Something I once read, how an ancient voice recording was possible

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Something I once read, how an ancient voice recording was possible
Tweet Topic Started: Jul 9 2011, 07:46 AM (547 Views)
Kerr Avon	Jul 9 2011, 07:46 AM Post #1
Senior Member Posts: 560 Group: Senior Members Member #52 Joined: December 13, 2006	Some years ago, I read somewhere (I think it was in a book of essays by Arthur C. Clarke, or Carl Sagan) that making a (admittedly bad and very primitive) recording machine would have been very easy to do even for the Egyptians at the time they were building the pyramids. I can't remember the details, but I think you had to setup a rotating cylinder or something, made out of a wax like substance, set up a sound trap thing like a paper funnel connected to a pin which was carefully balanced over the wax (or whatever) thing then you rotated the wax via a handle that precisely moved the cylinder, and spoke loudly into the sound trap, and the needle recorded the sound (well, an analogue of the sound, of course). To play the sound back, you had a sort of reverse of the soundtrap. I remember it said that the results of this machine were usable though they had no method of increasing the playback volume, and of course the sound was lousy by even the most basic of standards any of us have ever used. But the essay (which I do know was factual, it was in a book on popular science, definitely not a book on science fiction) stressed that such a machine (which was described in fair detail in the essay, and probably nothing like I've described it here) required no precise engineering (at least not beyond anyone competent with their hands), used only items and substances easily found in Egypt four thousand years ago, and if the Egyptions, or whoever else had managed to conceive of such a contraption and build it, then today we might well have actual recordings of Egyption pharohs, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Plato, Hypocrates, Aristotle and so on. Does anyone remember reading anything similar? And once again, it is NOT a science fiction story, or any sort of fiction. It was in a book of science essays, of which I've read a fair few over the years, but I can't remember the book or the author (or the theme of the book, it may have been on history, and this was mentioned as an aside or the book might have been specifically about one subject, but I really doubt it was specifically about sound recording, as I don't think I'd pick up a book devoted to that but it's possible the book's chapters each covered a different branch of science or mechanics, and what I remember was from a chapter on sound recordings).



stinger9142	Jul 9 2011, 10:16 AM Post #2
Endure and survive... Posts: 6,726 Group: Admin Member #48 Joined: December 4, 2006	I have never heard of that, but it definately sounds interesting. We do not give ancient cultures enough credit for what they could do!



Grimakis	Jul 11 2011, 10:04 AM Post #3
Senior Member Posts: 232 Group: Senior Members Member #556 Joined: July 7, 2011	The device you describe is an Edison Phonograph : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediphone A device like this wasn't created until the 1870's. It functioned much like early record-players, but instead of playing shellac or vinyl discs, they played wax cylinders. The Ancient Greeks certainly had the technology to make a primitive version of this device. The Ancient Greeks knew that sounds were expansions and contractions of air. Having that concept, they had the capacity to create such a device. They only needed to put together a simple chain of ideas. Ex: Sounds are vibrations, vibrations can be used to oscillate a needle, the needle's oscillations can be recorded on a soft surface and the same needle could be used to play back the sound.


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