Wednesday, January 10, 2007

It could be very true that very soon we'll have a chance to hear the voices of the famous people of the past, such as Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria. The speech/presentations of the heads of states, famous writers, poets and musicians of the past had been reordered on the wax and tin sound carriers. But now, they are so old and worn-out, that even with the help of modern techniques, it's almost impossible to listen to then. However, two scientists in the laboratory of the Berkley University in California have been testing a new device, which will be able to reanimate the old recordings. They scan sound tracks with the help of a microscope, and their image reflects as corresponding electrical signals, which are being transformed into a sound by a computer. At first, these two scientists were able to draw out the pure sound from the old gramophone records of 1950's. They were so lucky, that could clean all sound tracks' distortions and damages. The advantage of this technology is that the scientists only "watch" recordings, they neither touch nor play it. This system works like copier. The most part of the wax gramophone recordings was damaged due to bad storage conditions. But the scientists still don't give up and hope to be able to read the information from these recordings and hear the voices from the past. They say that there are voices of queen Victoria, poets, actresses and actors and many more famous people. According to some information, during the Civil War in the United States in 1863 former American president Abraham Lincoln was recorded on the phonograph.