Audio Cylinder Archive at UCSB

Download 10,000 of the First Recordings of Music Ever Made, Courtesy of the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

Open Culture | November 9, 2015

Long before vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s came along, people first experienced audio recordings through another medium — through cylinders made of tin foil, wax and plastic. In recent years, we’ve featured cylinder recordings from the 19th century that allow you to hear the voices of Leo Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Walt Whitman, Otto von Bismarck and other towering figures. Those recordings were originally recorded and played on a cylinder phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. But those were obviously just a handful of the cylinder recordings produced at the beginning of the recorded sound era.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/music/a13755/british-library-saving-sounds-of-history/

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder

<more at http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/download-10000-of-the-first-recordings-of-music-ever-made-courtesy-of-the-ucsb-cylinder-audio-archive.html; related links: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/music/a13755/british-library-saving-sounds-of-history/ (How the British Library Will Save Fragile Sound Recordings of WWI and Extinct Birds. The race to save early sound recordings before they disappear forever. January 14, 2015) and https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/ (History of the Cylinder Phonograph)>