Thursday, June 13, 2013

Oldest Recording Replicated, 134 Years Later

From the October 26, 2012, Chicago Tribune by Chris Carola, AP.

"It's scratchy, lasts just 78 seconds and features the first recorded blooper."  And now, you too can listen to it.  Experts say it is the oldest playable recording of an American voice and the first capturing recorded music.

It was originally made on a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in St. Louis in 1878.

It opens with a 23-second cornet solo followed by a man's voice reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Old Mother Hubbard."  The man laughs at two spots, including at the end when he recites the wrong words, saying "Look at me: I don't know the song."

It was made on a sheet of tinfoil, 5 inches wide by 15 inches long placed on a cylinder of the phonograph.  Edison invented it in 1877 and began selling it the following year.  Only a handful of these tinfoil recording sheets remain as once they were played a couple times, the stylus tore through it.

Only a handful remain and only two are playable: this one and one from 1880.

Recording has always been big in my life, starting first with the old reel-to-reel tapes and then to cassettes, which I just recorded on today.  I must have at least 5,000 cassette tapes.

Never Downloaded.  --Cooter

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