There's Vintage, Then There's Really Vintage
119 years ago, almost to the day, the first known audio recording in history was etched into a frail piece of paraffin wax. Thomas Alva Edison, the man responsible for pretty much every important invention in the 19th Century, used one of his early phonographs to scribe a live vocal performance in London of a Handel Oratorio in the Summer of 1888. The paraffin cylinder it was traced on was a frail medium. It would only survive to play the recording back 4 times. Fortunately for us, this original master copy was preserved to be re-mastered on other more permanent formats over the years for posterity.
Take a minute to listen to this beautifully eerie piece transmitted with all the scratches, pops, and fuzzes you would expect from such an archaic dubbing.
(Link via Wired Science)
