2008-03-27

No sound before its time?

This late breaking story about the recovery of the sound of a French recording, predating Edison's famous recording has relevance to our modern efforts in digital document archiving. Apparently, Edouard-Leon Scott was able to record sound but not in a way that his contemporaries could play back. It makes the point that archives that do not provide for an immediate "read out" can easily be lost to posterity even if they are physically durably accessible. This is the distinction between light and dark archives.



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