The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is a link to an original Edison doll recording. This recording was from a doll that belonged to my good friends Dave & Nina Heitz, the doll came from the original family in New England. This doll played "Now I lay me down to sleep", probably one of the scariest nursery rhymes for a child to hear before going to bed. The phonograph stylus must have broke off very soon after the doll was purchased and the it was just stored away, the record was virtually mint as can be heard in the recording & seen in the photo below.
To make the recording an elaborate system was constructed by Dave, Peter Dilg, and myself to drive the cylinder as it was impossible to remove it from the mandrel and to use a modern pickup arm for playback. We made about 12 recordings at various speeds, this was take #5 which sounded the best to us, these recordings were made in February 2002.

Dave ever being the showman, contacted the local newspaper and a local TV station to tell the story of the doll and the recording. We made a big deal about hearing the doll "speak" for the first time in 100 years, it did make the 7pm news and into the newspaper.



This is Dave and Pete cleaning the record. In the lower right you can see one of the motors we tried using - it didn't work. We ended up with a small DC gearhead motor with a variable speed control.

Here is the motor removed from the doll:



The newspaper article is too large to post on the forum, you can read the article here:

http://www.myvintagetv.com/posts/doll2.jpg

Here is the link to the actual recording
This is the raw audio file, no filtering was done to it:

http://www.myvintagetv.com/posts/edison%20doll5a.mp3


After listening to this recording for hours we were finding ourselves "singing" it for the rest of the day and night especially after a few bottles of wine.

Sure miss those days with Dave....

Chuck

Sure miss those days with Dave....

Chuck[/quote]

Chuck, I too have to reiterate that. Dave was a wonderful man and missed by me. He was an invaluable help with my Paillard hot-air machine. We talked for hours comparing and discussing.

i once did some digitizing experimens with a repro edison doll meganism we released the belt and very carefully took the return swich out of the way than we attatched the crankshaft to a slow running motor wich had a drill head welded on it we placed the corner of the ouside of the mechanism in a small vise an turned it on and placed a pickup arm with a round needle on the cyl it worked! with the pc i could speed up the mp3 of the cyl to get the original sound

if a real authentic one comes along i will be abble to digitise it and oh yea i dont care how moldy it is

and chuck thanks for the mp3 now i have 3 edison doll mp3s old mother hubbard, twinkle twinkle little star & now i lay me down to sleep

if any of you have more mp3s like this or if any of you want the other two mail me at [email protected]

i also have some mp3s of mae starr cylinders

greetings
tino

Ah, how well I remember that playback from Dave's doll. That is the finest Edison doll in existence, with original packaging, instructions, labels, even the excelsior packing. The half nut had fallen off the bracket, rendering it unplayable. I have always assumed that it either broke off in transit or immediately after the buyer got it. Either way, instead of returning this expensive item he just stuck it away in a closet for over a century.

A spot of solder was all it needed to reattach the half-nut. But were it not for that manufacturing flaw, this doll would never have survived intact.

I sure miss Dave. For those who never knew him, I have a memorial on my website: http://www.edisontinfoil.com/dave/heitz.htm