The Old Phono Blog
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- Written by: Tim Ott
Since we recently experienced the full solar eclipse on August 21, let's take a look back at how this celestial phenomenon affected the great American innovator of the Gilded Age.
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- Written by: OldPhono
The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. It is part of the American Discography Project (ADP)—an initiative of the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Packard Humanities Institute that is edited by a team of researchers based at the UCSB Library. These files are now available for download and provided free for personal use.
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- Written by: Eva Moreda Rodríguez
To the question “When were recordings invented?”, we might be tempted to answer “1877” – the year when Thomas A Edison was first able to record and playback sound with a phonograph. But what if we think of recordings not as mere carriers of sound, but as commodities that can be bought and sold, as artefacts capable of capturing and embodying values and emotions; of defining a generation, a country or a social class? The story then becomes one that unfolds over three decades and is full of many layers and ramifications.
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- Written by: Tom Eblen
Brian Gorrell spent most of his career teaching music to children, including directing the Henry Clay High School Band in the 1970s. But for the past two decades, he has sold, repaired and collected their ancestors’ mechanical music machines.
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- Written by: Adam Savage
Adam Savage tells the story behind American Epic, the culmination of a two-decade-long project to reassemble a one-of-a-kind 1920s recording system and the exhausting restoration of hundreds of the era’s forgotten musical works.