Hear the Voice of Alexander Graham Bell for the First Time in a Century

in History, Technology | April 25th, 2013

graham bell

In the past, we’ve brought you sound record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry — record­ings that recap­ture the long lost voic­es of fig­ures likes Walt Whit­man, Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, William Glad­stone, Tchaikovsky, and Thomas Edi­son. Now, thanks to the “dra­mat­ic appli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy,” the Smith­son­ian brings you (quite fit­ting­ly) the lost voice of the tele­phone’s inven­tor, Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell. Accord­ing to biog­ra­ph­er Char­lotte Gray, Bell record­ed his voice onto discs while con­duct­ing sound exper­i­ments between 1880 and 1886. Although the discs remained in the Smith­so­ni­an’s pos­ses­sion for decades, researchers lacked the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to play them back, and Bel­l’s voice went “mute” until Carl Haber, a sci­en­tist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, fig­ured out how to take high res­o­lu­tions scans of the discs and con­vert them into playable audio files. That’s what you can hear below. In the short record­ing dat­ed April 15, 1885, the inven­tor declares: “Hear my voice — Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell.”

H/T Mal­colm; audio via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

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Richard Feynman Introduces the World to Nanotechnology with Two Seminal Lectures (1959 & 1984)

in Physics, Technology | April 23rd, 2013

In Decem­ber of 1959, Richard Feyn­man gave a talk called “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at an annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety at Cal­tech. In this famous lec­ture, Feyn­man laid the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for the field now called nan­otech­nol­o­gy when he imag­ined a day when things could be minia­tur­ized — when huge amounts of infor­ma­tion could be encod­ed onto increas­ing­ly small spaces, and when machin­ery could be made con­sid­er­ably small­er and more com­pact. He asked his audi­ence:

I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a prac­ti­cal way, but I do know that com­put­ing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of lit­tle wires, lit­tle ele­ments, and by lit­tle, I mean lit­tle?

Although some have ques­tioned the degree to which Feyn­man influ­enced the rise of nan­otech­nol­o­gy, his lec­ture is still seen as a sem­i­nal event in the short his­to­ry of the nano field. It’s impor­tant enough that, 25 years lat­er, Feyn­man was invit­ed to give an updat­ed ver­sion of “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at a week­long sem­i­nar held at the Esalen Insti­tute in Octo­ber, 1984.

This time around, he called his talk “Tiny Machines.” And while stick­ing close to the 1959 script, Feyn­man’s revised lec­ture shows what tech­no­log­i­cal advances had been made since he first out­lined his vision for a nano world. You can watch the full 79 minute talk above.

Final­ly, since we’re talk­ing about things nano, let me leave you with this — Stephen Fry’s 2010 primer on nanoscience. Pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scin­e­ma Sci­ence Film Fes­ti­val and it does a pret­ty good job of explain­ing the nano world in 17 short min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cor­nell (1964)

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Ani­ma­tion

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Learn How Richard Feynman Cracked the Safes with Atomic Secrets at Los Alamos

in Math, Physics, Technology | April 17th, 2013

The sto­ry has become part of physics lore: A young Richard Feyn­man, future Nobel win­ner, was bored with life in the remote New Mex­i­co desert while work­ing on the atom­ic bomb dur­ing World War II, so he amused him­self by learn­ing to pick the com­bi­na­tion locks in the sup­pos­ed­ly secure fil­ing cab­i­nets con­tain­ing Amer­i­ca’s nuclear secrets. As Feyn­man would lat­er write in his essay, “Safe­crack­er Meets Safe­crack­er”:

To demon­strate that the locks meant noth­ing, when­ev­er I want­ed some­body’s report and they weren’t around, I’d just go in their office, open the fil­ing cab­i­net, and take it out. When I was fin­ished I would give it back to the guy: “Thanks for your report.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Out of your fil­ing cab­i­net.”

“But I locked it!”

“I know you locked it. The locks are no good.”

