First-Ever Captured Edison Audio Recording Unveiled

What is believed to be the oldest playable recording of an American voice has been revealed at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, New York. Digital mastering of the extremely rare, extremely fragile tinfoil medium has produced an audible 23-second cornet solo of an unidentified song, followed by a man's voice reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Old Mother Hubbard." The man laughs at two spots during the recording, including at the end, when he recites the wrong words in the second nursery rhyme. "Look at me; I don't know the song," he says. The singer/speaker is identified as St. Louis newspaper writer Thomas Mason. Recordings like this, which was made during an Edison phonograph demonstration in 1878, are so rare because typically they would wear through after just a couple playbacks, whereupon the demonstrator would tear the foil into pieces and hand it out as souvenirs. Optical techniques were used to read the recorded indentations rather than risking making physical contact. The algorithm attempted to mimic the physics of the original stylus in the same manner as done for a 1860 paper recording by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French printer credited with inventing the earliest known sound recording device.

Posted 2012

Anritsu MG36021A Microwave Frequency Synthesizer Module - RF Cafe Website

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...