Is it possible?
Alaska
idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
see what you think. It goes something like this:
A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
this point and the sound can be reproduced.
Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
(presumably with a laser beam)?
We have talked about this amongst ourselves and none of us are convinced
this cannot be done but then again none of us are audio/laser specialists
either. My personal concern is whether or not paper is subtle enough to be
capable of capturing the vibrations of a human voice (or any sound
vibration for that matter). But once again I am not a specialist in this
area, and there have been many types of paper used over the centuries.
My friend notes that most quill pens were split in the middle and thus in
many cases you would have two tracks recorded in parallel to one another.
In this case you could compare the two tracks and whatever vibrations are
not contained in both tracks could be eliminated thus removing any noise
caused by the sound of the pen scratching on the surface of the paper. The
remaining noise would be the sounds of the room... whatever those might
be.
I'm sure you can all imagine the possibilities. For example the king
dictating to the scribe his most recent decree, Beethoven tapping out
notes on the piano as he transcribed his music, the noises and sounds of
the bar as Edgar Allen Poe wrote his most recent work or the church bells
from the Cathedral of Notre Dame ringing in the background. Any event in
human history where a person was present and writing with a pen has the
potential of having been recorded. The ramifications would be extremely
profound.
I ask you all to treat this question with seriousness and to give your
thoughts on the possibility of this actually working. Thanks for any input
or observations you might have.
Clint Biery
Fairbanks Alaska
P.S. I originally wrote this post for rec.audio.pro but then added the
other newsgroups afterwords. I don't generally like to crosspost but the
cross-pollination of ideas from one group to the next will be helpful in
this case I suspect.
Simon Crouch
: Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
: that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
: scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
: that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
: resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
: vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
: the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
: the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
: surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
: (presumably with a laser beam)?
This is a hoary old one! The last time I saw it was a "New Scientist"
magazine Christmas special a number of years ago - the guise it appeared
in there involved the wallpaper of the room in which things were played
or spoken. I also seem to recall seeing it on a physics exam - as a test of
ability to do order of magnitude calculations.
Simon Crouch.
Peter J. Heitman
>
> A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
> idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
> see what you think. It goes something like this:
>
> A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
> transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
> in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
> this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>
> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
If the paper or ink did retain some impression of the audio frequency
vibrations, a basic limitation would be trying to match the original
speed of the recording. One does not write with a constant "stylus"
speed against the paper. In order to reproduce the original recorded
frequencies, you would have to match the original recording speed during
each interval of time. Physically, this is nearly impossible because
there is certainly no control track.
But, let's imagine you could somehow match the original recording speed.
The next issue would be what kind of intelligent signal could be
retrieved from the surface. It would be my guess that the paper fibers
would give the highest signal (noise). I have no idea what the size of
the paper fibers is, perhaps .0001". Given an average 1" per second
record speed, a surface with .0001" fibers would give a peek noise signal
of around 10 KHz (freq = speed / wavelength). This value could be
interpreted as the "sampling rate." Rule of thumb tells us that this
limits the recording to a maximum of 1000 Hz (1/10 the sampling rate).
Any speech types out there may want to comment on how much voice
intelligence is below 1000 Hz.
Another consideration is the consistancy of the paper fibers. If it is
known that all the fibers were of the same size, equally spaced and all
oriented the same way, then any variations from this norm could be
considered signal. Again, my guess is the random nature of the fibers
would make it impossible to discern the signal.
Interesting concept and exercise......
These thoughts are mine alone and do not express the views of 3M.
Opinions expressed herein are my own and may not represent those of 3M.
M Barnard
jd...@imagi.net (Alaska) wrote:
[snip]
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
Already used as the basis of a short story that I read years ago. Can't
remember the name, can't remember the author.
M
bar...@io.org (M Barnard)---http://www.io.org/~barnard/web/barnard.htm---
The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.
Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944)
Milo D. Cooper
>
> Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> (presumably with a laser beam)?
Ssshhh!! Don't give the materialistic avant-gardes any ideas,
they might demand government funding for them...
--
**************************************
*___________Milo D. Cooper___________*
* mco...@sonyinteractive.com *
**************************************
Scott Dorsey
>
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
There is a story by Arthur C. Clarke on a similar subject, in which
the spiral grooves in medeval pottery are played back. There actually
was some work in the sixties on doing this sort of thing with pottery,
although they never got so far as to find audible voices.
For writing I doubt you'd have anything useful, though, because the fine
movements of the hand would swamp anything induced by external sounds.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Lorne Tontegode
>
> A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
> idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
> see what you think. It goes something like this:
>
> A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
> transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
> in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
> this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>
> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
> other newsgroups afterwords. I don't generally like to crosspost but the
> cross-pollination of ideas from one group to the next will be helpful in
> this case I suspect.
Wouldn't it be nice if it worked. However, I would
doubt very much if there is any chance.
A couple of things to consider:
1) The quality of the media. There would be so many
inconsistancies and defects in the paper of those
eras.
2) The poor quality of the pens (ie inconsistent
flow and tip shape)
3) How do you filter out the natural vibrations of
the human.
4) The shift of the fibers in the paper over time.
Nothing is truly stable in this world.
5) The break down of the inks over time. There
would be a lot of loss of definition of the
original line profile.
But then again, who knows.
--
Lorne
Ideas in Motion
id...@interlog.com
http://www.interlog.com/~ideas
mat...@mindspring.com
I think it must have been skunk weed. :-)
Steven Vogel
preposterousness...
Silk is extruded from the spinnerets of silkworms as a liquid that then
very rapidly hardens in air. The filaments are well less than a tenth
of a millimeter in diameter, so solidification really is quick. Since
the moths (Bombyx mori, mainly) take a lot of care, the process has been
done in buildings with human attendents for millenia. If those humans
were speaking, would the speech be recorded as variations in the
diameters of the silk threads? If so, one could play back the gossip of
the attendents in ancient Chinese silk factories and know a great deal
about their lives, speech habits, and so forth - using samples of old
silk fabric.
The notion isn't mine. I think I first heard it in the mid '60's from
the late Carroll M. Williams reporting on a lunch table conversation
with the physicist Edward Purcell.
Richard Hagen
>Alaska (jd...@imagi.net) wrote:
>This is a hoary old one! The last time I saw it was a "New Scientist"
>magazine Christmas special a number of years ago - the guise it appeared
>in there involved the wallpaper of the room in which things were played
>or spoken. I also seem to recall seeing it on a physics exam - as a test of
>ability to do order of magnitude calculations.
Another version along this line can be found in ``The Stone Tape'', a
BBC one-off from 1972 about a stone room in an old building that
``recorded'' things. It was one of Nigel Kneale's projects - he was the
progenitor of Quatermass.
richard
--
Serdar Yegulalp
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
Uh... No.
____________________________________________________________________________
sye...@ix.netcom.com
http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device...
____________________________________________________________________________
Robert Platt Bell
>> jd...@imagi.net (Alaska) wrote:
>>
>> Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>> (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>they might demand government funding for them...
>
work to do at Sony, at least for one Engineer.
You present an interesting question, one which I think can be answered
seriously, using chaos theory. It is akin to the proposition that the
movement of a butterfly's wings can, through a chain reaction, cause a
hurricane on the other side of the world. Supposedly, you could trace the
action back, in theory. Reality is another matter.
The problem is signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). Although the quill of a scribe
_does_ pick up pressure waves from voices and noises in the area, these
forces are miniscule compared to other forces, such as the shaking of the
scibe's hand, wind from open windows, irregularities in the paper and work
surface.
I suppose you could filter out this extraneous noise, however, you'd have to
know what the extraneous noise looked like. In other words, you need a clean
copy of the other signals in order to remove them (unless they can be
isolated to narrow bandwidths, which I doubt).
Moreover, I suspect that the ink, when it is absorbed into the page, tends to
blot slightly, thus blurring any sharply defined edges. Thus, even if the
scratching of the quill included a sound signal modulated onto the writing
signal (so to speak) I suspect the amplitude of such a signal would be much
less than that readable from the written word, due to ink blottage.
Now, you might argue that scratching of the quill may be readable using a
laser to detect the actual pen point, and that may be possible if the
parchment is sufficiently preserved. However, I still suspect that other
forces would serve to drown out any sound factor, and that realistically
filtering such signals would be difficult, if not impossible.
However, I would be thrilled to be proven wrong in this matter.
The Edison phonograph utilized a metal (later wax) cylinder for these very
reasons - the wax (or metal foil) would maintain a fairly sharply defined
edge. Moreover, the "needle" was isolated so as to pick up mostly signal
(from the feed horn) and not ambient noise.
Your question is technically interesting. We all leave traces of our passage
in any medium. Theoretically, you should be able to recover such evidence
from even the slightest of matter. Reality, on the other hand, imposes its
messy design constraints.
Besides, didn't those monks (scribes) take a vow of silence? I suppose all
you'd recover is a Gregorian chant or two. ;)
Regards,
--Bob.
Robert Platt Bell & Associates, P.C.
Patent, Trademark, & Copyright Matters
917 Duke Street
Alexandria, Va 22314
chestfld
>>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>>(presumably with a laser beam)?
I don't know if it would be possible, but I'm sure it wouldn't be possible with
a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
played back.
Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
the paper are synonymousw with the gooves in s phonograph, there's no way a
laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
variations in the medium.
If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
L. Meyer
writes:
>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up
>with an idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you
>people and see what you think. It goes something like this:
>A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice
>are transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are
>preserved in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove
>created by this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill
>pen, that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As
>the scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it
>possible that the sound vibrations present in the room could have
>caused the pen to resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe
>wrote, that these vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper
>either in the form of the shape of the ink or in the actual
>indentation in the paper caused by the tip of the pen? And if these
>vibrations are indeed stored on the surface of the paper would it be
>possible to play them back somehow (presumably with a laser beam)?
What kind of grass has your friend been smoking lately? :-)
|_ |\/| --- L.M...@ix.netcom.com
Ben Cannon
>We've actually been doing this for about two years, and it actually
>works! The secret is in using DSP routines to perform a
>predictive-adaptive noise correction algorithm (proprietary exotemporal
>theory) which essentially "guesses" what the noise is through a
>forward-sampling technique, then extracts what isn't the noise. The
>not-noise signal is amplified, and processed through a 75Hz 120dB/octave
>"cliff" filter, which eliminates the body-motion component of the written
>signal, leaving the intelligible speech range intact.
>
>Though the coarseness of the fibers in the paper may at first appear to
>wreak havoc with Nyquist subsampling error, the random nature of the
>fibers themselves lends itself to the Nyquist exception (where the
>highest reproducible frequency is calculated based upon the deviation
>from Fs using a two dimensional DFT, as proposed by Tekalp and Pavlovic,
>Journal of Electronic Imaging, Jan. 1993), and can provide temporary
>reproduction up to 14kHz!
