Audio from 123-year-old doll could be 1st commercial recording

A 12-second recording of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' from the first-ever talking doll could also be the first-ever commercial recording, experts have said.


The recently-recovered recording, captured on a ring-shaped cylinder phonograph, was produced for Thomas Edison's failed talking-doll business venture in 1888.


The recording eventually found its way to Jerry Fabris, museum curator of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, who thought that the hopelessly bent, 123-year-old artifact was condemned to eternal muteness.


Then, a few years ago, Fabris saw engineer Carl Haber give a presentation on a new 3-D scanning technology for old records at a conference.


Fabris brought the tin recording, long since separated from the rest of the doll, to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where on May 11 Haber and another scientist successfully reproduced the audio.







"That was really exciting," Fabris said, of 'arguably the first commercial recording, the earliest documented example of anyone hiring someone to make records, to perform on records, that would then be sold.'


"I was hoping to hear Edison, but I was happy to hear any kind of voice," Fabris was quoted by CNN.


Patrick Feaster, a historian of the early phonograph, added that the recording has 'a number of different significances.'


"This was the very first case of a professional recording for an audience -- before it had really been done only for the novelty," Feaster said.


"This is the first instance of someone doing it to earn some money, and that's a pretty big first.


"It gives us a better understanding of the nature of the technical development of recorded sound; with this recording of the toy doll we have a much better sense of what these recordings sounded like," Feaster said.


Fabris added that the recording marks a key moment in the history of early sound technology.

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'Hacktivists' make noise on US govt websites

A breed of cyber pranksters known as "hacktivists" appears to be on a campaign to embarrass the US government, but such types of attack are unlikely to breach the computer firewalls that protect important official secrets, independent analysts say.

A loosely organised group of hackers called Lulz Security, little known outside of cybersecurity circles, has claimed attacks against the public websites of the CIA and US Senate over the past week. Hackers mounted a second, similar assault against the Senate website on Wednesday, possibly the work of copycats.

US officials say government computer systems and websites, including those operated by the Pentagon, are subjected to thousands of attempted hackings each month but that safeguards usually keep would-be intruders away from sensitive data.

The Lulz style of attack, known as a denial of service meant to disable the target's website, is often undertaken by activists as young as teenagers and pose little danger aside from embarrassment and website clean-up costs that can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"It's hacktivism -- activism through hacking. Campaigns of this kind have been done in the past for two reasons: outrage and self-promotion. This one is some combination of those," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a think tank devoted to cyber issues.

"There's a lot of noise but no real downside, except that if people don't think the CIA can protect its own website, it colors their thinking about what it can do in other arenas -- maybe unfairly, but it doesn't really matter."

Denial of service attacks are the most basic form of cyber intervention, in which hackers jam a website by flooding it with traffic. The attacks often involve software that can be downloaded for free from the Internet.

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