11–20 of 26 posts
The time between about 1860 and 1910 seems totally magical to me. For all of history, people lived, loved, and died. Aside from perhaps a few of them writing their thoughts down, they totally disappeared. With the invention of still photography, and much more audio and moving-picture recording technology, suddenly you could see and hear people who were long gone. These folks are not just dead. Their kids are dead, th…
It must have been "magical" to be able to hear your own voice played back during those times. I wonder if in 100 years from now people will wonder if we though smartphones were magical. Does anyone know if the noise in the recording is because the foil is so old and that's the best they can recover, or if that's how it was played back originally?
I think the whole thing is magic now. That here in my bedroom, this box can link me 135 years into the past just strikes me as incredible.
At the same time, much of the 'magic' feeling I used to get has turned in to 'eh', just because it's such an ingrained part of life now. I remember my grandfather telling a story of taking a polaroid photo of ... his parents? (or in-laws, I can't remember), then taking the photo to the other room to let it dry/develop for the 2 mins or so it took, then taking it back to show them, and seeing how amazed they looked at it. IIRC I think that was the 60s when that happened. But my memory of the story is now hazy, and I think his was a bit when he told me it to me :)
Isn't there a theory somewhere that there have been accidental recordings in the past when objects vibrate against another and make grooves? That would be amazing to discover an accidental recording from 1000 years ago that can be recovered using laser scanning to decode.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics
[2] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h...
edit: fixed an autocorrect typo
It must have been "magical" to be able to hear your own voice played back during those times. I wonder if in 100 years from now people will wonder if we though smartphones were magical. Does anyone know if the noise in the recording is because the foil is so old and that's the best they can recover, or if that's how it was played back originally?
I think many people without much insight into electronics or computers would consider smartphones quite magical already.
The time between about 1860 and 1910 seems totally magical to me. For all of history, people lived, loved, and died. Aside from perhaps a few of them writing their thoughts down, they totally disappeared. With the invention of still photography, and much more audio and moving-picture recording technology, suddenly you could see and hear people who were long gone. These folks are not just dead. Their kids are dead, th…
The average consumer was astounded by low quality mp3 audio over a record, cassette tape or later on compact disc. Sort of like fast food, convenience over quality.
It's also the same for photography I remember the first digital cameras and they had horrible resolution and colour depth but it was amazing to have a film-less camera. Video being a close cousin to pictures got worse in quality too but more affordable and convenient no more giant saddle bag and shoulder-crushing camera.
Looking back years from now family pictures and audio will be great up to roughly the mid 1990s then from then on until the early 2000s the bottom fell out.
just amazing. i can only wonder what levels of reconstruction from data the future holds...
> For years the audio was trapped on the piece of foil you see above. There was no device that could play it and even if there had been, doing so would have likely ruined it. This summer, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, physicist Carl Haber and his team were able to create a 3D picture of the foil whose topography could then be translated into sound using techniques of mathematical analysis and physical modeling to calculate how a needle would have played the recording. They were able to do so "without physically having to touch them," he explained to me. "And that's kind of the key issue, because these things are so old and fragile and torn-up, broken, and delicate that in many cases it just would not be possible to play them back in any of the more standard ways."
All I could think was "it's like audio cryonics!"
The time between about 1860 and 1910 seems totally magical to me. For all of history, people lived, loved, and died. Aside from perhaps a few of them writing their thoughts down, they totally disappeared. With the invention of still photography, and much more audio and moving-picture recording technology, suddenly you could see and hear people who were long gone. These folks are not just dead. Their kids are dead, th…
I wonder if the late 1990s to roughly now will be seen as a audio, video, still picture dark ages of sorts. The average consumer was astounded by low quality mp3 audio over a record, cassette tape or later on compact disc. Sort of like fast food, convenience over quality. It's also the same for photography I remember the first digital cameras and they had horrible resolution and colour depth but it was amazing to hav…
PS: Not to mention people tend to compress history as it get's older, out side of historians who can really separate the 1180's from the 1190's in Ireland?
Isn't there a theory somewhere that there have been accidental recordings in the past when objects vibrate against another and make grooves? That would be amazing to discover an accidental recording from 1000 years ago that can be recovered using laser scanning to decode.