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story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordings
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:37 am
by brianu
I just read this intriguing story on a CA university's efforts to preserve its small archive of Edison wax cylinder recordings made in the early 20th century of the last members of certain native American cultures...
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/vid ... dings.html
... thought some here might be interested.
Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 3:41 pm
by CarlosV
It is very interesting! The technique of utilizing laser to read cylinders and other ancient media is not new, there is at least one development done in Switzerland, that very effectively reads not only cylinders but worn out and even cracked records, including transcriptions. The cylinders in the video look in quite good shape, although the recordings are very primitive. It is a form of aural archeology.
On a similar theme, the Germans recorded (in 78 records) hundreds of English prisoners voices during WWI, all reading the same texts, with the purpose of capturing the diverse local accents. These records survived both wars in an archive in Berlin, and have been made available for consultation. The BBC made a very nice program about it, even finding surviving relatives of the people whose voices were recorded, and playing the records for them.
Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 4:09 pm
by brianu
CarlosV wrote:On a similar theme, the Germans recorded (in 78 records) hundreds of English prisoners voices during WWI, all reading the same texts, with the purpose of capturing the diverse local accents. These records survived both wars in an archive in Berlin, and have been made available for consultation. The BBC made a very nice program about it, even finding surviving relatives of the people whose voices were recorded, and playing the records for them.
I hadn't heard of that... are those by any chance available online?
Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:03 pm
by 52089
brianu wrote:CarlosV wrote:On a similar theme, the Germans recorded (in 78 records) hundreds of English prisoners voices during WWI, all reading the same texts, with the purpose of capturing the diverse local accents. These records survived both wars in an archive in Berlin, and have been made available for consultation. The BBC made a very nice program about it, even finding surviving relatives of the people whose voices were recorded, and playing the records for them.
I hadn't heard of that... are those by any chance available online?
Links here:
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... &hilit=pow