4 ms·

Recovered: Thomas Edison’s Voice, frozen in time for more than 80 years

57 points by cwan 16y ago

Rhapso 16y ago
Edison was not as wonderful as common history proclaims him to be. None of his inventions worked well, and most of them were invented by his staff but accredited to him, he was an arsonist and he unfairly slandered his competitors. I really hope people today avoid him as a role model.
- kiba 16y ago
  And Alexander Graham Bell fought a patent battle against Elisha Gray, who is arguably an independent inventor of the telephone. There were even allegation that Bell stole the invention from Gray. James Watt is a monopolist who managed to get the government to extend his patent privileges. He waste his time enforcing his monopoly instead of using his brain to invent better steam engines. Yeah, the heroic inventors are not what they seem to be.
  - Rhapso 16y ago
    Tesla was ;p Although I admit to be a biased worshiper. He designed all his inventions in his head, then drafted and assembled them (they all worked the 1st time). He was so unaggressive in attacking other people financially he got screwed over. It is unlikely you have used a direct invention (not a derivative/improvement) of Bell's nor Edison's but I can be certain you are typing on a computer that uses an AC power supply or charger and thus know you have use one of Tesla's.
    - chegra 16y ago
      Tesla didn't like fat people and once fired a woman for being overweight. He believed in eugenics. Tesla was critical of Einstein work, calling it Mathematical garb. Everybody have their faults. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Personal_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Personal_life
  - devinj 16y ago
    Dean Kamen looks like he could be on the way to being a proper heroic inventor. Although people will always make fun of him for Segway. :)
    - Rhapso 16y ago
      I have to agree there. He designs revolutionary things, focuses on things that allow people with disabilities to be empowered. I must also admit I was heavily influenced by my time in FIRST. (if you have a kid 5th grade or higher, then mention it to them, seriously what techie kid does not want to make robots!)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
superk 16y ago
Does anyone know if there's a link to the actual audio file somewhere so I could hear it?
- Jasber 16y ago
  In the left column you can click "Hear the audio" under Multimedia. Not the most visible place.
  - trafnar 16y ago
    Video: Hear the audio :)
- Janteh 16y ago
  http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title=Hear+the+audio&vidid=96943642001&bccapt=Listen+to+the+audio+of+Thomas+Edison+speaking http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title....
Jun8 16y ago
Great story and audio! It's saddening to think how many such important treasures are rotting away forgotten on shelves (think the last scene of Indiana Hones, Raiders of the Lost Ark). My other thought when I looked at the team photos in the article is: Engineers who can do this type of wizardry are always old, e.g. 50+ or more. I think in our current emphasis on software engineering, we have raised (myself included) generations of students who just doesn't have the same level of comfort with working with their hands on hardware.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  I think rather than pulleys, sprockets and photo-transistors, modern tinkerers would just feed the whole mess through a modern-day 35mm film digitizer (they're quite common) and then just use a little software to work out what the squiggles represent. Edit: A post appeared suggesting this very thing as I typed. I hate when that happens.
- ramchip 16y ago
  Perhaps older/retired engineers simply have more time and patience to put on hobby projects like this. I don't think there's such a large emphasis on software engineering; at least in the universities I've been to, software engineering is small compared to mechanical or electrical. There's also computer engineering, a fairly hardware-heavy program.
WalterBright 16y ago
It would seem easier to just scan the film, then write some software instead of building a special machine.
- phaedrus 16y ago
  Exactly! In fact the software that does that even already exists! I read a news story earlier this year about a team which was using that technique to restore old phonograph records that are too fragile to play. They even used it to successfully reconstruct the audio from fragments a record that had already shattered. In the article (I forget now whether it was on NPR or Wired) they mention that the software is flexible enough to follow a linear stream whether the line wraps around a flat record or a cylindrical gramophone; likely it'd work on this medium as well. (I can readily imagine 80 years from now, when they want to reconstruct the audio from an old CD, they'll take a picture of it from 3 feet away with a digital camera and it would be able to resolve the pits on the CD into a data stream.) Many engineers have a tendency to "imprint on" a certain set of technologies and keep tools in their mental toolbox from early in their career. Even most brilliant engineers will do this - technology moves very fast and using the tools you know saves time and effort up front even if new technologies exists that are less time long term. I'd never dream of belittling the hard work they obviously must have done to reconstruct this pallophotophone, but I do notice that in the picture from the article the engineer is not young, and I do think it likely he built a mechanical device only because that's what he knows. If a millennial were doing this project, absolutely he'd try it with software first. But my generation can't be too smug because we're not immune to the effect. Maybe the next generation from now would (to give a random example) first think of growing a piece of biological wetware to do it.
mikecane 16y ago
Disappointed they use a Flash player to share it. Audacity will rip that to an MP3. I'd like to hear those other recordings. I hope someone clues them into the Internet Archive! [edited for typo]

