What can IRENE technology scan?
IRENE has been developed to scan historical sound carriers with a groove, although the technology has expanded to include other media types as well. To a significant extent, historical sound recordings can be divided between cylinders, with a vertical cut groove, and discs, with a lateral cut groove.(There are other combinations, and hybrids, but these two basic formats are a convenient way to describe IRENE’s capabilities.) Both media types can be scanned using IRENE.
As a rough guide, the grooves on commercial shellac and lacquer transciption discs are ~75 microns deep while those on plastic and aluminium transcription discs and wax cylinders are ~5-10 microns (the average human hair is 50 microns in diameter). 2D or 3D IRENE technology can be applied to extract the best audio depending on the material type and condition of the object.
Traditional playback methods with a stylus may damage the surface of historical media permanentely, since the stylus may further abrade the soft materials. IRENE can image the surface of discs and cylinders, without contact, even if they are cracked, broken, have mold ridden substrates, or warped surfaces without the risk of damaging the object. Successful audio retrieval has occured on a variety of media types and more techniques are being developed as part of ongoing research.
Media types scanned using IRENE technology:
- Aluminum discs
- Blue Amberol Cylinders
- Broken discs and cylinders
- Coated plaster discs and cylinders
- Cuneiform tablets (for 3D OCR text recognition)
- Dictabelts
- Dictation discs (plastic/polyvinyl)
- Diamond discs
- Foils
- Glass discs coated with photographic emulsion
- Gray Audograph discs
- Metal rings
- Paper tracings
- Phonograph Wax Cylinders
- Postcard discs
- Soundscriber discs
- Shellac discs
- Vinyl discs
- and more…
Edison Wax cylinders (c.1920) with extreme bloom being scanned on IRENE 3D System