November 6th, 2014 
THIS HAS BEEN EMBARRASSING THINGS ABOUT HUMANITY, PART 1 OF 36224




The haps: I actually thought Frank Lambert's talking clock was the #1 earliest recorded sound from humans - that's where Frank messes up counting to 12, and it's totally worth a listen - but when I did my PRE-WRITING COMICS RESEARCH (because I am a professional) it turns out in 2008 we realized we could scan old, unplayable VISUALIZATIONS of sound and convert those back. So that's why T-Rex says "playable", because you need computers to play back these phonautographs.

These recordings are fascinating - you can hear Frank's talking clock cylinder here. If you ask me, this is what ghosts sound like: distorted but vibrant, almost alive, crying out to us in voices we can barely understand. Tinfoil.com has lots of early recorded sound and they're all pretty great. You'd record onto wax cylinders by playing loudly, so it's a lot of brassy bands. But since playback wasn't loud enough, you'd need to record a new take for each set of recordings. There was no such thing as a master copy, and different recordings could all be from different takes. NEATO

– Ryan

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