57 points by cwan 16y ago

Edison was not as wonderful as common history proclaims him to be. None of his inventions worked well, and most of them were invented by his staff but accredited to him, he was an arsonist and he unfairly slandered his competitors. I really hope people today avoid him as a role model.

kiba 16y ago
And Alexander Graham Bell fought a patent battle against Elisha Gray, who is arguably an independent inventor of the telephone. There were even allegation that Bell stole the invention from Gray. James Watt is a monopolist who managed to get the government to extend his patent privileges. He waste his time enforcing his monopoly instead of using his brain to invent better steam engines. Yeah, the heroic inventors are not what they seem to be.
- Rhapso 16y ago
  Tesla was ;p Although I admit to be a biased worshiper. He designed all his inventions in his head, then drafted and assembled them (they all worked the 1st time). He was so unaggressive in attacking other people financially he got screwed over. It is unlikely you have used a direct invention (not a derivative/improvement) of Bell's nor Edison's but I can be certain you are typing on a computer that uses an AC power supply or charger and thus know you have use one of Tesla's.
  - chegra 16y ago
    Tesla didn't like fat people and once fired a woman for being overweight. He believed in eugenics. Tesla was critical of Einstein work, calling it Mathematical garb. Everybody have their faults. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Personal_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Personal_life
- devinj 16y ago
  Dean Kamen looks like he could be on the way to being a proper heroic inventor. Although people will always make fun of him for Segway. :)
  - Rhapso 16y ago
    I have to agree there. He designs revolutionary things, focuses on things that allow people with disabilities to be empowered. I must also admit I was heavily influenced by my time in FIRST. (if you have a kid 5th grade or higher, then mention it to them, seriously what techie kid does not want to make robots!)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

superk 16y ago

Does anyone know if there's a link to the actual audio file somewhere so I could hear it?

Jasber 16y ago
In the left column you can click "Hear the audio" under Multimedia. Not the most visible place.
- trafnar 16y ago
  Video: Hear the audio :)
Janteh 16y ago
http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title=Hear+the+audio&vidid=96943642001&bccapt=Listen+to+the+audio+of+Thomas+Edison+speaking http://www.timesunion.com/multimedia/video/TUvideo.asp?title....

Jun8 16y ago

Great story and audio! It's saddening to think how many such important treasures are rotting away forgotten on shelves (think the last scene of Indiana Hones, Raiders of the Lost Ark). My other thought when I looked at the team photos in the article is: Engineers who can do this type of wizardry are always old, e.g. 50+ or more. I think in our current emphasis on software engineering, we have raised (myself included) generations of students who just doesn't have the same level of comfort with working with their hands on hardware.

noonespecial 16y ago
I think rather than pulleys, sprockets and photo-transistors, modern tinkerers would just feed the whole mess through a modern-day 35mm film digitizer (they're quite common) and then just use a little software to work out what the squiggles represent. Edit: A post appeared suggesting this very thing as I typed. I hate when that happens.
ramchip 16y ago
Perhaps older/retired engineers simply have more time and patience to put on hobby projects like this. I don't think there's such a large emphasis on software engineering; at least in the universities I've been to, software engineering is small compared to mechanical or electrical. There's also computer engineering, a fairly hardware-heavy program.

WalterBright 16y ago

It would seem easier to just scan the film, then write some software instead of building a special machine.

phaedrus 16y ago
Exactly! In fact the software that does that even already exists! I read a news story earlier this year about a team which was using that technique to restore old phonograph records that are too fragile to play. They even used it to successfully reconstruct the audio from fragments a record that had already shattered. In the article (I forget now whether it was on NPR or Wired) they mention that the software is flexible enough to follow a linear stream whether the line wraps around a flat record or a cylindrical gramophone; likely it'd work on this medium as well. (I can readily imagine 80 years from now, when they want to reconstruct the audio from an old CD, they'll take a picture of it from 3 feet away with a digital camera and it would be able to resolve the pits on the CD into a data stream.) Many engineers have a tendency to "imprint on" a certain set of technologies and keep tools in their mental toolbox from early in their career. Even most brilliant engineers will do this - technology moves very fast and using the tools you know saves time and effort up front even if new technologies exists that are less time long term. I'd never dream of belittling the hard work they obviously must have done to reconstruct this pallophotophone, but I do notice that in the picture from the article the engineer is not young, and I do think it likely he built a mechanical device only because that's what he knows. If a millennial were doing this project, absolutely he'd try it with software first. But my generation can't be too smug because we're not immune to the effect. Maybe the next generation from now would (to give a random example) first think of growing a piece of biological wetware to do it.

mikecane 16y ago

Disappointed they use a Flash player to share it. Audacity will rip that to an MP3. I'd like to hear those other recordings. I hope someone clues them into the Internet Archive! [edited for typo]