Over the course of the development of optical scanning, the IRENE project has had the opportunity to scan and restore a substantial variety of early, or otherwise significant and interesting recordings, some which would be considered unplayable by other means. The list includes:
• Phonautograph: Beginning the 1850’s French inventor Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville initiated experiments with the “phonautograph”, literally sound-self-writer, a machine which could inscribe audio signals on paper, intrinsically unsuitable for playback in the 19th Century. In 2008 the tracings on phonautograms recorded by Scott in 1860 were digitized by the First Sounds collaboration and passed through the IRENE algorithm resulting in clearly recognizable speech, the earliest example known of a recorded human voice.
• Edison Foil: Thomas Edison, in 1877, was the first person to record and reproduce sound. He used tinfoil, rather than paper, and could emboss the audio signals, allowing for a playback stylus to retrace the waveform. His earliest experiments are apparently lost or only fragmentary. By mid-1878 copies of his machines were being sold and demonstrated. In 2012 a tinfoil in the collection of the miSci (Schenectady, N.Y. Museum of Science and innovation), recorded in St. Louis, in June of 1878, was scanned using the 3D confocal probe and fully reconstructed. It is the oldest recording of an American voice, and of an instrumental music performance, yet played back, in modern times.
• Volta Collection: Beginning around 1880, Alexander Graham Bell, and a group of associates, established a research collaboration to further develop sound recording and other technologies. Located in Washington, D.C., the Volta Laboratory Association was active until the mid-1880’s and deserves credit for exploring most of the analog audio formats which were later adopted. Their most lasting contribution was the wax cylinder which formed a basis for the early commercial recording industry, dictation technology, and was used widely for field research recordings in ethnography, linguistics, anthropology, and musicology. Working in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History, 3D and 2D scans of a variety of items from this collection have been made in the period 2011-2013. In 2015, a year-long exhibit at the Museum “Hear My Voice: Alexander Graham Bell and the Birth of Recorded Sound” featured a dozen of these restored recordings.
- Graphophone: This is an 1881 experiment to record sound on a wax coated cylinder. The entire mechanism had to be scanned using a special dedicated set up. The resulting audio is the earliest wax recording yet reproduced.
- Electroformed disc: In October of 1881, Charles Sumner Tainter, one of the Volta Associates, documented an experiment to mass reproduce disc records through stamping. 3D scans have been made, and reproduced, of this “master disc” which is a documented electrotype of a wax disc cut with a lateral groove. In some sense the commercial recording industry itself can be seen as descending from this experiment.
- Photographic discs: In 1884-1885 the Volta Associates experimented with optical recording methods. Emulsion coated discs were exposed to a light beam modulated by audio signals. These experiments receded the later adoption of motion picture optical sound tracks by some forty years. In 2011 some of these discs were scanned using the 2D/IRENE method and audio was recovered.
- Wax discs: Bell and the Volta Associates created a variety of wax discs on diverse substrates. Some of these were meant to be played back with jets of compressed gas or fluid streams. A number of these have been scanned in 3D and reconstructed. One disc, from 1885, contains the documented voice of Bell himself.
• Talking doll: Beginning around 1887 Edison experimented with a miniature playback mechanism which could be fitted inside a “talking-doll”. This was perhaps the earliest commercial use of sound recording. A prototype mechanism with audio recorded on a since deformed metal ring, was scanned in 3D in 2011 and restored. This may also be the earliest recording of a women, who here is heard to recite “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
• Dickson: Around 1893 Edison and William Dickson experimented with sound recording synchronized to motion pictures. The Dickson Cylinder is broken into two pieces. It was partly transcribed by stylus playback in the late 1990’s. In 2012 a 3D scan of the entire cylinder was completed by temporarily holding the pieces together with polyethylene straps. (Since then many other broken cylinders have been scanned.)
• Bishop Museum: In 1891 King David Kalakaua of Hawaii was recorded by a representative from the Edison Company, in San Francisco. This cylinder, in the collection of the Bishop Museum, was scanned in 2011 but only small, essentially inaudible audio signals were found on the artifact.
• Berliner: Beginning in the late 1880’s, Emile Berliner popularized the disc record format, with a lateral groove, first explored by Bell in 1881 and described also by Edison around the same time. Berliner’s companies eventually became Victor, EMI, and Deutsche Gramophone. Commercial Berliner discs have been scanned and restored using both 3D and 2D methods.
• The Montana Fortune Teller: An early novelty application of sound recording was in arcade machines. A cracked 1906 wax cylinder containing “random” fortunes was scanned and restored using the 3D methods.
• Jack London: Towards the end of his life, novelist Jack London, dictated correspondence onto wax cylinders. A few of these remain with damage to the wax from mold growth. Some have been scanned in 3D revealing the writer’s voice and verified text from letters found in his collected correspondence.
• Franz Boas Recordings: In 1930 anthropologist Franz Boas filmed and recorded Kwakuitl culture at Fort Rupert in British Columbia. The recordings, on wax cylinders, were electrotyped at the Berlin Phonogramm Archive, resulting in wax derivatives. About 20 of these were scanned in 3D and the sound restored. Some improvement to the sound, as compared with stylus playback was found.
• Milman Parry: In the 1930’s, Harvard classicist Milman Parry collected South Slavic folklore on ~3000 soft aluminum transcription discs. This material forms the basis of research leading to the Parry-Lord oral-formulaic hypothesis of composition, and is in the collection of Harvard University. Such discs are problematic for playback due to an extremely small groove and the relative softness of the metal. Using the 3D scanner, a pilot study of some 25 discs from the collection was made and the results posted. Further work is underway.
• Howard Hughes: Glass or aluminum discs coated with lacquer were used in the 1930 and onwards for radio broadcast transcription. When Howard Hughes won the Collier Trophy for Aviation his speech was recorded on a disc coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer. These surfaces are soft and easily damage. One such disc was scanned using the 2D IRENE method and reconstructed.
• Janis Joplin: Beginning in the 1940’s and extending into the 1960’s, vending machines existed for creating personal messages on lacquer or plastic discs. Janis Joplin recorded such a disc as a message to her family prior to her career as a recording artist. The future artist is heard to banter and even sing, just a bit. She states “I have never heard my voice on record before.” The disc was scanned in 2D and reconstructed.
• Dictabelts: These are soft plastic loops which were used for office dictation and telephone or other monitoring applications in the mid-20th Century. There is considerable US Presidential history recorded on these belts. A variety of studies and pilot 3D scans have been carried out on dictabelts and considerable software has been developed to study and analyze them.