For those of you who didn't catch the PBS News Hour either last Wednesday or Tuesday night (sorry, I forget which), there was a feature on a recently restored foil recording from around 1878. When Edison invented the original phonograph, the recording medium was a cylinder with a layer of tinfoil wrapped around it. I don't know if the tinfoil was meant to be separated from the cylinder so that the cylinder could be reused with a new tinfoil wrap for additional recordings, or not. Anyhow, this particular piece of foil had been folded over on itself seven times and was in pretty bad chape, so bad, in fact, that it couldn't be touched. Digital photographs were taken of the grooves in the cylinder and they were converted to a digitized signal that was then cleaned up electronically, to remove as much noise as possible. The result was a staticy cornet solo followed by a barely understandable reading of "Mary Had a Little Lamb." That nursery rhyme is purported to be the first recording ever done, that Edison himself made, on the prototype phonograph machine. According to the PBS story, once the phonograph came into at least privileged use, everybody who bought one recorded that same nursery rhyme on it. The foil recording has been placed in the archive of one museum or another; sorry, I forget which. -- Thanx, *Ray *