So the offi­cials at Los Alam­os installed cab­i­nets with bet­ter locks. But Feyn­man stud­ied the new ones sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, giv­en a lit­tle time, he could open any lock at will. As a joke, he left a note in one cab­i­net that said, “I bor­rowed doc­u­ment no. LA4312–Feynman the safe­crack­er.”

I opened the safes which con­tained all the secrets to the atom­ic bomb: the sched­ules for the pro­duc­tion of the plu­to­ni­um, the purifi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures, how much mate­r­i­al is need­ed, how the bomb works, how the neu­trons are gen­er­at­ed, what the design is, the dimensions–the entire infor­ma­tion that was known at Los Alam­os: the whole schmeer!

To learn a bit about how Feyn­man did it, watch this fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle video by jour­nal­ist Brady Haran of the YouTube-fund­ed Num­ber­phile. Haran inter­views Roger Bow­ley, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, who explains sev­er­al of the inge­nious meth­ods used by Feyn­man to solve the prob­lem of crack­ing a lock with (sup­pos­ed­ly) a mil­lion pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions. And to learn more about Feyn­man’s adven­ture as a safe­crack­er, be sure to read “Safe­crack­er Meets Safe­crack­er,” which is includ­ed in his book Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man! and can be read on PDF by click­ing here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cor­nell (1964)

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Ani­ma­tion

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The Shaggy, Cute, Eco-Friendly Lawnmowers of Paris

in Random, Technology | April 4th, 2013

They toyed with the idea of a don­key, but they went with four sheep instead, and now four ewes are mow­ing the grounds of Paris’ Munic­i­pal Archives. It’s all part of a pilot pro­gram where, if suc­cess­ful, sheep will trim the grass of Parisian pub­lic spaces and burn no fos­sil fuels along the way. The New York Times has more on this old school solu­tion to a mod­ern envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem.

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Roger Ebert Talks Movingly About Losing and Re-Finding His Voice (TED 2011)

in Film, Life, Technology, TED Talks | April 4th, 2013

Film crit­ic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great tor­rent of words. Those of us accus­tomed to seek­ing out his opin­ion can com­fort our­selves on the Inter­net, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in per­pe­tu­ity.

After a rup­tured carotid artery robbed him of the pow­er of speech, words assumed an even greater impor­tance for Ebert. Even though he felt lucky to be alive in an age when most home com­put­ers come equipped with a text-to-speech option, he mourned the loss of inflec­tion, tim­ing, and spon­tane­ity. Cere­Proc, a Scot­tish firm spe­cial­iz­ing in per­son­al­ized com­put­er voic­es, cre­at­ed a cus­tom ver­sion he breezi­ly referred to as Roger Junior or Roger 2.0, a Franken­stein’s mon­ster assem­bled from hours of tele­vi­sion appear­ances. A noble, but flawed attempt. Despite his Mid­west­ern attrac­tion to Apple’s com­put­er­ized British accent, Ebert returned to its Amer­i­can male voice, “Alex”, as the most expres­sive option.

In 2011, the speech­less Ebert gave a TED Talk on the sub­ject. “Alex” was giv­en his moment to shine, but there’s no way the tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle can com­pete with the human spec­ta­cle onstage.

Rather than rely on the rel­a­tive­ly autonomous voice sub­sti­tute, Ebert arranged for his wife, Chaz Ham­mel­smith, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, to read his words from pre­pared scripts.

