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And the voice of a woman from 123 years ago is heard

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Hey, you’ve got to hear this. This is really cool.

The National Park Service in West Orange on Wednesday released online what historians believe is the earliest surviving talking doll recording.

The recording is the only example of a talking doll from 1888 known to survive today. Inventor Thomas A. Edison had begun to make talking dolls during the fall of that year. You also will hear the voice of an unidentified woman who lived 123 years ago. Edison captured the sound of the woman’s voice on a ring-shaped cylinder phonograph record made of solid metal.

Call up: http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/talking-doll-record-hear-the-recording.htm

On May 11, scientists at the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory in Berkeley, Cal. recovered sound from the artifact which has been preserved at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange. On the recording, the woman recites one verse of the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”.

“This recording has not been heard since Edison’s lifetime,” NPS Superintendent Greg Marshall said. “It represents a significant milestone in the early history of recorded sound technology.”

Edison museum curators first cataloged the record in 1967. It was found among items left in the desk of Edison’s secretary.

The solid tin record is significantly bent out of its original round, cylindrical shape. For this reason, curators were unable to play the recording using conventional methods. At the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Senior Scientist Carl Haber and Computer Systems Engineer Earl Cornell used a three-dimensional optical scanning technology developed during 2007–2009, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, to create a digital model of the surface of the record and reproduce the audio.

In November 1888, the New York Evening Sun announced that Edison’s talking dolls had just been “perfected,” and that “nothing remains but to manufacture them in large quantities.”

Edison hired women with suitable voices to make as many records as he thought would be needed once his talking dolls were put on the market. According to historian Patrick Feaster, the New York Evening Sun report marks the first time anyone is known to have been employed specifically to perform for the phonograph, so these women were arguably the world’s first professional recording artists. If the goal was to stockpile these tin records “in large quantities” to supply the eventual demand for talking dolls, as the Evening Sun suggests, then they may also have been the first phonograph recordings ever manufactured for sale to the public, even though they were never actually sold.

By 1890 Edison had switched the design to records made of wax rather than tin. The wax-record dolls failed to sell because they broke too easily – due in large part to the fragility of the records.

The research and development at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was supported by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, and creating new materials.

Thomas Edison National Historical Park is dedicated to promoting an international understanding and appreciation of the life and extraordinary achievements of Edison by preserving, protecting, and interpreting the park’s extensive historic artifact and archive collections at the Edison Laboratory Complex and Glenmont, the Edison family estate.

The Visitor Center is located at 211 Main Street in West Orange. The Laboratory Complex is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or directions please call 973-736-0550 ext. 11 or visit: www.nps.gov/edis.