NYT, wax cylinder phonograph trove brought back to life- WAV

[timcoalman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings.html

Highlights:
1) The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck

2) the only ones known to survive from someone born as early as 1800.

3) Jerry Fabris, the curator at the Edison laboratory, used a playback device called the Archeophone to trace the grooves of 12 of the 17 cylinders in the box and convert the analog electrical signals into broadcast WAV files.

And my favorite:

4) The Wangemann cylinders are just the latest in an explosion of discoveries in early recorded sound over the last five years, said Tim Brooks, a sound historian in Greenwich, Conn. In 2008, Dr. Feaster and his colleagues at FirstSounds.org succeeded in playing a version of the French lullaby “Au Clair de la Lune,” deciphered from a tracing in soot-coated paper dating from 1860 — the earliest sound ever recovered. A trove of cylinders recorded in Russia in the 1890s was also recently uncovered.

The ability to digitize old recordings and the use of new imaging techniques to map the grooves of damaged cylinder records without touching them has contributed to the onslaught, Mr. Brooks said, adding, “You can actually hear history as well as read about it.”
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[Gregg Juke]

Thanks Tim. That was interesting, informative, and will prove to be challenging, I'm sure (I downloaded a bunch of files to play with some restoration tools).

GJ