Staffers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are working with partners at the Library of Congress (LC) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) to recover sound from some of the earliest sound recordings every made. These recordings, made in Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta Laboratory between 1881 and 1885, were considered unplayable until LBL partner Carl Haber and his associates invented a noninvasive process about 2003. Without ever touching the fragile recordings, the process employs ultra-precise measurement instruments and results in digital .wav files.

This presentation describes the ongoing project, reports on results to date, and offers preliminary thoughts about the project’s implications for sound preservation and studies of sound culture.