Particle Physics Resurrects Alexander Graham Bell’s Voice | Hacker News Reader

Particle Physics Resurrects Alexander Graham Bell’s Voice

spectrum.ieee.org

119 pointssohkamyung19 comments

I recall a documentary I watched a while ago, and had almost forgotten, about an African tribe in which the presenter plays a 100 year old old voice recording of the natives' ancestors made by an earlier explorer . You could see the astonishment and joy in their faces when they heard the voices and names of tribe members they had heard about but never even seen. (If anyone else has seen the documentary please remind me of its title)

We tend to place great emphasis on pictures and video, but audio recordings I believe, capture the past like none other. There is a connection here that is unique.

Great work by the creators of IRENE. Much praise also to Bell and his team, and all the other uncredited contributors to the development of the telephone.

I'm sure to start making audio recordings to store up for future generations.

You don't think they would have been even more excited to both see and hear their ancestors?

I don't know for sure, we have old reels aplenty yet we are still moved by scratchy barely audible voice recordings.

Perhaps a matter of focus. Audio recordings are more often conversational, video tends to be more hyperactive.

You may already have voice memos and voicemails on your phone right now. Take a moment to email them to yourself so you have another copy that’s easy to get to.

Can only concur in that hearing these recordings brought an involuntary tear to my eye. Something something human spirit.

It's gray-ham bell, in his own voice. Can't in good conscience use the short vowel a any longer

All evidence of hard-g GIF to the contrary...

https://gizmodo.com/the-creator-of-the-gif-says-its-pronounc...

It was also a very soft H, almost like gray-ahm

Not surprising as he grew up in Scotland, and that's how Britons today still pronounce Graham. Perhaps Graham was widely pronounced that way in Canada and the USA at the time too? I don't know.

The recovered recordings are on http://americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/h...

> Bell knew there was a distinct possibility of a patent fight with Edison, so on three occasions he had papers and experimental products sealed in tin boxes and deposited at the Smithsonian Institution for safekeeping.

You can (or could) do that?

Discussed at the time, in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5611288

For some reason this reminded me of the Narmer Palette, (one of?) the oldest artifacts naming a king and his works.

Where's the particle physics?

The same technology used to align the silicon detectors for ATLAS (one of the detectors on the LHC) was used to recover the audio. (article mentions optical metrology)

damn, retro scifiesque

It doesn’t seem right that a man who fought so hard to prevent deaf people from being taught sign language now gets to be heard forever.

Bell was a despicable monster whose work led to forced sterilizations in the US and to the holocaust in Germany.

If it had been me, I would have smashed the disk.

the IEEE is turning into an advertisement network?

I just hope the next floating point format does not do:

2E3 CocaCola + 3E4 BigMac =3.2E4 McMenu

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