Category Archives: Recorded sound
London Sounds, 1928
From the incredible London Sound Survey: THERE ARE NO BBC radio recordings surviving from before 1931, so the job of representing the 1920s falls to this curiosity from the Columbia Graphophone Company. It’s a 12” 78rpm disc made in 1928 … Continue reading
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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
‘You made a will yet, Morse?’ ‘Not much to leave, really.’ ‘All these records of yours, surely?’ ‘Bit out of date, I’m afraid. We’re all buying CDs now.’ ‘Perhaps they’ll be out of date soon.’ Morse nodded. Strange was not … Continue reading
Posted in Digitization, Predictions, Recorded sound
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The Future of the Music Industry in Numbers. Digital Tipping Point in 2014?
“Like a popular rocker who burns out, only to try to stage a comeback a decade later, the sickly music industry will probably never regain its previous vigour. But even modest growth is welcome news for the industry.” Source: The … Continue reading
Posted in Digitization, Forecasts, music, Recorded sound, Tipping points
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Edison’s First Movie Projector: A Phonograph for Pictures
Today in 1888, Thomas Edison filed a patent for the first movie projector, the “Optical Phonograph,” which projected images just 1/32-inch across. Steven Lubar in InfoCulture: “Thomas Edison was thinking about the phonograph when he decided to invent a moving picture machine. … Continue reading
First Classical Music Recording
Today in 1888, Thomas Edison’s foreign sales agent, Colonel George Gouraud, made a wax cylinder recording in the Crystal Palace, London, of a 3016-person choir performing Handel’s Israel in Egypt at a distance of more than one hundred yards from … Continue reading
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What Did Alexander Graham Bell’s Voice Sound Like?
From Berkeley Lab: Berkeley Lab’s sound-restoration experts have done it again. They’ve helped to digitally recover a 128-year-old recording of Alexander Graham Bell’s voice, enabling people to hear the famed inventor speak for the first time. The recording ends with … Continue reading
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From the Archives: First Classical Music Recording
Today in 1888, Edison’s foreign sales agent, Colonel George Gouraud, made a wax cylinder recording in the Crystal Palace, London, of a 3016-person choir performing Handel’s Israel in Egypt at a distance of more than one hundred yards from the phonograph. It was … Continue reading
Posted in Recorded sound, This day in information
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Sound Recording Milestones
Today in 1888, Emile Berliner demonstrated the flat gramophone disc and its reproduction at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. F. W. Wile: “Emile Berliner took human sound, whether uttered in speech or song, and reproduced it, not as a parody as in the tinfoil phonograph, or in the … Continue reading
The Memory of Sound
Today in 1877, Thomas Edison recorded his voice on the phonograph for the first time, reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Here is his re-enactment of that first recording. Edison offered the following possible future uses for the phonograph in … Continue reading
Posted in Recorded sound, This day in information
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The Story of Information 