>
>We were lucky enough to be granted access to the original Constitution
>during a sponsored visit to Washington D.C., and were able to
>successfully analyze the scribings. Unfortunately, the results were
>rather boring, with only the occasional throat-clearing and off-color
>jokes by Thomas Payne, who was evidently rather ribald (How many redcoats
>does it take to light a candle?...) and repeated several limericks which
>are not printable on this forum.
>
>The good news is that this did attract the attention of the intelligence
>community (agencies who shall remain nameless), who are presently funding
>our research into a photo-restorative technique based on the reaction of
>photons on ordinary office paper. The same predictive-adaptive technique
>can be used to selectively filter out photon action on a time-recall
>basis on ordinary bond office paper, allowing us to actually recreate
>images that were "seen" by that sheet of paper over it's life. In other
>words, we can selectively recall not only the audio, but the visual data
>that have been stored in the paper over it's lifetime.
>
>Unfortunately, what paper sees is usually other paper, so most of our
>images come out looking like pictures of paper, but we expect to have a
>breakthrough soon.
Is this a joke? :) (office paper seeing other office paper? the Government has
aparently gotten really wierd lately.
Ben.
John Pederson
>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
>idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
>see what you think. It goes something like this:
>A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
>transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
>in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
>this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>We have talked about this amongst ourselves and none of us are convinced
>this cannot be done but then again none of us are audio/laser specialists
>either. My personal concern is whether or not paper is subtle enough to be
>capable of capturing the vibrations of a human voice (or any sound
>vibration for that matter). But once again I am not a specialist in this
>area, and there have been many types of paper used over the centuries.
>My friend notes that most quill pens were split in the middle and thus in
>many cases you would have two tracks recorded in parallel to one another.
>In this case you could compare the two tracks and whatever vibrations are
>not contained in both tracks could be eliminated thus removing any noise
>caused by the sound of the pen scratching on the surface of the paper. The
>remaining noise would be the sounds of the room... whatever those might
>be.
>I'm sure you can all imagine the possibilities. For example the king
>dictating to the scribe his most recent decree, Beethoven tapping out
>notes on the piano as he transcribed his music, the noises and sounds of
>the bar as Edgar Allen Poe wrote his most recent work or the church bells
>from the Cathedral of Notre Dame ringing in the background. Any event in
>human history where a person was present and writing with a pen has the
>potential of having been recorded. The ramifications would be extremely
>profound.
>I ask you all to treat this question with seriousness and to give your
>thoughts on the possibility of this actually working. Thanks for any input
>or observations you might have.
Nope, 'taint possible.
Here's one.
Take a freshly laid hen's egg. Chip away the shell. Carefully!
And soon. First couple of minutes after it's laid.
By osmosis, infuse chlorophyll through the semi-permeable membrane
under the shell. While it's still only one cell.
Now when the cell divides, by mitosis, the chlorophyll divides with
it. So there is chlorophyll in every cell.
When the egg hatches, it yields a chicken which has chorophyll in
every cell.
The chicken makes its own food out of carbon dioxide, sunlight and
water, with the chlorophyll as a catalyst.
If we're _really_ lucky, the breed will reproduce itself.
So no chicken feed!
So the chicken meat is green! So what?! It's plenty cheap!
I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
is tasteless!
Maybe a better chance it could work?????
John
Gerald Wang
>>>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>>>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>>>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>>>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>>>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>>>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>>>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>>>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>>>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>>>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>
>a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
>variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
>according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
>laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
>off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
>reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
>played back.
>
>Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
>the paper are synonymousw with the gooves in s phonograph, there's no way a
>laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
>differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
>variations in the medium.
The variations in the medium will cause variations in the way that light
reflects off of the surface, which will thus produce variations in light
intensity. If a laser can be used to read the tiny pits on a CD, then
there is no doubt that it will be able to read the variations of the
record groove. (please see my earlier proof).
Have a nice day.
Gerald
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Gerald Wang
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~gtwang
University of Waterloo
Gerald Wang
R Krizman
>
> Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill
pen,
> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen
to
> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form
of
> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> (presumably with a laser beam)?
Actually this idea was once explored in a story by Ray Bradbury or Arthur
C. CLarke, I can't remember (maybe it was Heinlein). In the story,
futuristic anthropologists "read" the spiral lines on an ancient clay pot.
The potter would have been turning the pot and making a spiral line on
the outside by holding a wisk against it, just like a cutting lathe. With
computer enhancement they were able to hear the conversations going on
while the potter worked. Anybody remember this story?
Rick Krizman
KrizManic Music,
Venice, CA
Leo Backman
successfully extracted from the surface of an old clay pot, hence
constituting the oldest "cylindrical" recording. The source may have
been Scientific American.
But I cannot recall if it was their April issue.
Leo Backman
A waste of bandwidth
: >the paper are synonymousw with the gooves in s phonograph, there's no way a
: >laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
: >differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
: >variations in the medium.
: The variations in the medium will cause variations in the way that light
: reflects off of the surface, which will thus produce variations in light
: intensity. If a laser can be used to read the tiny pits on a CD, then
: there is no doubt that it will be able to read the variations of the
: record groove. (please see my earlier proof).
In fact, there exists a phonograph player that reads vinyl with a laser. I
believe it's by a company named ELP.
Marlon
Panic
>
> Lorne Tontegode <id...@interlog.com> writes:
> >Alaska wrote:
> >> A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
> >> transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
> >> in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
> >> this point and the sound can be reproduced.
> >> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> >> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> >> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> >> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> >> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> >> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> >> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>
> See Daedelus' column in New Scientist for 6 February 1969, where
> this idea was first proposed.
>
> John Nagle
>
(Sigh.) Oh, well.... Nothing new under the sun. Sell your idea to Hollywood
and you'll have the dough to do some research. That is, assuming that
the film hasn't been produced already...
Ben Cannon
ons you might have.
>
>Nope, 'taint possible.
>
>Here's one.
>
>Take a freshly laid hen's egg. Chip away the shell. Carefully!
>And soon. First couple of minutes after it's laid.
>
>By osmosis, infuse chlorophyll through the semi-permeable membrane
>under the shell. While it's still only one cell.
>
>Now when the cell divides, by mitosis, the chlorophyll divides with
>it. So there is chlorophyll in every cell.
>
>When the egg hatches, it yields a chicken which has chorophyll in
>every cell.
>
>The chicken makes its own food out of carbon dioxide, sunlight and
>water, with the chlorophyll as a catalyst.
>
>If we're _really_ lucky, the breed will reproduce itself.
>
>So no chicken feed!
>
>So the chicken meat is green! So what?! It's plenty cheap!
>
>I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
>it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
>is tasteless!
>
>Maybe a better chance it could work?????
I wouldsn't be so quick to laugh, quite a few biotech companies are spending
millions of dollars on that very genetin engineering project right now. The
firs one to patent it and sell it will become a multi-billion dollar company
overnight.
And not just in chicken, cattle, sheep, jsut about all livestock could be
converted to self-feeding (interesting) mode!! That may even be worth
_trillions_ of dollars.
Other than that, it's pretty rediculas, eh?
Ken Norton
I would imagine that the SN ratio would be a little steep.
Interesting concept though. I makes me wonder if the CIA
or NSA has ever explored this idea. I'm sure they have
examined more whacky ideas than this.
TheHookTek
works, NOT on all of us legitimate inventors and sane people to prove it
doesn't.
Harold A. Meyer, III Chairman
The Hook Appropriate Technology
Ben Cannon
>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
>idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
>see what you think. It goes something like this:
>
>transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
>in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
>this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
In theroy it's possible. (the pen certinly did vibrate!) But we are talking about a
total movement of maybe a few micrometers at best. I doubt that paper has the accuracy
(I almost want to say signal/noise ratio :) to even allow the vibrations to be
transfered to the paper.
Still, maybe you can find some documents written on really nice paper, during a really
high-volume symphony perofrmance or something....
And humanity's ability to isolate a signal form allot of noise is improving daily!!
Ben.
Jim Sun
it's April 1st.
Jim
|> --
|> +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|> | -Rob Withoff- rwit...@magic-marmot.com |
|> | Owner/Production Manager, rwit...@winternet.com |
|> | Magic Marmot Studios (WWW site under construction) |
|> | 612.823.2141 |
|> +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Daniel David Alexander
one day. There was apparently a wall in an old pub in some part of the UK
or Ireland, which was believed to be haunted and was heard to have sounds of
some sort emanating from it. One respected expert concluded that the stones
making up the wall were loaded with ferrous materials and were acting like
some sort of primitive magnetic tape, trapping the sounds of the past within
them. (Yes, in so many words he actually said this!)
I was immediately astounded by the bullshit contained in this explanation!
What was being used for recording & playback heads, electro-mechanical
transducers, etc? Not to mention other obvious flaws in the theory. I think
this was an Arthur C. Clark show, or something of that nature, but it surely
makes for a good laugh.
John Nagle
>> transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
>> in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
>> this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>> Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
Wolfgang Schwanke
>If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
>change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
Easy: Check out http://useattle.uspan.com/elp/
Greetings
Wolfgang
--
Elektropost: wo...@cs.tu-berlin.de | wo...@berlin.snafu.de | wo...@techno.de
WeltweitesSpinnweb: http://www.snafu.de/~wolfi/
IRC: wolfi | der die das, wieso weshalb warum
RealLife: Wolfgang Schwanke | the the the, why why why
ku...@perseus.phys.unm.edu
Magic Marmot Studios <rwit...@winternet.com> wrote:
>We've actually been doing this for about two years, and it actually
>works! The secret is in using DSP routines to perform a
>predictive-adaptive noise correction algorithm (proprietary exotemporal
>theory) which essentially "guesses" what the noise is through a
>forward-sampling technique, then extracts what isn't the noise. The
>not-noise signal is amplified, and processed through a 75Hz 120dB/octave
>"cliff" filter, which eliminates the body-motion component of the written
>signal, leaving the intelligible speech range intact.
>
But how are you doing at inferring sex, age, and bank balance from typing
style on the internet?
Jim
U. Faigle
Dear Clint:
Your friend is, of course, completely correct. It will be possible.
I am only afraid that the idea he came up with is not completely
his. Other people have come up with similar ideas already. As a matter
of fact, it was suggested that a `live recording' of J.S. Bach at the
organ of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig should be available soon,
which, in particular, includes several different endings of the
Art of the Fugue. Apparently, Bach himself had difficulties deciding
which one was the most artful one.
Other projects should include the full partition of Beethoven's 10th
symphony that Beethoven repeatedly hummed at the breakfast table and
imparted on a piece of Limburg cheese (maybe soon on display at the
Beethoven-Haus in Bonn).
