Ah, I knew I had seen it on TV.  Thanks for the memory jog Gwyn.
:o)

-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gwyn
Alcock
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 2:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: earliest audio recordings NOT made by Edison

... which is probably where that episode of CSI (the original in Las
Vegas) picked up the idea.

(Of course, now that the "technique" was on CSI, millions think it's
real.)

Gwyn Alcock





________________________________
From: Joshua L. Stewart <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, June 1, 2009 12:52:10 PM
Subject: Re: earliest audio recordings NOT made by Edison

A quick amble around google turns up several news stories, relating to
the amazing pot, which turns out to have been just a french april fools
joke. 

Here is a link to one of the sites : 

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/3992/

Joshua Stewart

________________________________

From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY on behalf of Marty Pickands
Sent: Mon 6/1/2009 2:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: earliest audio recordings NOT made by Edison



Yes- I remember that talking pot, too, from an article I read during my
first year as a grad student. I could never remember the source, and was
always suspicious that it was wishful thinking by the researcher. They
claimed to have a recorded a shout, but maybe scratches on a pot just
sound like shouts- who would ever know?

Marty Pickands
New York State Museum
>>> Susan Walter <[log in to unmask]> 06/01/09 12:29 PM >>>
This is really neat!  Literal VOICES from the past.
Decades ago in one of the San Diego museums in Balboa Park, there was
the
neatest display and recording...an ancient pot, while being made on a
potter's wheel, had apparently also recorded voices...I think it was in
the
Aerospace Museum for an exhibit on technology.  I was distracted at the
time
as a chaperone for 30 some odd children on a field trip, but always
thought
that those sounds were so magnificent...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Skiles" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 7:54 AM
Subject: earliest audio recordings NOT made by Edison


Researchers unveil imprints made 20 years before Edison invented
phonograph
...
WASHINGTON - The muffled sounds from more than 150 years ago resemble
the
"wa wa" of the unseen teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. It would be
impossible to know that someone was playing the coronet and guitar,
although
other fragments, from a dramatic speech from Shakespeare's Othello,
might be
discerned if you knew the lines by heart in French.

Yet these sound bites and other snippets, unveiled May 29 by historians
at
the annual meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections,
are
the earliest known recordings. A bunch of wavy lines scratched by a
stylus
onto fragile paper that had been blackened by the soot from an oil lamp
date
from 1857. That's 20 years before Edison invented the phonograph ...
(story
continues ... with lovely images ... at link below):

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/44267/title/Earliest_known_so
und_recordings_revealed