Scientists are able to recover recordings of 125 years in the laboratory of Alexander Graham Bell

A team of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National have successfully managed to get the sound of voices recorded 125 years ago in the laboratory Volta Alexander Graham Bell. Through the use of 3D optical scanning technology got the voices of researchers working in the lab famous for over a century. Recordings that were made to try to improve the quality of newly invented phonograph was Thomas Edison.

The Volta Laboratory, also called Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory and Bell Laboratory was founded in 1887 in Washington by the famous scientist and inventor. The building, in the words of Bell, serve to "increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf."

Bell, famous for getting a patent on the telephone, was working late in 1880 with a team of researchers in the laboratory. As a precaution so as not to steal the ideas another group of investigators, the man sent periodically sample the results he was getting to the Smithsonian Institution for safekeeping each advance. Unfortunately, these devices do not always play the recordings were sent, so that had been stored in time for over a century.

The time and the technology itself has given way to advanced techniques until the present time. Announced today as researchers, optical scanning technology has made these recordings can be heard once again.

Restoration supported by a team of specialists in digital conversion system using hardware and software IRENE/3D, capable of taking high resolution images of the spinning disks and then eliminate the errors introduced by the damage to the discs or cylinders. A system where the first recordings can be played without touching anything on the original disk, because otherwise it is very likely that could be damaged in the process.

Finally, the achievements of the team through technique was the ability to hear human voices reciting Shakespeare, reading a book or newspaper. It is unclear whether some of the voices heard belong to Bell but everything points to yes. It is certain that in the laboratory Volta only worked three inventors: Bell, his cousin Charles Sumner Tainter and.