Oh, this stuff, this wonderful stuff!
U. Faigle
Alaska (jd...@imagi.net) wrote:
: A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
: idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
: see what you think. It goes something like this:
: A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
: transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
: in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
: this point and the sound can be reproduced.
: Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
: that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
: scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
: that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
: resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
: vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
: the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
: the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
: surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
: (presumably with a laser beam)?
: We have talked about this amongst ourselves and none of us are convinced
: this cannot be done but then again none of us are audio/laser specialists
: either. My personal concern is whether or not paper is subtle enough to be
: capable of capturing the vibrations of a human voice (or any sound
: vibration for that matter). But once again I am not a specialist in this
: area, and there have been many types of paper used over the centuries.
: My friend notes that most quill pens were split in the middle and thus in
: many cases you would have two tracks recorded in parallel to one another.
: In this case you could compare the two tracks and whatever vibrations are
: not contained in both tracks could be eliminated thus removing any noise
: caused by the sound of the pen scratching on the surface of the paper. The
: remaining noise would be the sounds of the room... whatever those might
: be.
: I'm sure you can all imagine the possibilities. For example the king
: dictating to the scribe his most recent decree, Beethoven tapping out
: notes on the piano as he transcribed his music, the noises and sounds of
: the bar as Edgar Allen Poe wrote his most recent work or the church bells
: from the Cathedral of Notre Dame ringing in the background. Any event in
: human history where a person was present and writing with a pen has the
: potential of having been recorded. The ramifications would be extremely
: profound.
: I ask you all to treat this question with seriousness and to give your
: thoughts on the possibility of this actually working. Thanks for any input
: or observations you might have.
: Clint Biery
: Fairbanks Alaska
: P.S. I originally wrote this post for rec.audio.pro but then added the
: other newsgroups afterwords. I don't generally like to crosspost but the
: cross-pollination of ideas from one group to the next will be helpful in
: this case I suspect.
--
Magic Marmot Studios
works! The secret is in using DSP routines to perform a
predictive-adaptive noise correction algorithm (proprietary exotemporal
theory) which essentially "guesses" what the noise is through a
forward-sampling technique, then extracts what isn't the noise. The
not-noise signal is amplified, and processed through a 75Hz 120dB/octave
"cliff" filter, which eliminates the body-motion component of the written
signal, leaving the intelligible speech range intact.
Though the coarseness of the fibers in the paper may at first appear to
Jim Sun
None of it would work. Don't forget Smithian Division of Labor. A life
form that is good at everything is really good at nothing. A simple example
is that we do not plant trees for both grain/starch and wood at the
same time; we plant grasses and trees seperately instead. A photosynthetic
cow could not possibly support itself simply due to the lack of surface
area. I'd like to know which braindead biotech company is trying to pull
this trick.
Jim
Peter D Kaye
: So the chicken meat is green! So what?! It's plenty cheap!
:
: I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
: it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
: is tasteless!
A green chicken for St. Patrick's? As I am originally from Boston, I'm
used to everything edible being green around this time of year.
Peter Kaye
p...@cinenet.net
Bryan W. Reed
John Pederson <jptu...@azstarnet.com> wrote:
>jd...@imagi.net (Alaska) wrote:
>
>>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
>>idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
>>see what you think. It goes something like this:
>
>
>Nope, 'taint possible.
>
>Here's one.
>
>Take a freshly laid hen's egg. Chip away the shell. Carefully!
>And soon. First couple of minutes after it's laid.
>
>By osmosis, infuse chlorophyll through the semi-permeable membrane
>under the shell. While it's still only one cell.
>
>Now when the cell divides, by mitosis, the chlorophyll divides with
>it. So there is chlorophyll in every cell.
>
>When the egg hatches, it yields a chicken which has chorophyll in
>every cell.
>
>The chicken makes its own food out of carbon dioxide, sunlight and
>water, with the chlorophyll as a catalyst.
>
>If we're _really_ lucky, the breed will reproduce itself.
>
>So no chicken feed!
>
>
>I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
>it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
>is tasteless!
>
>
>
I can't believe I'm responding to this thread . . .
But, then again, practically everybody's already put it into their kill files,
so why not?
My question: I didn't recall that chloroplasts had their own DNA. I could be
mistaken (they might be like mitochondria), but if they don't have any DNA then
they won't reproduce. It won't do any good to put a little chlorophyll in an
early embryo cell, since it won't reproduce as the cell divides. You have to
put chlorophyll-making DNA into the cell, not the chlorophyll itself.
Anyway, the chicken has no mechanism for transporting the required amount of
CO2 to the surface of the body--well, actually the feathers, since that's all
that's getting hit by sunlight. So all this metabolic effort goes into making
chlorophyll that is almost completely useless, and the chicken has less
available energy, not more. Not to mention that the feathers are dead in the
first place, and there'd be no way to move the newly formed organic materials
back into the chicken's circulatory system.
Not to mention all the rest of the subcellular chemistry that plants have
evolved to take advantage of chlorophyll, which wouldn't exist in a chicken
cell. You think the chicken can live off pure simple sugars?
Anyway, why not just eat a plant? If you want efficient conversion of
sunlight to food, then forget about animals. People can live just fine off
plants, ya know? (Uh oh, now it's a vegetarian vs. meat-eaters thread!)
Gads. I can't believe I'm responding to this. What a silly thread.
Recommend adding it to killfiles if you haven't already done so.
breed
Manawydden Ap Llyr
> From: js...@solaria.mit.edu (Jim Sun)
> Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,alt.inventors,comp.music.midi,misc.writing,rec.audio.tech,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.opinion,rec.music.classical,soc.history,soc.history.science,soc.history.what-if
> Date: 19 Mar 1996 06:11:08 GMT
> Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
> In article <4ilgvl$a...@nntp.crl.com>, Ben Cannon <art...@a.crl.com> writes:
> |> jptu...@azstarnet.com (John Pederson) wrote:
> |> ons you might have.
> |> >
> |> >Nope, 'taint possible.
> |> >
> |> >Here's one.
> |> >
> |> >Take a freshly laid hen's egg. Chip away the shell. Carefully!
> |> >And soon. First couple of minutes after it's laid.
> |> >
> |> >By osmosis, infuse chlorophyll through the semi-permeable membrane
> |> >under the shell. While it's still only one cell.
> |> >
> |> >Now when the cell divides, by mitosis, the chlorophyll divides with
> |> >it. So there is chlorophyll in every cell.
> |> >
> |> >When the egg hatches, it yields a chicken which has chorophyll in
> |> >every cell.
> |> >
> |> >The chicken makes its own food out of carbon dioxide, sunlight and
> |> >water, with the chlorophyll as a catalyst.
> |> >
> |> >If we're _really_ lucky, the breed will reproduce itself.
> |> >
> |> >So no chicken feed!
> |> >
> |> >So the chicken meat is green! So what?! It's plenty cheap!
> |> >
> |> >I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
> |> >it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
> |> >is tasteless!
> |> >
> |> >Maybe a better chance it could work?????
> |>
> |> I wouldsn't be so quick to laugh, quite a few biotech companies are spending
> |> millions of dollars on that very genetin engineering project right now. The
> |> firs one to patent it and sell it will become a multi-billion dollar company
> |> overnight.
> |>
> |> And not just in chicken, cattle, sheep, jsut about all livestock could be
> |> converted to self-feeding (interesting) mode!! That may even be worth
> |> _trillions_ of dollars.
> |>
>
> None of it would work. Don't forget Smithian Division of Labor. A life
> form that is good at everything is really good at nothing. A simple example
> is that we do not plant trees for both grain/starch and wood at the
> same time; we plant grasses and trees seperately instead. A photosynthetic
> cow could not possibly support itself simply due to the lack of surface
> area. I'd like to know which braindead biotech company is trying to pull
> this trick.
>
> Jim
>
I'm sure if you can bioengineer the chlorophyll bit that you could bioengieer the
cow to increase its surface area a bit. Imagine the acres of big, flat cows in the
fields. Imagine the look on the bioengineers faces when the first big wind blows
and slaps the big flat cows onto the side of their building. (Imagine the look
on the cows faces... *Moo?* Whoosh. Splat!)
The benefits of big, flat, green cows are endless. Steaks will be easier to cut.
You can eat your meat and vegetables at the same time. Tan the hide and use it for
a putting green.
Beef! It's what's for dinner!
Alex
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Lahoski Sun Geek
Eastern Connecticut State University Eternal Senior
laho...@ecsuc.ctstateu.edu
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
program doesn't deliver it.
==========================================================================
<* WARNING! The following may not be suitable for children or WARNING! *>
<* WARNING! advocates of the CDA (especially the last line). WARNING! *>
<* WARNING! Read at your own risk... WARNING! *>
congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manawydden Ap Llyr
> From: ches...@inlink.com (chestfld)
> Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,alt.inventors,comp.music.midi,misc.writing,rec.audio.tech,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.opinion,rec.music.classical,soc.history,soc.history.science,soc.history.what-if
> Date: 18 Mar 1996 18:12:44 GMT
> Organization: Inlink
>
> >>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
> >>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> >>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> >>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> >>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> >>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> >>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> >>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> >>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> >>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>
> I don't know if it would be possible, but I'm sure it wouldn't be possible with
> a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
> variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
> according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
> laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
> off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
> reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
> played back.
>
> Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
> the paper are synonymousw with the gooves in s phonograph, there's no way a
> laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
> differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
> variations in the medium.
>
> If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
> change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
>
I seem to remember, a few years back, when CD's were first coming out and the
phonograph people started to panic about it (rightly so), that I saw advertisements
for a laser phonograph. Can't remember the exact specs, but it was a linear tracking
phonograph that tracked and read the grooves. I can't see why this would be all that
different from an CD reader. The CD reader reflects off the media, which (if I
remember correctly) is just an alternating sequence of reflective and absorptive
sections. The phono laser would be relecting off a non-linear, but still reflective,
surface. The variation in the grooves would end up varying the amount of reflected
light. This *would* be hard to accurately track and convert to analog sound (hence
the original selling price of $2500 on those units ;))
I don't think it would be a problem reading it, but as many people have
pointed out already, the quality of the recording media (i.e quill & paper, finger
& clay) doesn't lend itself to good sound reproduction.
Chris Koenigsberg
A very important consideration for playback fidelity: if the paper was
dyed GREEN or not (with green magic marker :-)
Christer Berner
> > would it be possible to play them back somehow
> > (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
The idea is not new. Some years ago New Scientist reported on trials to
"replay" grooves in old ceramics and stuff. No success as far as I know.
Kreutlein Peter
The ink from the pen flows along the fibers of the paper, it doesn't
remain in a nice tidy line on the surface (unless you're using very
glossy paper. Try blowing up a page of written manuscript with a
photocopier to about 2000 percent and you'll get the idea. Any
information that small would be lost in the randomisation of the
fibers.