For­get W.C. Fields’ caveat about per­form­ing with chil­dren and dogs. Ebert stole his own show, shame­less­ly upstag­ing his loved ones with jol­ly pan­tomimed thumbs ups and oth­er antics. When he’s on cam­era, you can’t take your eyes off him…as he clear­ly knew. A 2010 Esquire arti­cle by Chica­go-based the­ater crit­ic, Chris Jones, described how the removal of Ebert’s low­er jaw gave him the aspect of a per­ma­nent smile. The dis­fig­ure­ment was shock­ing, but espe­cial­ly so on one whose face was so famil­iar. It led to fre­quent mis­as­sump­tions that he had been men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed as well. Ham­mel­smith’s tears when she gets to this part of her hus­band’s elo­quent TED Talk speak vol­umes as well. His will­ing­ness to place him­self front and cen­ter, where peo­ple who might think it impo­lite to stare could not help but see and hear him as a whole per­son, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

“With­out intel­li­gence and mem­o­ry, there is no his­to­ry.”  — Roger Ebert, 1942 — 2013

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a writer in the Big Apple.

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The Popular Science Digital Archive Lets You Explore Every Science and Technology-Filled Edition Since 1872

in Archives, History, Science, Technology | April 4th, 2013

popsci

Pop­u­lar Sci­ence is the fifth old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly-pub­lished month­ly magazine—a long way of say­ing that the mag­a­zine has done a fine job of main­tain­ing a niche in a crazi­ly fast-paced indus­try. Found­ed in 1872 by sci­ence writer Edward Youmans to reach an audi­ence of edu­cat­ed laypeo­ple, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence today com­bines reviews of the lat­est gad­gets with sto­ries about inno­va­tion in design and sci­ence. It’s an orga­nized mish­mash of news about “the future now,” lib­er­al­ly defined. A recent issue includ­ed sto­ries about the military’s use of 3‑D print­ing and an astro­physi­cist who ques­tions whether Shake­speare wrote the entire Folio.

With that kind of breadth, the magazine’s archives cov­er just about every­thing. And it’s easy to browse through back issues, dat­ing all the way back to 1872, since the mag­a­zine teamed up with Google to put a search­able archive on the web. The ear­li­est issues, like this one from Feb­ru­ary 1920, fea­ture col­or cov­ers that bring to mind sci­ence fic­tion with a fas­ci­na­tion for the imag­ined future.

One of the cool things about the mag­a­zine is its equal atten­tion to new and old tech­nol­o­gy. Search for “scis­sors” and you will find this 1964 arti­cle about the mechan­ics of sharp­en­ing your own scis­sors. The archive also offers anoth­er search tool that returns results in a visu­al word fre­quen­cy grid, which is espe­cial­ly cool if you click the “ani­mate” but­ton. Any social his­to­ri­ans out there able to explain why the word “scis­sor” would appear so often in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry?

Inter­est­ing­ly, although the word “inter­net” dates back to the 1960s, the word did­n’t appear in the magazine’s pages until 1989.

Peri­od adver­tise­ments are includ­ed, which adds to the fun. This issue from Sep­tem­ber, 1944 includes a house-adver­tise­ment on the table of con­tents page call­ing for all col­lec­tors of back issues to con­sid­er sur­ren­der­ing them for the war cause. “There’s a war going on and this is no time for sen­ti­ment,” the ad urges. “Grit your teeth and dig out those stacks of back num­bers. Then turn them over to your local paper sal­vage dri­ve!” Enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

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A Gallery of Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs: Iconic Moments Briefly Animated

in Animation, Film, Technology, Web/Tech | March 16th, 2013

shining2_32677

Type “stu­pid ani­mat­ed gif”—or words to that effect—into your pre­ferred search engine and you’ll be reward­ed with an abun­dance of ger­mane mate­r­i­al.

Mean­while a search on “ani­mat­ed gif of Stan­ley Kubrick rolling in his grave” fails to yield any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.

Pity. I guess we’ll just have to imag­ine how the late per­fec­tion­ist and cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor would have react­ed to a gallery of his most icon­ic images, down­loaded and doc­tored into infi­nite­ly loop­ing, min­i­mal­ly ani­mat­ed snip­pets.

clockwork_27123

Per­haps I pre­sume. Per­haps he’d be pray­ing for some­one to rean­i­mate him, so he could haunt the realm of the late night cha­t­rooms, his every obser­va­tion and opin­ion punc­tu­at­ed with a lan­guid Sue Lyons lift­ing her head in Loli­ta, or a dia­bol­i­cal Clock­work Orange toast.

