Soundtrack to history: 1878 Edison audio unveiled

In July, Hunter brought the Edison tinfoil recording to California's Berkeley Lab, where researchers such as Carl Haber have had success in recent years restoring some of the earliest audio recordings.

Haber's projects include recovering a snippet of a folk song recorded a capella in 1860 on paper by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French printer credited with inventing the earliest known sound recording device.

Haber and his team used optical scanning technology to replicate the action of the phonograph's stylus, reading the grooves in the foil and creating a 3D image, which was then analyzed by a computer program that recovered the original recorded sound.

The achievement restores a vital link in the evolution of recorded sound, Haber said. The artifact represents Edison's first step in his efforts to record sound and have the capability to play it back, even if it was just once or twice, he said.

"It really completes a technology story," Haber said. "He was on the right track from the get-go to record and play it back."

Online:

Haber's site: http://bio16p.lbl.gov/Tinfoil.html