Also, the human body is mostly water and therefore acts as a natural
sound absorption buffer (when building concert halls, acoustic
engineers take into account that they will be full of people when they
design the room acoustics, that's why they have to lower baffles if
the hall is mostly empty, otherwise you get too much reverb). The
normal sound spectra and amplitude of someone talking would be
absorbed by the tissues of the individual before being transmitted to
the pen, unless you think that the pen itself may vibrate from these
frequencies. Again, I would think the hand holding the pen would
absorb such small vibrations. Take a look at your phonograph and
notice how carefully isolated the head is.
peter k
Peter Kreutlein - pet...@odyssee.net
Composer/multi-media arts, Crimson Twins, CT Media, Montreal
Gabe M. Wiener
Alaska <jd...@imagi.net> wrote:
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place?
I think there's an Arthur C. Clarke story about this....where ancient
pottery contained audible information encoded by a stick making carvings
while the pottery spun on a wheel.
It doesn't work, by the way. The hand holding the stick would dampen
it. The media isn't yielding enough. There's no resonator, or diaphragm,
or free-floating axis on which the "needle" could move.
--
Gabe Wiener Dir., PGM Early Music Recordings |"I am terrified at the thought
A Div. of Quintessential Sound, Inc., New York | that so much hideous and bad
Recording-Mastering-Restoration (212) 586-4200 | music may be put on records
ga...@pgm.com http://www.pgm.com | forever."--Sir Arthur Sullivan
Gerald Wang
>>>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>>>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>>>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>>>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>>>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>>>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>>>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>>>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>
>a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
>variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
>according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
>laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
>off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
>reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
>played back.
>
>Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
>the paper are synonymousw with the gooves in s phonograph, there's no way a
>laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
>differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
>variations in the medium.
>
>If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
>change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
>
I am only addressing the statement about lasers not being able to read
'physical variations' in media. I think what you were trying to say was
that lasers can be used to read digital signals, but not analogue ones.
Well, there is a turntable which does use lasers (yes, it uses more than
one) to read the information in the grooves of the record. It is very
expensive though ($20k). If you don't believe me, check out:
http://useattle.uspan.com/elp/
Also, the video signal on a laserdisc is in analogue form, and this is
read by a LD player using a laser as well. So it is possible to retrieve
read analogue signals by using lasers.
Regards,
Gerald
PS-No, I don't think it's possible to record/retrieve sound information
by writing on a piece of paper.
Gerald Wang
Ben Cannon
A laser certinly can read a phonograph (33.3 RPM LP) It is NOT easy, and requires
some of the most sensitive photodetectors in the world, but it CAN be done. You
shine the laser onto the LP at a fixed angle, then redord the _change_ in the
angle of reflection relative to the angle of incidence. (the grove depth changes
the angle of the reflected beam a bit) I can say that it definately works, as I
once had the fortune to accually hear one of these. It cost over $30,000 and was
teh biggest damn record player I've ever seen, but it worked great! I belive it
was made by Forsell, maybe Levinson or Krell though. (ARC ?)
Ben.
Steve Taylor
(Jim Sun) wrote:
> There should be a smiley somewhere when posting a joke like this; unless,
> it's April 1st.
Smileys are for the ironically handicapped.
> Jim
Steve
Calix Lewis Reneau
Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high and
too coarse for a laser to interpret!
To explain: a record groove is too coarse for a laser, unless one is
using a very non-discriminating (or wide-beam) laser/reader system,
because while CD lasers work in microscopic-sized sampling bites (in
terms of the physical area of each pit or lack thereof) while you can
see the variations of the low-freq components of the recording on a
record w/a trained naked eye. Conversely, the technical evolution of
the record player is such thatthe magnetic field which the needle
vibrates in to produce electricity is very sensitive to nuances of
amplitude which a coarse laser/reader assembly might not be able to
pick up without gross trial and error.
A related example (and one I use to explain to people why CD's don't
sound good! <g>) is that of magnetic tape: the trouble with tape isn't
the lower sampling resolution, it's that we don't have machinery
sophisticated enough to control magnetic tape at the atomic level,
aligining all the particles specifically, so that the trouble is the
field noise of all the rebellious particles interfering. (As a proof,
consider that a properly recorded metal-oxide tape has a higher
signal-to-noise ratio than 16-bit 44.1k sampling.) The "smoothness"
of analog when compared to CD is attributable to a number of factors,
including the averaging of signals in the medium (that is, in the
example of tape the gear and our ears takes the average of all that's
going on and interprets it as the proper sound.)
Which answers, I suppose, the original question about audio being
recorded in some retrievable fashion through a writing implement
resonating when pressed to paper: the signal-to-noise ratio would be
worse than unintelligable. And lasers wouldn't help (or any
concieveable technology) because it would still be an analog recording
which is by definition ill-suited to digital interpretation. So we'll
have to rely on the writer's literary voice to surmise what was going
on as they scribed for us.
Cordially,
Calix
Gerald Wang <GTW...@HELIX.Watstar.UWaterloo.CA> wrote:
>The variations in the medium will cause variations in the way that light
>reflects off of the surface, which will thus produce variations in light
>intensity. If a laser can be used to read the tiny pits on a CD, then
>there is no doubt that it will be able to read the variations of the
>record groove. (please see my earlier proof).
>Have a nice day.
>Gerald
>--
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----
>Gerald Wang
>http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~gtwang
>University of Waterloo
Ben Cannon
>I can't believe I'm responding to this thread . . .
>
>But, then again, practically everybody's already put it into their kill files,
>so why not?
>
>My question: I didn't recall that chloroplasts had their own DNA. I could be
>mistaken (they might be like mitochondria), but if they don't have any DNA then
>they won't reproduce. It won't do any good to put a little chlorophyll in an
>early embryo cell, since it won't reproduce as the cell divides. You have to
>put chlorophyll-making DNA into the cell, not the chlorophyll itself.
FYI, modern chloroplasts, (like mitochondria :) do have their own DNA. Current
theroies say they used to be parasitic photosenthesising bacterial cells.
DAN TALBOT
writes:
>
>In <jdart-18039...@204.119.24.198> jd...@imagi.net (Alaska)
>writes:
>>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up
>>with an idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you
>>people and see what you think. It goes something like this:
>
>>are transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are
>>created by this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill
>>pen, that a similar type of recording might have been taking place?
As
>>the scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it
>>possible that the sound vibrations present in the room could have
>>caused the pen to resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe
>>wrote, that these vibrations were recorded on the surface of the
paper
>>either in the form of the shape of the ink or in the actual
>>indentation in the paper caused by the tip of the pen? And if these
>>vibrations are indeed stored on the surface of the paper would it be
>>possible to play them back somehow (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>
>
>
>|_ |\/| --- L.M...@ix.netcom.com
>
L. Meyer:
I am certain this person's idea was not born of stupidity or stupor.
However, there are many things which prevent it from becoming realized.
First, the signal-processing issues are rampant: alias frequency
removal due to the quill pen's sampling effect on the data, an
incomplete data record (truncation of data causes
frequency-and-time-domain artifacts), and AM and PM modulation of the
data by a sampling rate that is not well controlled. To mention just a
few. But maybe the idea could be realized in the future if all these
effects could be adaptively filtered. But you would still have
extremely short records. Maybe this idea is born from the biblical
notion of "the rocks cried out"?
Dan Talbot
Scott Dorsey
>Don't know what lasers, LP's, and CD's have to do with writing, but:
>
>Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high and
>too coarse for a laser to interpret!
>
>To explain: a record groove is too coarse for a laser, unless one is
>using a very non-discriminating (or wide-beam) laser/reader system,
>because while CD lasers work in microscopic-sized sampling bites (in
>terms of the physical area of each pit or lack thereof) while you can
>see the variations of the low-freq components of the recording on a
>record w/a trained naked eye. Conversely, the technical evolution of
>the record player is such thatthe magnetic field which the needle
>vibrates in to produce electricity is very sensitive to nuances of
>amplitude which a coarse laser/reader assembly might not be able to
>pick up without gross trial and error.
True enough, but that's not to say it's not possible to implement such
a device. Finial is currently making one in Japan; it sounds wonderful
but is prone to having a very high noise floor because it picks up
dust and dirt that a conventional stylus would brush out of the way.
--scot
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Robert Platt Bell
>>>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>>>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>>>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>>>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>>>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>>>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>>>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>>>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>>>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>>>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
>variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
>according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
>laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
>off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
>reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
>played back.
>
>Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
>differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
>variations in the medium.
>
>change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
>
cross-posted in alt.inventors).
I seem to recall right before the demise of the "turntable" (remember those analog
monsters?) some experimentation with optical pickups for "record players". The idea
was touted at the time as the answer to the CD, as there would be no physical
contact with the record, and thus the record could theoretically last forever (of
course the little grooves would still fill with dust, and the Wow, Flutter, and
Rumble problems associated with analog payback might still occur).
It is really no great trick. The variance in the groove deflects a laser beam at
correspondingly different angles. You could use a photosensor array to pickup the
reflected beam from different reflected positions, or measure absolute amplitude at
a fixed position (as the beam moves off-center, the amplitude at a fixed point would
vary).
I think the idea never took off because (a) CD players were so cheap and readily
available, (b) digital recording has inherient advantages over analog (dinosaur
audiophiles, please save the flames), (c) it probably didn't work very well and (d)
it was hugely expensive.
You may recall also a commercially successful optical track sensor record player
sold at the twighlight of the LP era. These devices used a small laser diode to
detect groove density in a record, allowing the "tone arm" to move across a record
to a preprogrammed track. Thus, you could program the turntable to play different
tracks in any order desired. Later models had a unique platter drop mechanism which
would allow you to stack up to five LPs and switch between them (it would corkscrew
_UP_ a record to access one underneath. Hmmmm... Shades of the multi-disc CD
changer? Of course, it could only play one side of an LP, and as I recall, "true"
audiophiles frowned on it as being a piece of flashy junk. The pickup was still
performed by a "needle" or "stylus" (such technology!), but the laser diode and
photodiode detector -were- able to detect reflectivity of record grooves (albeit
crudely).
Your error in making absolute "can't be done" statements stems from your
misunderstanding of reflectivity and lasers. You don't need a perfect mirror
surface (like in a CD) to reflect a laser beam. If the beam is powerful enough,
you'll get a reflection off of almost anything (hence Laser radar, or Lidar).
Believe me, I've written patents on this stuff! Of course, it might also melt the
record if the laser were powerful enough! Moreover, many such lasers do not use
optical light frequencies, so your everyday experiences with reflectivity of light
may not apply to other regions of the spectrum.