Admit­ted­ly, the longer one watch­es George C Scot­t’s Gen­er­al Turgid­son work­ing over a mouth­ful of gum, or Jack Nichol­son act­ing four kinds of crazy, the more tempt­ing it is to put togeth­er a cin­ema­graph of one’s own. That’s the high fly­ing term assigned to the form by artist Kevin Burg and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Beck who alleged­ly invent­ed (and lat­er trade­marked) it while cov­er­ing New York Fash­ion Week. To quote super­mod­el Coco Rocha, as they do on their web­site, “it’s more than a pho­to but not quite a video.”

Be fore­warned that it’s not a project for the Pho­to­shop new­bie. Maybe the instruc­tion­al video below just makes it seem so.  (Though if you’re look­ing for an instruc­tion­al video on how not to make an instruc­tion­al video, this is very instruc­tion­al indeed. If not, stick with a more straight for­ward, non-film-based how to. Stan­ley Kubrick, this guy ain’t.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cin­ema­graph: A Haunt­ing Photo/Video Hybrid

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Ayun Hal­l­i­day rec­om­mends Stan­ley Kubrick­’s “Paths of Glo­ry” in its orig­i­nal form.

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Artist Robbie Cooper’s Video Project Immersion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTubers

in Art, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | March 8th, 2013

What if that screen you’re peer­ing at was some­thing akin to a one-way mir­ror? There’s a def­i­nite aspect of dress­ing room hor­ror, view­ing artist Rob­bie Coop­er’s Immer­sion project, a video col­lec­tion of the alter­nate­ly grotesque and dull expres­sions appear­ing on peo­ple’s faces as they play video games and watch YouTube. (The view­er is nev­er privy to what’s show­ing on the sub­jects’ screens, but one sus­pects it’s like­ly less rar­i­fied than a short ani­ma­tion inspired by physi­cist Richard Feyn­man’s remarks on a flower or film­mak­er Miran­da July’s lyri­cal advice to the pro­cras­ti­na­tion-prone). But before we denounce the most­ly under­aged par­tic­i­pants’ dead eyes and slack jaws—an effect made more dis­turb­ing by the sound­track­’s high inci­dence of gunfire—perhaps we should turn the web cam on our­selves.

That’s exact­ly what Coop­er is hop­ing will hap­pen, as he pre­pares to expand the pro­jec­t’s scope to include peo­ple of all ages and nation­al­i­ties. “Babies being born right now arrive in a land­scape where com­put­ers, smart­phones, the inter­net, and social media already exist,” he explains, “While the old­est gen­er­a­tion alive today can remem­ber a time before TV was a fix­ture of our liv­ing room.”

To widen the net, Coop­er is turn­ing to crowd sourc­ing. Whether some­one who know­ing­ly trains the cam­era on him or her­self can achieve the pre­vi­ous par­tic­i­pants zoo-like lack of inhi­bi­tion remains to be seen, but the Kick­starter cam­paign to fund this next phase lays things out on a grand scale. The plan is for the pub­lic to con­tribute via uploads and a social media aggre­ga­tor. More excit­ing­ly, they’re encour­aged to seize the reins by cre­at­ing a series of instruc­tions and prompts for those com­ing lat­er to fol­low.

Let us hope this will lead to a more heart­en­ing vari­ety of expres­sions, as well as the book, doc­u­men­tary, and  inter­ac­tive exhibits Coop­er envi­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Kid on Tele­vi­sion

Art in the Era of the Inter­net (and Why Open Edu­ca­tion Mat­ters)

The Cre­ators Project Presents the Future of Art and Design, Brought to You by Intel and Vice Mag­a­zine

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s lap­top is direct­ly respon­si­ble for two ver­ti­cal creas­es between her brows.

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