Funding Will Preserve Alexander Graham Bell’s Experimental Sound Recordings
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has received a $488,000 grant from the Department of Interior, National Park Service (NPS) through the Save America’s Treasures (SAT) grant program, for conserving sound recordings from Alexander Graham Bell’s Washington, D.C., Volta Laboratory. Dating from 1881 to 1892, they are among the earliest recordings ever made.
This is one of 41 grants awarded this fall, totaling $12.6 million, given in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. With Save America’s Treasures funds, organizations and agencies conserve significant U.S. cultural and historic treasures, which illustrate, interpret and are associated with the great events, ideas and individuals that contribute to the nation’s history and culture. The Alexander Graham Bell Foundation in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, has pledged matching funds.
The National Museum of American History, through an ongoing collaborative project with the Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has recovered sound from 20 experimental Volta Laboratory recordings in 2011, 2013 and 2019, including the only documented recording of Bell’s voice. The earlier conservation work received funding from the Grammy Foundation, Smithsonian Women’s Committee and the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies program. The SAT grant will permit the continuation of this project, enabling the team to work with the museum’s collection of nearly 300 more experimental recordings from Bell’s laboratory and with additional Bell recordings in the collections at Parks Canada’s Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck.
“Recovering sound from these recordings will be a major advance in the study of our sonic heritage,” said Carlene Stephens, curator at the museum. “This project allows us to revive sounds from recordings in two Bell collections and reunite the collections digitally. These sounds will enrich what we know about the earliest days of experiments with recorded sound and let us hear history.”
The noninvasive optical technique that scans and recovers sound was first conceived by Berkeley Lab in 2002 and jointly developed with assistance from the Library of Congress and other institutions over the past 15 years. The process creates a high-resolution digital map of a disc or cylinder. This map is then processed to remove evidence of wear or damage (e.g., scratches and skips). Finally, software calculates the motion of a stylus moving through the disc’s or cylinder’s grooves, reproducing the audio content and producing a standard digital sound file. For more information, visit www.irene.lbl.gov. For more information about the museum’s Bell collection, visit the online exhibition.
The National Museum of American History, through an ongoing collaborative project with the Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has recovered sound from 20 experimental Volta Laboratory recordings in 2011, 2013 and 2019, including the only documented recording of Bell’s voice. The earlier conservation work received funding from the Grammy Foundation, Smithsonian Women’s Committee and the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies program. The SAT grant will permit the continuation of this project, enabling the team to work with the museum’s collection of nearly 300 more experimental recordings from Bell’s laboratory and with additional Bell recordings in the collections at Parks Canada’s Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck.
“Recovering sound from these recordings will be a major advance in the study of our sonic heritage,” said Carlene Stephens, curator at the museum. “This project allows us to revive sounds from recordings in two Bell collections and reunite the collections digitally. These sounds will enrich what we know about the earliest days of experiments with recorded sound and let us hear history.”
The noninvasive optical technique that scans and recovers sound was first conceived by Berkeley Lab in 2002 and jointly developed with assistance from the Library of Congress and other institutions over the past 15 years. The process creates a high-resolution digital map of a disc or cylinder. This map is then processed to remove evidence of wear or damage (e.g., scratches and skips). Finally, software calculates the motion of a stylus moving through the disc’s or cylinder’s grooves, reproducing the audio content and producing a standard digital sound file. For more information, visit www.irene.lbl.gov. For more information about the museum’s Bell collection, visit the online exhibition.
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