For other fans of obscure technologies, you may recall the very, very, early analog
DISC movie players (no, no, not laser disk!). These obscure modern-day antiques
used an analog _grooved_ disk encased in a sleeve to store video. They are
something of a collector's item now. I believe they _may_ have used an optical
pickup.
Presuming there is some sort of groove in the paper, I am sure that you could use
some sort of optical sensor, including a laser, to detect it. It need not be a very
powerful laser at that. I say this not as a Patent Attorney, nor as a former Patent
Examiner in the Instrumentation arts, nor as an Electrical Engineer, but as a former
Instrumentation Technician at UTC (my last honest job).
Is it possible? ANYTHING is possible.
Regards,
--Bob.
Jerome Bigge
Ben Cannon <art...@a.crl.com> wrote:
>cal...@earthlink.net (Calix Lewis Reneau) wrote:
>>Don't know what lasers, LP's, and CD's have to do with writing, but:
>>
>>Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high
and
>>too coarse for a laser to interpret!
>>
>>To explain: a record groove is too coarse for a laser, unless one is
>>using a very non-discriminating (or wide-beam) laser/reader system,
>>because while CD lasers work in microscopic-sized sampling bites (in
>>terms of the physical area of each pit or lack thereof) while you
can
>>see the variations of the low-freq components of the recording on a
>>record w/a trained naked eye. Conversely, the technical evolution of
>>the record player is such thatthe magnetic field which the needle
>>vibrates in to produce electricity is very sensitive to nuances of
>>amplitude which a coarse laser/reader assembly might not be able to
>>pick up without gross trial and error.
>
>Phooey. There are a couple of laser turntables (only reason there is
>so few is their cost, over $20,000!!!!) and those few machines easily
>extract the best that the vynal LP has to offer, far above any
>gartirge-based system.
>
>
>>A related example (and one I use to explain to people why CD's don't
>>sound good! <g>) is that of magnetic tape: the trouble with tape
isn't
>>the lower sampling resolution, it's that we don't have machinery
>>sophisticated enough to control magnetic tape at the atomic level,
>>aligining all the particles specifically, so that the trouble is the
>>field noise of all the rebellious particles interfering. (As a
proof,
>>consider that a properly recorded metal-oxide tape has a higher
>>signal-to-noise ratio than 16-bit 44.1k sampling.)
>
decibles,
>I'm sure they're worth a fortune!!
>>Which answers, I suppose, the original question about audio being
>>recorded in some retrievable fashion through a writing implement
>>resonating when pressed to paper: the signal-to-noise ratio would be
>>worse than unintelligable.
>
as
>it refers only to the AVERAGE amplitude of the random noise) can be
>recorded and played back with remarkable accuracy. The human brain
is
>extreemly good at this, as are DSPs nowadays.
>
>Ben.
>
>BTW, lasers are, in no way shape or form, "digital."
>
Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
old books around? There's just too much deterioration over time. I
wouldn't even bet on a CD-ROM sealed up in an air tight container
lasting more than a few centuries on the outside.
Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com)
Ben Cannon
>
>Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high and
>too coarse for a laser to interpret!
>
>To explain: a record groove is too coarse for a laser, unless one is
>using a very non-discriminating (or wide-beam) laser/reader system,
>because while CD lasers work in microscopic-sized sampling bites (in
>terms of the physical area of each pit or lack thereof) while you can
>see the variations of the low-freq components of the recording on a
>record w/a trained naked eye. Conversely, the technical evolution of
>the record player is such thatthe magnetic field which the needle
>vibrates in to produce electricity is very sensitive to nuances of
>amplitude which a coarse laser/reader assembly might not be able to
>pick up without gross trial and error.
What? The above makes no sense, lasers can't see the big picture?
Phooey. There are a couple of laser turntables (only reason there is
so few is their cost, over $20,000!!!!) and those few machines easily
extract the best that the vynal LP has to offer, far above any
gartirge-based system.
>A related example (and one I use to explain to people why CD's don't
>sound good! <g>) is that of magnetic tape: the trouble with tape isn't
>the lower sampling resolution, it's that we don't have machinery
>sophisticated enough to control magnetic tape at the atomic level,
>aligining all the particles specifically, so that the trouble is the
>field noise of all the rebellious particles interfering. (As a proof,
>consider that a properly recorded metal-oxide tape has a higher
>signal-to-noise ratio than 16-bit 44.1k sampling.)
Show me an analouge tape recorder with a S/N ratio of over 96 decibles,
I'm sure they're worth a fortune!!
>Which answers, I suppose, the original question about audio being
>recorded in some retrievable fashion through a writing implement
>resonating when pressed to paper: the signal-to-noise ratio would be
>worse than unintelligable.
Maybe not, even a signal BELOW the noise floor (which is a bad term, as
Jan Six
> Smileys are for the ironically handicapped.
The Internet is for the telepathically handicapped.
;-) <--- there!
______________________________________________________________________
Jan Six |"It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise in the
| morning. This means we don't _know_ it will rise"
Jan...@uku.fi | - Ludwig Wittgenstein
|
It's my real name.|"Actually, now that you come to mention it..."
Honest. | - Nikolaus Copernicus
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Kreutlein Peter
>ches...@inlink.com (chestfld) writes:
>>If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
>>change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
>Easy: Check out http://useattle.uspan.com/elp/
>Greetings
>Wolfgang
>--
>Elektropost: wo...@cs.tu-berlin.de | wo...@berlin.snafu.de | wo...@techno.de
>WeltweitesSpinnweb: http://www.snafu.de/~wolfi/
>IRC: wolfi | der die das, wieso weshalb warum
>RealLife: Wolfgang Schwanke | the the the, why why why
Actually, I don't have the specifcs on me, but I have seen a laser
phonograph player. It's not that difficult, really, you just beam an
infra-red laser (same as cd) onto the phonograph and read the
difraction that comes back.
David Gibson
: >> [VERY LIKELY IMPOSSIBLE, BUT INTERESTING PROPOSAL DELETED]
: I don't know if it would be possible, but I'm sure it wouldn't be
: possible with a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound
: as PHYSICAL variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is
: modulated PHYSICALLY according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is
: reproduced. I can't see a laser working as it is made of light. A CD does
: it's magic by bouncing a laser off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet,
: and interpreting the light reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times
: a second you get a sample being played back.
Umm.. wrong. A laser may be a light beam, but its reflection will
certainly be affected by the physical shape of the surface it reflects
from. You'd probably need several beams coming from different directions
to do it, but with appropriate detectors, electronics and interpretation
(ie. software), it is certainly possible to map to physical indentations
on a surface, and to very high precision, since using interferometry one
measure displacements of the order of the wavelength of light. You
probably couldn't do it real time, but there'd be no reason you'd want to
anyway, since a great deal of processing would be needed to extract the
information.
Of course, I very much doubt this would work anyway, since
there'd be so much other noise from vastly bigger fluctuations in the
environment that sound.
: Since the "grooves" you are proposing are theoretically physically preserved in
: the paper are synonymous with the gooves in a phonograph, there's no way a
: laser can retrieve that information. That information is not modulated by
: differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
: variations in the medium.
But there is... laser interference effects are frequently used
for measuring precisely _physical_ deformations.
: If someone could convince me that a laser could read a phonograph, then I'll
: change my opinion, but unil then I say the laser won't do the job.
It can. It would just be very expensive to set up a system to do
so, since there not very much in demand.
--
David Gibson @ The Lorax | New from Microsoft...
david%bruce...@anu.edu.au | THNEED 95
| Which everyone, Everyone, EVERYONE needs.
DG Malham
> I'm sure if you can bioengineer the chlorophyll bit that you could bioengieer the
> cow to increase its surface area a bit. Imagine the acres of big, flat cows in the
> fields. Imagine the look on the bioengineers faces when the first big wind blows
> and slaps the big flat cows onto the side of their building. (Imagine the look
> on the cows faces... *Moo?* Whoosh. Splat!)
>
> The benefits of big, flat, green cows are endless. Steaks will be easier to cut.
> You can eat your meat and vegetables at the same time. Tan the hide and use it for
> a putting green.
>
>
But just imagine an FC (flat cow) with BSE (Mad Cow Disease)!!
Dave
Grant W. Petty
I think the easiest way to understand why this wouldn't work is to
visualize what you would hear if you attached a scrap of paper
DIRECTLY onto the surface of the transducing element of a microphone
(set to a gain that would allow ordinary conversations to be picked
up) and started writing on the paper with a quill pen. What you would
undoubtedly hear is an extremely loud, broad-spectrum scratching noise
which would THOROUGHLY drown out all other ambient sounds! The
signal-to-noise ratio would undoubtedly be -50 dB or worse! There
would be no way in the world to lift the desired signal out of that
noise.
--
Grant W. Petty gpe...@rain.atms.purdue.edu
Assoc. Prof. of Atmospheric Science
Dept. of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences (317) 494-2544
Purdue University, West Lafayette IN 47907-1397 FAX:(317) 496-1210
Roland Hutchinson
[enormous snip]
>Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
>old books around? There's just too much deterioration over time.
There plenty of old books around. The ones from before the mid-19th
century are for the most part in very good condition.
Only acidic wood-fiber papers self-destruct over time. Rag paper and
parchment are very durable.
--
Roland Hutchinson Visiting Specialist/Early Music
rhut...@email.njin.net <==New preferred address! Dept. of Music
hutch...@alpha.montclair.edu Montclair State University
From All-in-1 at MSU: rhutchin@apollo@wins Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
Jerker Jönsson
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
I've heard of a similar idea: the possibilty to record sounds when making
ceramic pots. When the potter speaks down into the spinning pot the pot
resonates and his fingers make playable tracks.
I think the problem with this idea, as it is with your idea, is that even if
the tracks are there (they might be) they are probably not of good enough
quality to play. A human voice would be undistinguishable (spelling?).
--
__________________________________________
jer...@sparta.lu.se
http://www.sparta.lu.se/~jerker
"Delenda est Cartago."
-Cato-
KROMKAMP ANDY
>>>>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>>>>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>>>>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>>>>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>>>>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>>>>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>>>>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>>>>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>>>>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>>
>>
>>a laser beam doing the retrieval. A Phonograph records sound as PHYSICAL
>>variations in the medium. Upon playback, the needle is modulated PHYSICALLY
>>according to the groove in the vinyl and sound is reproduced. I can't see a
>>laser working as it is made of light. A CD does it's magic by bouncing a laser
>>off of tiny little pits in a mirrored sheet, and interpreting the light
>>reflected back as a 0 or a 1. Done 44.1k times a second you get a sample being
>>played back.
>>
>>differences in light intensity (what lasers deal with) but by physical
>>variations in the medium.
>
>reflects off of the surface, which will thus produce variations in light
>intensity. If a laser can be used to read the tiny pits on a CD, then
>there is no doubt that it will be able to read the variations of the
>record groove. (please see my earlier proof).
