Robo Jesus

All Hail The Saviour Of Computer Geeks Everywhere. It was programmed with scalable compatibility and simplicity, yet It was decommissioned on the UNIVAC mainframe for our parsing errors......

(And yes, it's a REAL TOY from Japan)

"Au Claire de la Lune" Unknown (1860)

Just when you thought you've heard everything in music, comes a blast from the '60s....

That's the 1860s....

Almost two decades before Thomas Edison unveiled his tin foil cylinder phonograph, a little known French scientist named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was also researching audio recording. 

He built a device called a "phonautograph" that recorded sound waves. 

However, unlike Edison, his device had no means of playback. His recordings were made on plate glass and later paper and stored, unplayed for nearly 150 years. There were no known means of playing the recordings without permanent damage to the extremely delicate grooves.

Finally, just a few years ago, with the aid of lasers and computer audio restoration, a 10 second snippet of a human voice singing "Au Clair de la Lune", recorded in February of 1860 was recovered from these recordings. An earlier 1859 recording of a tuning fork and possibly a bit of a human voice recorded in 1857 were also found. But that recording was too short to identify positively.

You can hear the "Au Clair de la Lune" recording below. Granted, the fidelity is extemely low, just barely recognizable. But it's history:

http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune.mp3

There is now a web site dedicated to the digitizing and preservation of phonautpgraph recordings:

http://www.firstsounds.org

The oldest playable recording up until then was the Lambert Talking Clock from 1878. Unlike Edison, who was recording and playing on weak tin foil at that time, Frank Lambert used a sturdy solid lead cylinder. Here is an MP3 of that (the audio on that too was barely recognizeable.):

http://www.tinfoil.com/lam-clock~.mp3

And until the recent playback of the 1860 phonautograph recording, this 1888 wax cylinder of Handel's Israel In Egypt was considered to be the earliest known surviving music recording. Again it's low fi, but eerily beautiful: 

http://www.archive.org/download/EDIS-SRP-0154-17/EDIS-SRP-0154-17.mp3

It was recorded on a wax covered cardboard cylinder, hence the heavy surface noise - especially at the end.

It has been speculated that ancient etched pottery COULD hold sound vibrations from as far back as 1000 B.C. But that hasn't been proven yet. Pottery clay itself is among the worst substances to make a recording on and unless the person making the pottery was singing VERY loudly to tool etching a groove - a possibility, but a very distant one. I doubt it...

Cheers!

Before They Were Stars: Lemmy

Here is a lost rock n' roll gem from Lemmy Kilmister and his early band The Rockin' Vickers from 1966 (LONG before he became the leather lunged lead singer of Motorhead.) 

Happy #@&!$% Valentine's Day: Songs For The Dumped

Valentine's Day.....Is there ANY day more REVOLTING?

Of course not. At least the fact you just got dumped isn't rubbed into your face by every Madison Avenue commercial jingle on Halloween.

For every happy couple you see today, there are couples who were missed by Cupid's arrow.

These songs are for them.......

20. "F--k It (I Don't Want You Back)" Eamon
19. "Kiss This" Joanna Dean
18. "Gives You Hell" The All American Rejects
17. "You Oughta Know" Alanis Morrisette
16. "Love Stinks" J. Geils Band
15. "Before He Cheats" Carrie Underwood
14. "I Hate Everything About You" Ugly Kid Joe
13. "Coney Island Whitefish" Joan Jett
12. "Ain't No Pleasing You" Chas & Dave
11. "My Give A Damn's Busted" Jo Dee Messina
10. "I Hate Everything About You" Three Days Grace
9. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" Joy Division
8. "You're Breaking My Heart" Harry Nilsson
7. "Song For The Dumped" Ben Folds Five
6. "She's Got The Ring (I Got The Finger)" George Strait
5. "Nag" Joan Jett
4. "They'll Need A Crane" They Might Be Giants
3. "Leave You Behind" Sleater-Kinney
2. "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" Green Day
1. "The Salt In My Tears" Martin Briley

Part 15 Radio

If you ever wanted to run a radio station (and who hasn't?), there is a way you can do it without a lot of money, that has small, but fair enough range (about a mile, more or less - enough for a local neighbourhood) and without a license - legally.

There's a little known sub-section in the Code of Federal Regulations under Title 47 called Part 15. Under this section, you can legally operate a small radio transmitter running no more than 100mW (milliwatts) and a maximum antenna height of three meters (about 10 feet) on AM. (FM is much more limited in signal strength and smaller in antenna height.)

You can operate on either AM of FM. But the range you get with FM is much more limited (about 250 feet) than with AM. AM is by far the best method of transmitting under Part 15 rules.

Most Part 15 operators transmit in the upper portion of the AM dial, in that "expanded band" area that appeared on AM radios made past 1988 between 1600-1700 on the AM dial where there are fewer stations. Range is actually farther on these frequencies than those on the lower end of the AM dial. Which was something I never understood because technically, the lower end of the dial always seemed to have the farthest broadcast range of most AM stations. But I think that's factoring in grounding and other high-end engineering methods (that's one downside with AM, you have to really study radio transmission methods and theory.)

Here are some web sites that can get you started on this incredible little hobby:

http://www.hobbybroadcaster.net

http://www.part15.us

http://www.lpam.net