How much earlier could sound recording have happened?

Derek Jackson · Dec 2, 2012

Basically what it say on the tin?

I have to say it would be really intersting to hear Lincoln's second inaugaral.

How hard would it be?

Dathi THorfinnsson · Dec 3, 2012

Derek Jackson said:
Basically what it say on the tin?
...
How hard would it be?

Not very hard, probably.

Derek Jackson said:
I have to say it would be really intersting to hear Lincoln's second inaugaral.

Remember that the first versions of sound recordings had no reproduction capability - they were one off. Then they figured out how to do 10 copies for each recording, then 100. But it was quite a while before anyone figured out a way to do a master disk that they could press copies from.

Also, you had to speak right into the trumpet. So you would NOT have copies of the actual speech. What you might have is him (or someone) recording the speech later.

Given the difficulties, I doubt you'd move things forward much.

Armored Diplomacy · Dec 3, 2012

Actually, the first sound recording ever is from 1860. You could probably bump it back to mid or early 1850s, and if they kept working at it, you can have coherent recordings by the mid to late 1860s instead of the 1880s (yes, there were coherent recordings even back then).

Dathi THorfinnsson · Dec 3, 2012

Armored Diplomacy said:
Actually, the first sound recording ever is from 1860. You could probably bump it back to mid or early 1850s, and if they kept working at it, you can have coherent recordings by the mid to late 1860s instead of the 1880s (yes, there were coherent recordings even back then).

One offs. Sure. Ten copies from a single recording? quite possibly.

Enough to be commercial? I doubt it.

Tallest Skil · Dec 3, 2012

Wait, isn't there some artifact from somesuch BC that could have possibly been used to record sounds?

Gosh, what was that. It was on a show… I think the recording might have been inadvertent and then they discovered it…

Dathi THorfinnsson · Dec 5, 2012

Tallest Skil said:
Wait, isn't there some artifact from somesuch BC that could have possibly been used to record sounds?

Gosh, what was that. It was on a show… I think the recording might have been inadvertent and then they discovered it…

Iirc, pottery incised with a needle that picked up sound vibrations from the air. No playback then, though.

TIMER · Dec 6, 2012

If you look at the device in armored diplomacy's thread and Edisons early device you see that the recording cylinders are advanced by a precision screw. So you need a reliable method of producing the needed screw. In OTL that was the late 1700's, prior to that screw threads were hand made and not repeatable enough to play back a recording on a device other than the one that made it. If you accept that limitation the Greeks or Romans could have done it.

Mike Stearns · Dec 6, 2012

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Iirc, pottery incised with a needle that picked up sound vibrations from the air. No playback then, though.

That was disproved on Mythbusters. And it was based on an X-files episode.

Mongo · Dec 6, 2012

The X-files episode was from 2000. A 1979 short story by Gregory Benford entitled "Time Shards" used this very idea (the voice of a potter and another person conversing, being recorded in the clay pot), and the idea was discussed as early as 1969 in New Scientist.

It appears from several experiments by different people using typical line-incising techniques on clay pots, that sounds including human words could in fact be recovered:

"Acoustic Recordings from Antiquity", Proceedings of the IEEE 57 (8): 1465–1466, August 1969

Kleiner, Mendel; Åström, Paul (1993), "The Brittle Sound of Ceramics - Can Vases Speak?", Archeology and Natural Science 1: 66–72