Cylinders

[Kitty]

Some of those are very strange! Just listened to this one:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detai ... 6&r=1&of=6

Yes, I listened to that odd one earlier. I wonder what the motivation was for making that.

Some of what they're saying is indistinguishable. I also noticed a strange kind of echo after many of the words, almost like an added reverb. I wonder if that was accidental?

I think it was accidental. Probably because the man was screaming!

[donnie]

Some of those are very strange! Just listened to this one:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detai ... 6&r=1&of=6

Yes, I listened to that odd one earlier. I wonder what the motivation was for making that.

Some of what they're saying is indistinguishable. I also noticed a strange kind of echo after many of the words, almost like an added reverb. I wonder if that was accidental?

I think it was accidental. Probably because the man was screaming!

Yeah, I'm just wondering how in that recording process you would have gotten a reverb like that. I guess it was something the needle was doing in the wax.

[donnie]

Here's another strange one—hard to make much of anything of it, but it's rather spooky.
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detai ... &r=1&of=22

[Kitty]

Here's another strange one—hard to make much of anything of it, but it's rather spooky.
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detai ... &r=1&of=22

I don't know.... It could be a coincidence, but if you Google Donald Paxton, it comes up a man who was born in July of 1915, which is when this recording was taken. Maybe it is mostly baby talk?

[donnie]

Interesting! I'll bet it is he. It does sound like a baby.

[Kitty]

Also, if you listen closely there's a little bit of that reverb we spoke of before. It could be something the horn causes, or maybe even a thing that sometimes happens in the digitizing. All speculation, of course!

[donnie]

Yes, I noticed that, too. Now I'm suspecting it may have something to do with the digitalizing, indeed. I've never heard anything like that on a cylinder.

[donnie]

Sidenote: Speaking of cylinders, have you seen this charming Edison 1910 infomercial for the cylinder dictation machine? (One of my favorite shorts. )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7iticaveQk

[Kitty]

That's a great short!! I wonder how her headphones worked. You'd think it would be very loud. Was there an adjustable volume? What did they mean by shaving the cylinder? Does that mean it can be listened to 100 times, or recorded over 100 times? Thanks for sharing! The film was very good quality, too.

[donnie]

I’m glad you liked that one. It’s an old favorite of mine.

Those eartubes apparently just hooked up directly to the diaphragm some which way or other in the place where the speaker was normally connected. They couldn’t have operated by electrical signal since the whole contraption was mechanical. So I guess there was no way to regulate the volume.

The wax on the cylinders was apparently thick enough that after a recording was made and no longer wanted, the outer surface with the grooves could be shaved off in that special machine, leaving fresh wax for a new recording. So it could apparently be re-recorded 100 times. Which was a good thing in a set-up like this, I guess.

One thing I like about this film is that it shows details of how things were in a typical business office of that day. I always like to see things that show the details of life, don’t you?