>
>Have a nice day.
>
>Gerald
>
>--
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----
>Gerald Wang
>http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~gtwang
>University of Waterloo
>
If this is true, why hasn't somebody produced a record-player with a laser
beam head? I would think this would produce the ultimate in sound quality.
Of course the answer to this would probably be 'theres no market for it'.
Andy K.
Dusk Bennett
>We've actually been doing this for about two years, and it actually
>works! The secret is in using DSP routines to perform a
>predictive-adaptive noise correction algorithm (proprietary exotemporal
>theory) which essentially "guesses" what the noise is through a
>forward-sampling technique, then extracts what isn't the noise. The
>not-noise signal is amplified, and processed through a 75Hz 120dB/octave
>"cliff" filter, which eliminates the body-motion component of the written
>signal, leaving the intelligible speech range intact.
Stuff deleted
>Unfortunately, what paper sees is usually other paper, so most of our
>images come out looking like pictures of paper, but we expect to have a
>breakthrough soon.
Whoa, that's cool! : )
>Dusk
chestfld
>phonograph player. It's not that difficult, really, you just beam an
>infra-red laser (same as cd) onto the phonograph and read the
>difraction that comes back.
>
Yes, but it's been my understanding that the grooves in a record are recorded
by by moving the stylus "back and forth", not "up and down." So, it seems to
me thata laser would have to look at the "sidewall" of a record groove in order
to pick up the modulation. Or am I all wet?
Gendelta
laser based player for vinyl records was developed. Several backers were
involved in the project, originally designed for consumer use. This was
eventually abandoned when development & production costs drove the retail
price well into 5 figures. A limited # were marketed to the archival
market, namely museums &/or universities. I'm sure Julian Hirsch or
others on staff at Stereo Review or Audio will remember more details.
-glenn
Narayan Nayar
spoken dialog, and playback is possible--I've done it.
I became interested in this theory when I found an old post-it note in the
attic of a temple in India. Carbon dating suggests that the post-it was
manufactured at 3:56 pm on Wednesday, April 3rd, in 527 B.C.. As we all
know, the procedures used in carbon dating are not a very accurate, so
let's assume it was manufactured anywhere from 3:30pm to 4:00 pm on that
Wednesday.
Well, the first thing to cross my mind was elation--it was apparent that
my ancestors were as absent-minded as I was as to need post-it notes. The
post-it had definitely kept its "stick-it-anywhere" ability; as I removed
it from the wall, it left no adhesive residue. The writing was very
faint, but after much study of the sloppily-written sanskrit, I figured
out that it said "don't forget to turn off the light."
Intrigued, I brought the post-it home for further examination. While
making dinner, I accidently dropped the post-it in the pasta maker. I was
making linguine, and the post-it was cut into strips about 1/8" wide. I
figured "what the hell", and I went to my studio to splice the strips
together.
I gingerly wrapped the long strand of post-it in a cassette shell, and
placed the cassette in my deck. I turned on my computer, and sampled the
audio eminating from the speakers. It sounded terrible, and wrecked my
tape deck, but my computer displayed the waveform before my eyes.
I ran the waveform through the NoNoise filter, and the result was
remarkable. It was dialog between a man and a woman, apparently arguing.
M: "I just forget, I'm sorry"
W: "Here, put this by the door."
M: "I don't need a note."
W: "Just put it by the door."
The man then grumbled.
In any case, playback is possible. The manufacturers of NoNoise should
consider a heavy marketing campaign towards archaeologists and historians.
--
Narayan Nayar
nar...@mcs.com
Jerome Bigge
dba...@camosun.bc.ca (Deryk Barker) wrote:
>Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com) wrote:
>[snip]
>: Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
>: old books around?
>
>
>pulp. Unfortunately for around a century almost all paper has been
>made from wood pulp, which contains acids which eat away at the paper
>over time.
>
>However, 'proper' paper (made from linen rags) is very durable -
there
>are many books still around which are hundreds of years old, and most
>of them are in better condition than wood-pulp paper books printed 50
>years ago.
>
>In fact the deterioration of wood-pulp paper is probably the single
>biggest problem (after funding cuts) facing most libraries today.
>---
>Deryk.
>=====================================================================
======
>|Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Across the pale
parabola of Joy |
>|Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada |
|
>|email: dba...@camosun.bc.ca | Ralston McTodd
|
>|phone: +1 604 370 4452 | (Songs of
Squalor). |
>=====================================================================
======
There's probably still enough damage by time to the paper to scramble
any message on it. Paper isn't a very good medium for something like
this. Baked clay tablets might be better like what the Babylonians
used. Basic problem however is that the natural "shake" of the human
hand would probably be enough to destroy any signal that might exist.
The life of cheap paperbacks isn't even fifty years. On the other
hand I have books fifty years old that are still in pretty good
condition. Computer data stored on cassettes (old Color Computer)
was still readable after ten years. If I'm still around in 2005
I'll give them another try just to see. No doubt the life of any
data stored on floppy disks would be in much the same range here.
Jerome Bigge
Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com)
Ben Cannon
>If this is true, why hasn't somebody produced a record-player with a laser
>beam head?
They do. :)
>I would think this would produce the ultimate in sound quality.
From LPs, it does give the ultimate in sound quality, no doubt about it!!
>Of course the answer to this would probably be 'theres no market for it'.
Would you pay Twenty Grand for a record player ? (they really do cost $20,000!!!)
Ben.
Ben Cannon
>
>I think the easiest way to understand why this wouldn't work is to
>visualize what you would hear if you attached a scrap of paper
>DIRECTLY onto the surface of the transducing element of a microphone
>(set to a gain that would allow ordinary conversations to be picked
>up) and started writing on the paper with a quill pen. What you would
>undoubtedly hear is an extremely loud, broad-spectrum scratching noise
>which would THOROUGHLY drown out all other ambient sounds!
Yes.
>The
>signal-to-noise ratio would undoubtedly be -50 dB or worse!
Yes.
>There
>would be no way in the world to lift the desired signal out of that
>noise.
NO! Signals below an avarage of a random noise floor can be extracted with DSPs, and
by listening to music when your computer is running (the fan is at least 2 db louder,
yet the misuc is loud and clear. My Intel DX2100 needs ample cooling :)
Ben.
Deryk Barker
MILK-MAN
>In article <4iqhhk$k...@nntp.crl.com>,
> Ben Cannon <art...@a.crl.com> wrote:
>>>recorded in some retrievable fashion through a writing implement
>>>resonating when pressed to paper: the signal-to-noise ratio would be
>>>worse than unintelligable.
>>
>as
>>it refers only to the AVERAGE amplitude of the random noise) can be
>>recorded and played back with remarkable accuracy. The human brain
>is
>>extreemly good at this, as are DSPs nowadays.
>>
>>Ben.
>>
>>BTW, lasers are, in no way shape or form, "digital."
>>
>wouldn't even bet on a CD-ROM sealed up in an air tight container
>lasting more than a few centuries on the outside.
thourgh the centuries. Think about it. First you had papyrus
and clay tablets, which last virtually forever (though the
climates of Egypt and Iraq have a lot to do with this too) unless
they are ripped or shattered. Then came parchment, which can
last for a few centuries without serious disintegration. With
the invention of paper in China and its theft by everyone else,
recording material suffered another fall in durability.
The cheap soft-wood, chemically treated paper of today lasts only
a few decades. Most ROMs are guarenteed for 10 years, though
they can last for up to 100. The point is that if you wanted to
spy on a conversation recorded in paper, the best documents to use
(supposing the other technical problems can be solved) would be
from Ancient Egypt. Then the only problem you would have is
finding someone who speaks Ancient Egyptian.
>
Gabe M. Wiener
Jerome Bigge <jbi...@novagate.com> wrote:
>Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
>old books around? There's just too much deterioration over time.
Excuse me??? Books made from good paper age remarkably well. Look at
any book printed before, say, about 1885 and you'll discover that if
stored well, it looks about as good as the day it was made. When paper
was expensive, it was made with rag content, not pulp.
It was the advent of cheap, highly-acidic pulp paper beginning in the
late 19th century that resulted in crumbling books.
--
Gabe Wiener Dir., PGM Early Music Recordings |"I am terrified at the thought
A Div. of Quintessential Sound, Inc., New York | that so much hideous and bad
Recording-Mastering-Restoration (212) 586-4200 | music may be put on records
ga...@pgm.com http://www.pgm.com | forever."--Sir Arthur Sullivan
Rob Holzel
Rob
jj, curmudgeon and all-around grouch
>pulp. Unfortunately for around a century almost all paper has been
>made from wood pulp, which contains acids which eat away at the paper
>over time.
There is neutralized wood pulp paper available, that doesn't self-destruct.
It just costs more.
--
Copyright alice!jj 1996, all rights reserved, except transmission by USENET
and like facilities granted. This notice must be included. Any use by a
provider charging in any way for the IP represented in and by this article
and any inclusion in print or other media are specifically prohibited.
Richard Wallingford
>
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
YES! With the proper filtering techniques, it will absolutely work.
As I write this, I'm listening to the *original* Gettysburg address,
which is still reverberating throughout the US after all these years.
--
Dick Wallingford di...@iastate.edu
Richard D Pierce
>In article <4io1oi$bp0...@pm-mk101.novagate.net>,
>Jerome Bigge <jbi...@novagate.com> wrote:
>>Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
>>old books around? There's just too much deterioration over time.
>
>Excuse me??? Books made from good paper age remarkably well. Look at
>any book printed before, say, about 1885 and you'll discover that if
>stored well, it looks about as good as the day it was made. When paper
>was expensive, it was made with rag content, not pulp.
>
>It was the advent of cheap, highly-acidic pulp paper beginning in the
>late 19th century that resulted in crumbling books.
For example, I have a an original printing of Mark Wicks, "Organ Buildiong
for Amateurs", printed in London in 1887. The cover and binding are beat
to death from overuse, but the pages are as flexible and strong as new,
and the few color plates are in perfect shape. Before I got it, the book
was stored in a damp, unheated, bat-infested garage for about 40 years.
Paper back and school textbooks stored in the same box had turned to mush.
And, by the way Gabe, I paid a nickel for it!
--
| Dick Pierce |
| Loudspeaker and Software Consulting |
| 17 Sartelle Street Pepperell, MA 01463 |
| (508) 433-9183 (Voice and FAX) |
Leo Backman
>surface (like in a CD) to reflect a laser beam. If the beam is
powerful enough,
>you'll get a reflection off of almost anything (hence Laser radar, or
Lidar)
Besides, the CD laser readout is not based on reflectivity variations
of the information layer.
