And when Tchaikovsky looked like this.
A shame it's not of Liszt or Anton Rubinstein playing.
Posted on 03/27/2008 7:30:43 PM PDT by blam
referance ping
As an aside, a Scotsman named Baird quite literally "tinkered" with videodiscs back in the 1920's, and at the time even he couldn't get the playback to work to his satisfaction. Nowadays his hopes at reproducing his efforts are done very well by hobbyists.
When I listened to it I thought I heard, “Did anyone notice George’s fingernails?” Then a female voice answering, “Oh my, yes. They looked like they were eaten away by weevils.” Then, a male voice remarks, “It’s warm in here. Open a window.” Then, “Hey! What are you doing?” Then female voice exclaims, “Dear God.” After that there’s a clunking sound on the tape, a low rumple, a metallic ‘squink’ and a ‘glonk.’
Man, Solti shakes a mean stick for a bald guy, don’t he? Nilsson is simply astounding. I noticed her sneak her jacket over her shoulders when she wasn’t singing, sort of like a major league pitcher. And that Wagner feller was a heckuva composer as well as a fine shortstop. Honus. ;-)
“I wouldn’t call an .mp3 at 128 kilobytes ‘true’.”
You miss the point. The question was whether the original was a true recording, since it could not be played back without the help of technology.
The answer to that question remains yes, it is a true recording. The fact that you are listening a compressed 128-kbps MP3 of it now is irrelevant.
As an aside, I am sure that an uncompressed rendering of it existed before it was made into an MP3 for web consumption. But again, that’s beside the point. The original would have remained a true recording whether or not it had ever been played back, using any method.
bump
Der Baseballdiamond des Pittsburghen Zwergstoppen. Unggghhh!
Mythbusters did an episode on the ‘recording on clay’ thing. They said no way.
Free Republic & Mythbusters, what a combination
Seems like an audio version of Muybridge’s motion photography (though Muybridge, unlike Scott de Martinville, soon developed an interest in recreating the motion his camera banks captured.
It is a true recording because it was intended to be a recording, and used the same basic principle as Edison’s phonograph—a moving medium on which is traced the impressions made by a stylus attached to a diaphragm which is being vibrated by a sound. The fact that the inventor didn’t use a medium capable of moving a stylus attached to a diaphragm in order to reproduce the sound doesn’t make this any less a true sound recording. In other words, this isn’t a recording fabricated by digital wizardry or “photoshopping.”
There are optical sound recordings on motion picture film as early as 1910, recorded without electrical amplification. Around 1921-22, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge were both recorded on the Pallophotophone, another non-electrical recording device that recorded on photographic film. Because the sound waves had to move a very low-mass light-valve, instead of a heavy diaphragm and stylus cutting a groove in wax, the recordings are superior to the commercial recordings of the time.
Coolidge, of course, was electrically recorded (standard 78 rpm wax discs) during his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1925, and twice made talking films by the Case-DeForest system (optical soundtrack), during the campaign of 1924 and again in May of 1925.
For every innovation introduced to the public, there are fascinating inventions and experiments, often decades before one might imagine.
The wax cylinder phonograph was not introduced to the public until 1888, almost thirty years after this incredible 1860 recording. Experiments were done in electrical recording as soon as radio engineers started using amplification. This 1860 recording was already 65 years old when the two big record companies, Victor and Columbia, started issuing electrical records in the Spring of 1925.
It was possible to see the vibrations, since the wavy line on the paper was visible. The Smithsonian has glass discs coated with lampblack, on which are recordings made in 1888 or so, on an invention by Bell and Tainter. To my knowledge, those recordings have never been played back. Obviously, they could be, by an optical device similar to the one used for this French recording.
There are theories that some “ghost” are images recorded into stone or glass that, when certain light hits it, are projected.
I think it’s you who missed my point.
An MP3 is like a paper recording, alright?
That is effin incredible.
It still amazes me that there is a photograph of our sixth President, John Quincy Adams.
I’m sure that’s a reference to something, but hell if I know what.
What a pleasure! James Whitcome Riley spoke a Hoosier Dialect that they say has all but disappeared - wonderful to hear him read the poems as they should be read.
I just listened to his “Deer Crick” poem. It was like reading the little House books - it brought me to a place from our history of years ago. I only wish they had a recording of my favorite - Little Orphant’ Annie.
The "pressing" was the last stage of the process, not part of the recording process.
There is a great video on Youtube (in two parts) about this process, from 1942.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xwe-Mt99Dw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxhiUgK5gzs
By that time, thick wax blanks had been replaced with a metal disc coated with wax. The lacquer-coated aluminum or glass discs used mostly in radio could also be electroplated and processed to make stampers. Not long after this 1942 film, the record companies stopped using wax at all, and recorded their 78 rpm masters on lacquer-coated discs, either from live performers in the studio, or dubbed from a prior lacquer disc, or (after 1949) from a master tape.
From 1943 until the introduction of tape, Decca recorded in the studio on 33.3333 rpm lacquer discs, then transferred the recordings to 78 rpm masters. When LPs came out in 1948, Decca was able to make new transfers from the lacquer masters, rather than dubbing from 78 masters. Many CDs have been issued using the lacquer masters rather than 78 rpm sources, even though at the time of the recordings, the public was still using 78s in the home.
When you hear Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, and other radio programs from 1934 into the 'Fifties, you are hearing a lacquer disc. (Often called [erroneously] in radio circles, "acetates.")
The AUDIO of television programs on NBC was routinely preserved on lacquer-coated discs until 1967! In many cases, the videotape of the programs long ago disintegrated (or was recorded over), but the discs are fine.
Inconceivable treasures in the vaults in Camden, which are seen in the 1942 film, were blasted to smithereens in 1967, when RCA dynamited some of the Victor buildings in Camden. Witnesses saw a cloud of glittering particles of tens of thousands of the metal discs, issued and unissued recordings by the World's Greatest Artists.
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