story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordings

Discussions on Talking Machines & Accessories
Post Reply
brianu
Victor V
Posts: 2165
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2009 3:35 pm
Personal Text: on instagram as "oncedeadsound"
Location: just outside Philadelphia, PA

story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordings

Post 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.

CarlosV
Victor IV
Posts: 1835
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:18 am
Location: Luxembourg

Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi

Post 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.

brianu
Victor V
Posts: 2165
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2009 3:35 pm
Personal Text: on instagram as "oncedeadsound"
Location: just outside Philadelphia, PA

Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi

Post 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?

52089
Victor VI
Posts: 3745
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2011 7:54 pm

Re: story on preserving native american wax cylinder recordi

Post 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

Post Reply