Chris Patten
(Calix Lewis Reneau) wrote:
>> Don't know what lasers, LP's, and CD's have to do with writing, but:
>>
>> Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high and
>> too coarse for a laser to interpret!
http://useattle.uspan.com/elp/
The arguement of *what* is being used to read the information from the
parchment is moot. A laser CAN read LP data and, theoretically, if there
were any data recorded on a piece of paper using the same type of grooves
and bumps as those found on an LP, a laser could read that too. (laser
tunnelling microscopes have been used successfully for many years to scan
all types of information)
The problem with reading info from a piece of parchment, (in the manner
that the orginal post suggested. ie: try to pick up what was being said at
the time of the original writing) is all the extraneous info that would
have to be filtered out.
Think about it. You've got someone, presumably across the room, talking.
The scribe is scribing (which in itself is causing a helluva lot of
scratching noise because of the natural fibres in the paper) the scribe is
*breathing* and their heart is pumping blood through their writing hand,
all invariably causing some kind of vibration to be transmitted to the
quill.
NOW! This is not to say that you *couldn't* extrapolate the original
dictation of the reader from these scratchings. With a powerful enough
computer, a seriously powerful SMP machine; CRAY-YMP or HyperCube, and a
program designed to actually determine what was noise and what was
signal... conceivably, you could scan the paper with a microscope and feed
the entire "page" of data into the computer... it IS technically
possible, but the programming, scanning and computing requirements would
be enormous.
What the program would need to do is:
a) determine the fiber pattern of the paper and eliminate it from playback.
b) determine what letter is being written (ie: that's an "A" or that's a
"q") and then, based on a study of the type of writing style used in the
document, make an accurate map of how much pressure was being exerted on
the paper at any given moment during a pen stroke. (yes, this would be
exceedingly difficult and probably a crap shoot, at best)
c) having eliminated the above, other microscopic variations might be able
to be extrapolated from the scan data...potentially, this might carry
speech...or how much wind was blowing through the room, or how fast the
scribes heart was beating, or how quickly they were breathing or...
Again, this is all quite theoretical. If anyone at the National Center
for SuperComputer Applications would like to burn some processing cycles
on the Cray, puh-leeez, email me. I'd LOVE to take up the challenge of
developing the methodology of this project.
Cheerio!
-Chris
___________________________
Ottawa, Canada
Andy Trafford
>
>Would you pay Twenty Grand for a record player ?
>(they really do cost $20,000!!!)
>
YES!!!
That's *IF* I had $20K spare....
And I wouldn't buy the laser gizmo either - there are plenty of ways to
spend that much on a conventional record deck (and I'm almost positive
that a conventional deck would sound better)
--
* Andy "Traff" Trafford Work: traf...@pathfinder.com *
* Sybase dude. http://www.pathfinder.com *
* Music lover. Play: tr...@interport.net *
* Photoshop dabbler. http://www.interport.net/~traff *
Pomponio Magnus, ter consuli, comes litoris saxoni
> that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
> scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
> that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
> resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
> vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
> the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
> the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
> surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
> (presumably with a laser beam)?
>
Given that I own the manuscript for the Jupiter Symphony (yeah! sure!)
I decided to go to Radio Shack and purchased a system to get the
background...here is the transcript:
"Woofie...damn it! You are drunk again!"
"200 Kronen! 200 Kronen! You owe us that money! Pay now!"
"...I brought these pastries...give them to your husband...tell
him Signore Salieri admires his work a lot..."
"DOOON GIOVANI!!!! A CENAR VENGO!!!!"
Manawydden Ap Llyr
> From: jbi...@novagate.com (Jerome Bigge)
> Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,alt.inventors,comp.music.midi,misc.writing,rec.audio.tech,rec.audio.pro,rec.audio.opinion,rec.music.classical,soc.history,soc.history.science,soc.history.what-if
> Date: Thu, 21 Mar 96 06:32:12 GMT
> Organization: http://www.novagate.com/~jbigge
>
> In article <4it62u$r...@daria.cdnow.com>,
> dba...@camosun.bc.ca (Deryk Barker) wrote:
> >Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com) wrote:
> >[snip]
> >: Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
> >: old books around?
> >
> >
> >Actually paper *is* durable - provided it's not made from wood
> >pulp. Unfortunately for around a century almost all paper has been
> >made from wood pulp, which contains acids which eat away at the paper
> >over time.
> >
> >However, 'proper' paper (made from linen rags) is very durable -
> there
> >are many books still around which are hundreds of years old, and most
> >of them are in better condition than wood-pulp paper books printed 50
> >years ago.
> >
> >In fact the deterioration of wood-pulp paper is probably the single
> >biggest problem (after funding cuts) facing most libraries today.
> >---
> >Deryk.
> >=====================================================================
> ======
> >|Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Across the pale
> parabola of Joy |
> >|Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada |
> |
> >|email: dba...@camosun.bc.ca | Ralston McTodd
> |
> >|phone: +1 604 370 4452 | (Songs of
> Squalor). |
> >=====================================================================
> ======
>
> There's probably still enough damage by time to the paper to scramble
> any message on it. Paper isn't a very good medium for something like
> this. Baked clay tablets might be better like what the Babylonians
> used. Basic problem however is that the natural "shake" of the human
> hand would probably be enough to destroy any signal that might exist.
>
> The life of cheap paperbacks isn't even fifty years. On the other
> hand I have books fifty years old that are still in pretty good
> condition. Computer data stored on cassettes (old Color Computer)
> was still readable after ten years. If I'm still around in 2005
> I'll give them another try just to see. No doubt the life of any
> data stored on floppy disks would be in much the same range here.
>
> Jerome Bigge
>
> Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com)
After all the discussion, I still have to wonder what would come out
of all this. What would we get to hear after all, Zog the potter
talking to one of his buddies ("Hey Offal! Did you catch the Grindel
show last night? Those bellydancers always get me goin'!") or to
one of the apprentices ("No no Ratboy! Those brooms and buckets
belong by the well!")
Although, now with the CIA finally admitting that it has no use for
the psychics they've been paying since the 70's to find missiles in
Russia, we can easily afford to fund this study...
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Lahoski Sun Geek
Eastern Connecticut State University Eternal Senior
laho...@ecsuc.ctstateu.edu
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
program doesn't deliver it.
==========================================================================
<* WARNING! The following may not be suitable for children or WARNING! *>
<* WARNING! advocates of the CDA (especially the last line). WARNING! *>
<* WARNING! Read at your own risk... WARNING! *>
congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dusk Bennett
>In <4io1oi$bp0...@pm-mk101.novagate.net> jbi...@novagate.com (Jerome Bigge) writes:
>
>
>>Let me add my $.02 worth here. Paper is not very durable. Got any
>
>century are for the most part in very good condition.
>
>Only acidic wood-fiber papers self-destruct over time. Rag paper and
>parchment are very durable.
>
>
>--
were written sometime in the early 150 AD's. I would think that paper
could last quite some time if correctly cared for. Our constitution was
written around 1776 and it still exists.
>Dusk
Dusk Bennett
>In article <4ilg3h$4...@blackice.winternet.com>,
>Magic Marmot Studios <rwit...@winternet.com> wrote:
>>We've actually been doing this for about two years, and it actually
>>works! The secret is in using DSP routines to perform a
>>predictive-adaptive noise correction algorithm (proprietary exotemporal
>>theory) which essentially "guesses" what the noise is through a
>>forward-sampling technique, then extracts what isn't the noise. The
>>not-noise signal is amplified, and processed through a 75Hz 120dB/octave
>>"cliff" filter, which eliminates the body-motion component of the written
>>signal, leaving the intelligible speech range intact.
>>
>
>But how are you doing at inferring sex, age, and bank balance from typing
>style on the internet?
>
>Jim
----------------
Well obviously not very good. Some guy emailed me a month ago and
started hitting on me. He said he'd been watching me for a while. I mean
I guess "Dusk" can seem like a unisex name but girls aren't as cynical as
me. You'd think you could tell if someone was a man when they said stuff
like "recording gear kicks ass" and "guitars rock". I mean I hope you
guys don't think I'm a girl-I'd be offended you know? That's all I need
guys on the net trying to get into bed with me. My morals are much higer
than that.
>Dusk
DISCLAIMER: That last post wasn't meant to offend those who actually do
like going to bed with guys.
Mark Hensley
> >Excuse me??? Books made from good paper age remarkably well. Look at
> >any book printed before, say, about 1885 and you'll discover that if
> >stored well, it looks about as good as the day it was made. When paper
> >was expensive, it was made with rag content, not pulp.
> >
> >It was the advent of cheap, highly-acidic pulp paper beginning in the
> >late 19th century that resulted in crumbling books.
Also, they used to make paper from hemp, which is much more durable. We have
people like william randolph hearst to thank for outlawing the use of hemp
products.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark Hensley, Producer/Engineer
http://haven.uniserve.com/~mhensley/marks.htm
mhen...@uniserve.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ton Maas
during the late sixties. I an attempt to demonstrate the disastrous effects
of pollution of surface water, a newspaper photographer took a picture of
the Rotterdam harbour and used some water from that same harbour as
developer. Sure enough a visible image appeared. I mean, you couldn't see a
lot of details, but the outlines of buildings were clear. Although
scientifically speaking this image didn't carry much weight in terms of
proof, it made a tremendous impact because the public at large was rather
horrified by the very *idea*. It is questionable however, if the trick
would have worked if *all* the parameters were "native", I mean not
high-tech. In this case the film and the camera were both state-of-the-art,
only the "developer" was "primitive". By the same token, you may surprize a
*lot* of people by sticking a piece of aluminum foil into the groove of a
rotating vinyl record, but it seems to me that in the case which triggered
this thread, there ar just too many "wild" parameters.
Ton Maas, Amsterdam NL
Gary Noack
da...@eesun1.tamu.edu (Daniel David Alexander) said:-
>This reminds me of some real garbage I saw on one of those learning channels
>one day. There was apparently a wall in an old pub in some part of the UK
>or Ireland, which was believed to be haunted and was heard to have sounds of
>some sort emanating from it. One respected expert concluded that the stones
>making up the wall were loaded with ferrous materials and were acting like
>some sort of primitive magnetic tape, trapping the sounds of the past within
>them. (Yes, in so many words he actually said this!)
>
>I was immediately astounded by the bullshit contained in this explanation!
>What was being used for recording & playback heads, electro-mechanical
>transducers, etc? Not to mention other obvious flaws in the theory. I think
>this was an Arthur C. Clark show, or something of that nature, but it surely
>makes for a good laugh.
>
>
I heard that some words had been 'extracted' from the modulations in the paint
on the Mona Lisa. Imagine that, Gaz.
__
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I M M O R T A L C O I L S
e-mail to: ga...@imco.demon.co.uk or phone 01480 497730
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eric 't Hart
>Gads. I can't believe I'm responding to this. What a silly thread.
>Recommend adding it to killfiles if you haven't already done so.
>breed
No way, I've read every word!
