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Queen Victoria's voice may soon be heard for the first
time in over a century thanks to the pioneering work of Southampton Science Park
based TaiCaan Technologies Ltd.
It is believed that the Queen's voice was captured on a
graphophone - a recording machine made by Thomas Edison. Early recordings
of this type were made by a needle scratching a groove into a wax
cylinder.
Unfortunately, the wax is very soft so repeated playing
wears out the grooves and damages the recording. Many important recordings
from early times cannot be played, because of the fear of further damage
by the stylus.
To overcome this problem, TaiCaan Technologies have
built a prototype surface profiler that allows these cylinder recordings
to be played without any further wear. The profiler uses optical methods
to measure the surface of the groove without touching it - much like sonar
scanning the ocean floor.
Not only are the recordings being heard for the first
time in many years, this new method also improves their sound quality.
Once they've been profiled, these early recordings can be transferred into
digital format and may ultimately be available over the Internet. With
TaiCaan's cutting edge technology, the voices from the past are being
brought back to life.
To listen to the reconstructed sound, visit their web
page at www.taicaan.com under
'Archive Sound Project'.
Pictured: Christian Maul of TaiCaan
Technologies (left) and
Professor John W McBride of Southampton University
with one of the recording cylinders.
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