Speaking of ghosts . . .
Check this out: 1860 'Phonautograph' Is Earliest Known Recording.
*shivers* I love this sort of thing. This officially replaces the 1878 Experimental Talking Clock as my number one creepy old recording (although the ETC is still quite close to the top of the list). I had actually known about the Phonautograph for years and wondered if it might be possible to reconstruct the original sounds. I even emailed some researchers who had developed a method for reproducing sound from gramophone records by creating digital models of the record grooves, and suggested that the same basic principles might be applied to the 2D Phonautograph renderings. They never wrote back, but at least now I know the idea was actually plausible!
*shivers* I love this sort of thing. This officially replaces the 1878 Experimental Talking Clock as my number one creepy old recording (although the ETC is still quite close to the top of the list). I had actually known about the Phonautograph for years and wondered if it might be possible to reconstruct the original sounds. I even emailed some researchers who had developed a method for reproducing sound from gramophone records by creating digital models of the record grooves, and suggested that the same basic principles might be applied to the 2D Phonautograph renderings. They never wrote back, but at least now I know the idea was actually plausible!