In fact, I'm already talking to some investors who are going to
finance my research projects . . . :-)
Stephen W Gunther
>
>A phonograph recording is made when the vibrations of a persons voice are
>transmitted through a substance down to a point where they are preserved
>in wax or vinyl. Later a needle can be placed in the groove created by
>this point and the sound can be reproduced.
>
>Is it conceivable that through the ages, as man wrote with the quill pen,
>that a similar type of recording might have been taking place? As the
>scribes of the past wrote on their paper (or parchment) is it possible
>that the sound vibrations present in the room could have caused the pen to
>resonate and as the pen resonated and the scribe wrote, that these
>vibrations were recorded on the surface of the paper either in the form of
>the shape of the ink or in the actual indentation in the paper caused by
>the tip of the pen? And if these vibrations are indeed stored on the
>surface of the paper would it be possible to play them back somehow
>(presumably with a laser beam)?
>
>Clint Biery
>Fairbanks Alaska
>
I don't know if it is possible but I see the possibility of a good sci-fi
story.I hope I can get it down and in print before Ben bova does.
Rose Haupt
>
>In article <4ioboi$k...@bolivia.it.earthlink.net> cal...@earthlink.net
>>Don't know what lasers, LP's, and CD's have to do with writing, but:
>>
>>Hmmm... trouble is, the resolution of a record LP is both too high and
>>too coarse for a laser to interpret!
>>
>>using a very non-discriminating (or wide-beam) laser/reader system,
>>because while CD lasers work in microscopic-sized sampling bites (in
>>terms of the physical area of each pit or lack thereof) while you can
>>see the variations of the low-freq components of the recording on a
>>record w/a trained naked eye.
>
>True enough, but that's not to say it's not possible to implement such
>a device. Finial is currently making one in Japan; it sounds wonderful
>but is prone to having a very high noise floor because it picks up
>dust and dirt that a conventional stylus would brush out of the way.
>--scot
Well, it the power is turned up just a little, it could simply vaporize
the dust!
Tim H.
Steve Strickland
> st...@empire.com.au (Steve Taylor) wrote:
>
> > Smileys are for the ironically handicapped.
>
> The Internet is for the telepathically handicapped.
>
Telepathy is for the deifically handicapped. If felons commit felonies
then irons must commit ironies, ergo, God is an iron!
Charles Packer
Stephen W Gunther <D00...@interpath.com> wrote:
>I don't know if it is possible but I see the possibility of a good sci-fi
>story.I hope I can get it down and in print before Ben bova does.
Yeah, by this point I was thinking of selling the idea to Crichton,
but (see earlier in the thread) A.C. Clarke and David Jones (Daedelus)
have already used it.
--
========== http://www.cais.net/whatnews/whatnews.html =========
========== Experiments in keeping informed =========
Charles Packer
Rob Holzel <hol...@bedford.progress.com> wrote:
>What would the internet be without posts like this? :)
Much poorer...look how it brought out most of the best in
Usenet and not much of the worst. What the thread
begat: Some serious info about signal-to-noise ratios, laser
mechanics, paper manufacturing, history, s-f literature...
some pretty good humor, too.
C R Johnson
>>>To explain: a record groove is too coarse for a laser, unless one is
( Much fine discussion of laser sylus design deleted )
Hows about not using a laser but still reading optically. Heres how it
works:
A microscope would be focused on the groove. A ccd camera chip mounted
on the microscope takes a digital image of the groove.
Then you use software to extract the sound - in the digital domain -
from the image.
There are, of course, a lot of technical problems to overcome with such
a design:
-Tonearm
Hey, if you can do this with a laser beam, you should be able to do it
with a lens.
-control system for tracking and focusing.
And you would do it with some fancy-smancy control system. Maybe use
could use a laser here, for tracking the groov. Tracking back and
forth, AND up and down.
-microscope design and installation
Wouldn't want to put a potentially heavy microscope on the
end of the "arm". either build a very light weight system, or use
fiber optics so as to have a statically mounted microscope.
-illuminating the groove (wow, I like how that sounds)
Need to have a reliable system which illuminates the focused point:
pipe in bright light of the best color with fibers.
-software design
This is the real tricky part. say you take a 256x256 ccd image of
the groove. Assuming that the groove is .1mm in width. at 100 mm out
from the center, at 33.3 rpm the velocity of the focused spot is
100 (mm) * 2 pi (1/rev) * 33.3 (rev/min) *1 (min/60 s) = 175 (mm/s)
so if you can only image .1 mm of length along the groove (10
images/mm) you have to take images at a rate of
175 (mm/s) * 10 (images/mm) = 1750 images/s just to get 1 image
of a particular spot. Chances are that you want more than 1 image of a
particular spot. Several images are probably needed. Lets say 8, but
its probably more. THat makes it 14000 images/s. If the 256x256 array
has a depth of 1 byte that makes it 64K (bytes/image) * 14K
(images/sec) = (about) 1MB/s of data to process. (of course, you could
read the record at a much lower speed and simply calculate the digital
transcription to DAT using a much time as it takes to get it right, If
you didn't have to use the machine as a turntable)
Now that you've got the data you have to process it in real time.
Theres some promise here. Hopefully with the proper algorithims, the
software could recognize dust and crap and surface damage to the vynil
and digitally eliminate the foriegn artifacts.
Then again, you could use Radar! ...
Illuminating the groove...
Cliff
Martin Leese - OMG
...
>> By the same token, you may surprize a
>> *lot* of people by sticking a piece of aluminum foil into the groove of a
>> rotating vinyl record,
Er ... what happens when you do this? (There is no way I am going to
try until I know what is likely to break.)
Many thanks,
Martin
E-mail: mle...@omg.unb.ca
WWW: http://www.omg.unb.ca/~mleese/
______________________________________________________________________
Want to know how Ambisonics can improve the sound of your LPs and CDs?
Read the Ambisonic Surround Sound FAQ. Version 2.6 now on my WWW page.
Timothy Kelly
Hi All,
Anythings possible, most of the stuff we take for granted in our
daily lives was considered impossible a few years ago.
Going back in time with a battery powered dat recorder or getting
out of the body a la Kung Fu and going back along the time track are 2
ways to bring things back from the past.
What if in addition to a recording angel who writes in a book,
theres also a bunch of recording angels who run around with mics
capturing everything musicans do.
Maybe alien recording engineers have been zooming around in UFO
mobile recording studios for years, taking movies of everything.
Holo Bach anyone?
Happy What If.
Timothy Kelly
MidiVox
--
MidiVox-Worlds 1st Voice to Midi Converter. Real Time. No Delays.
Hum a Bass, Croon a Sax, Scat a Horn, Scream a Guitar, Rap some
Drums, Sing a Cello.
Become a Human Sequencer, Human Vocoder, Human Breath Controller.
AES "Best in Show." EM "Editors Choice." " MidiVox Roars."
Keyboard.
Rick
> Subject: Audio stored in scribed ink on paper...
>
> I would imagine that the SN ratio would be a little steep.
> Interesting concept though. I makes me wonder if the CIA
> or NSA has ever explored this idea. I'm sure they have
> examined more whacky ideas than this.
Ken:
Are you from BE that does the AUDIO VAULT?
We have 14 wroksations and 12 9.2 gig HD system.
Rick
FLN
Jeffrey Kolb
(KROMKAMP ANDY) wrote:
> If this is true, why hasn't somebody produced a record-player with a laser
> beam head? I would think this would produce the ultimate in sound quality.
> Of course the answer to this would probably be 'theres no market for it'.
>
> Andy K.
Isn't that basically what a CD player is?
Doug Clinton
No.
Doug
Nancy Nystul
jk...@hamilton.edu (Jeffrey Kolb) wrote:
No, a CD stores information digitally- the sound is sampled, and a number
is assigned at each point of sampling. Similar to a movie film, the
succession of these discrete points creates a (convincing) simulacrum of
movement when they are fast enough. Thus, in a digital medium, a higher
sampling rate gives better fidelity. Vinyl (or shellac, wax, or acetate)
records are an analog medium, representing sound variations in smooth
curves. The idea of a laser reading records is certainly interesting,
though.
Paul Opel
Michael Roach
upon us all, when br...@HARLIE.ee.cornell.edu (Bryan W. Reed) wrote:
|In article <4il53n$d...@news.azstarnet.com>,
|John Pederson <jptu...@azstarnet.com> wrote:
|>jd...@imagi.net (Alaska) wrote:
|>
|>>A friend of mine who's mind is always racing and exploring came up with an
|>>idea the other day and I thought I would bounce it off of you people and
|>>see what you think. It goes something like this:
|>>(bizarre speculation . . .)
|>
|>
|>Nope, 'taint possible.
|>
|>Here's one.
|>
|>Take a freshly laid hen's egg. Chip away the shell. Carefully!
|>And soon. First couple of minutes after it's laid.
|>
|>By osmosis, infuse chlorophyll through the semi-permeable membrane
|>under the shell. While it's still only one cell.
|>
|>Now when the cell divides, by mitosis, the chlorophyll divides with
|>it. So there is chlorophyll in every cell.
|>
|>When the egg hatches, it yields a chicken which has chorophyll in
|>every cell.
|>
|>The chicken makes its own food out of carbon dioxide, sunlight and
|>water, with the chlorophyll as a catalyst.
|>
|>If we're _really_ lucky, the breed will reproduce itself.
|>
|>So no chicken feed!
|>
|>So the chicken meat is green! So what?! It's plenty cheap!
|>
|>I guess I could put up with a new color chicken breast, if I could buy
|>it for half the cost! Shouldn't taste any different! Chlorophyll
|>is tasteless!
|>
|>Maybe a better chance it could work?????
|>
|>John
|>
|
|I can't believe I'm responding to this thread . . .
|
|But, then again, practically everybody's already put it into their kill files,
|so why not?
|
|My question: I didn't recall that chloroplasts had their own DNA. I could be
|mistaken (they might be like mitochondria), but if they don't have any DNA then
|they won't reproduce. It won't do any good to put a little chlorophyll in an
|early embryo cell, since it won't reproduce as the cell divides. You have to
|put chlorophyll-making DNA into the cell, not the chlorophyll itself.
|
|Anyway, the chicken has no mechanism for transporting the required amount of
|CO2 to the surface of the body--well, actually the feathers, since that's all
|that's getting hit by sunlight. So all this metabolic effort goes into making
|chlorophyll that is almost completely useless, and the chicken has less
|available energy, not more. Not to mention that the feathers are dead in the
|first place, and there'd be no way to move the newly formed organic materials
|back into the chicken's circulatory system.
But we could still have green eggs and ham, write?
--
"Wherever there is belching, we'll be there! Wherever there
is stupidity, we'll be there! Wherever there is candy, we'll
be there!", Wacko, Yakko and Dot Warner