curious if the North Jersey or NY accent has changed in 122 years. It sounded like the "ar" in star is drawn out like a New England accent. Of course, it's all made the more difficult by her trying to make a baby voice.
reminds me of this episode of screensavers... (Score:2)
slightly off topic, but so long as we're discussing edison recording cylinders, i remember watching this poor guy crush an historic, irreplaceable cylinder record on tv. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqZWsJ2oO_E [youtube.com]
subject (Score:2)
Three minutes later, the RIAA filed suit against the scientists, claiming "unauthorized public broadcast."
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Did someone hear a DUCK???
I would have sworn I heard QUACKING.
Its funny how desperate you are to slide your quackery into any post you can.
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It is an advertisement
(FTW)
Dood you don't have to listen to that, theres AdBlock and NoScript you know /s
Also, regarding you constant selfpromotion and stuff, you're doing it right, I'd like to hear how good but I bet the ROI from you post is over 9000% - I may not be your target because I don't have use for Doctors in my normal life and maybe thats why I find them funny. But it's dangerous to go alone, use this [robietherobot.com].
I'm not feeding a troll, in all PHB style let me spin that as "I'm empowering the trolls"