Scientists Play World's Oldest Commercial Record

Ron Czapala

This scratchy, 12-second audio clip of a woman reciting the first verse of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star doesn't sound like much. But the faint, 123-year-old recording—etched into a warped metal cylinder and brought back to life after decades of silence by a three-dimensional (3D) optical scanning technique—appears to belong to the first record intended for sale to the public. Made for a talking doll briefly sold by phonograph inventor Thomas Edison, the early record is the oldest known American recording of a woman's voice and may be the oldest known record produced at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey.

Full strory
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/scientists-play-worlds-oldest-co.html?ref=hp

ElectricAye

Oldest? Bah! Obviously none of these people has heard about Archaeoacoustics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics

erco

WOW, two BAHs on the same day! A lot of scoffers here, huh?

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?132848-HiRes-Pics-from-Lunar-Tycho-Crater&p=1016296#post1016296

Me, I love my Victrola and collection of scratchy old 78 RPM records.

I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire...

ElectricAye

erco wrote: »

...
Me, I love my Victrola and collection of scratchy old 78 RPM records.
.....

Yes, there's something about that scratchy old sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WFgTCTI1Ew

Of course, nothing beats music quite like rap.