Smithsonian Releases 128-Year-Old Recording of Alexander Graham Bell 122
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.'"
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Did they secure the rights and pay the royalties on this recording? Someone call the RIAA. I smell a copyright lawsuit!
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Came to say something like this. Some troll will claim the right to it and demand payment if you listen to it.
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Did they secure the rights and pay the royalties on this recording? Someone call the RIAA. I smell a copyright lawsuit!
The original recording has no copyright. The recording of the recording, does, since the original had no copyright. Copyright is like a parasite... it attaches itself to everything.
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
Not in the US.
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. (1999) sets precedent for this remaining public domain.
"A photograph which is no more than a copy of a work of another as exact as science and technology permits lacks originality. That is not to say that such a feat is trivial, simply not original."
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Is 200+ feet enough to build an underwater city free from the greedy hands of capitalism and communism?
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No. Per the description, it's still in Florida.
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Did they secure the rights and pay the royalties on this recording? Someone call the RIAA. I smell a copyright lawsuit!
I know you are joking, but unfortunately according to the horrible decision in Capitol Records vs. Naxos of America, Inc. those Alexander Graham Bell records are technically still under copyright.
http://http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050412225604578 [groklaw.net]
To summarize the court case, Naxos, a classical music label, was taking old 78 RPM vinyl records and using modern technology to clean up the surface noise and putting them out on a budget label they run. This was perfectly legal in the EU
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The thing is in all honesty I was only half joking. I do genuinely wonder if because of the fucked up copyright when it comes to sound recordings if it really is still under copyright.
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
Anonymous Yellow-belly Coward, is that you?
Not exactly new technology (Score:1)
Not exactly new dates (Score:1)
March 2003 [lbl.gov]
Sadly it is not available any more. (Score:4, Funny)
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Not this joke again ... you're beginning to sound like a broken record!
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What is the copyright status of a broken record?
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Can't be - the word isn't long enough.
Get Orrin Hatch on the Phone! (Score:5, Funny)
We need legislation to restrict the sale of this laser scanner machine ASAP: It's obviously being used as a circumvention device.
Re:Get Orrin Hatch on the Phone! (Score:5, Funny)
If you outlaw lasers, only sharks will have lasers!
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My old foggy slashdot memory... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org]
There it is.
Nice to know the guy's technology actually worked.
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Re:My old foggy slashdot memory... (Score:5, Informative)
Something similar has also been used more recently to play a record that doesn't exist anymore in physical format, but had a photograph printed in a book that survives. They were able to optically play [wordpress.com] a scan of the printed photograph of the record.
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that's a pretty good photo and print. amazing.
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A friend from high school was working on this, what, 6-8 years ago for a college's music archive.
Is that you causing all this ruckus, Rob?
Direct Links (Score:5, Informative)
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and a movie, w/ cool tools starting about halfway through:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/videos/Playing-the-Unplayable-Records.html [smithsonianmag.com]
And maybe some swearing recorded too in a failed attempt, but I'll need to listen another 10 dozen times to figure it out.
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Thank you. Web 2.0 is so easy to use!
He probably said (Score:1)
"God, I hate what AT&T has become!"
Yeah right (Score:1)
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(as all great inventors, none of them actually are american ^__^)
Samuel Colt, John Browning, Eugene Stoner, Daniel Wesson, Benjamin Tyler Henry. All American inventors, all invented guns. You can't get much more American than that :)
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In a sense, I wouldn't count that breakthrough invention though. The gun was invent in China back way before Europe even got around to burning witches. However, IIRC America did invent the rifle/barrel rifling?
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Baker rifles were used by the British in the Napoleonic wars.
That's early 1800s, for the benefit of any Americans.
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Not rifling, but the revolver...and several other repeaters.
As you would see if you had looked up the inventors named.
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Is that that guy who made a few minor improvements to Marconi's inventions? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi [wikipedia.org]
Another interesting one (Score:1)
The smile on my face... (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
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Na, CSI already did this years ago.
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Before CSI was even born, X-Files did it. An episode involved a pot that had been crafted in a room where Jesus Christ was speaking, and a reed being brushed against it recorded him into the clay.
Not a new thing (Score:2)
It wasn't just the Smithsonian (Score:2)
"Clearly"?? (Score:1)
I don't know about anyone else, but I found the clip unintelligible. The number of syllables doesn't even seem to line up.
Re:"Clearly"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even worse: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
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still sounds better than most cellphones.
Mr. Watson (Score:3)
Come here. I need you to issue a take-down notice.
Ok this is cool and all but... (Score:1)
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
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So even back in the 1800's the patent system (while a little slower) was broken?
Can you hear me now? (Score:5, Funny)
Not new... (Score:2)
This isn't exactly new technology... it's been around for over a decade now.
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Yes, well over a decade.
LOC release (Score:2)
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. :-(
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What a waste of time! (Score:3)
They should have just taken some grainy photos of the disc and let Reddit sort it out.
[Seriously though, this is awesome.]
ibitimes (Score:2)
Copyright (Score:1)
so... it finally expired?
A recording of Alexander Graham Bell? (Score:2)
Sweet.
Still silent to me, needs Adobe flash (Score:1)
Yay (Score:1)
Laser turntable for vinyl records (1970s?) (Score:2)
Link to ... (Score:1, Redundant)
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 [lbl.gov]
Link to the audio (Score:2)
Here:
http://media.smithsonianmag.com/audio/alexander-graham-bell.mp3 [smithsonianmag.com]