----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Brock-Nannestad" <[log in to unmask]>
> Steven Smolian wrote:
>> In recent years I have been privately advocating that each sound archive 
>> and
>> other learning venues present a program called "How Our Ancestors Heard
>> Recordings."
>> It would sequentially play back the same piece of music, "Stars and 
>> Stripes"
>> or an earlier piece for which recordings exist in all commercial media.
>> These would be reproduced through the actual machines for which they were
>> intended rather than microphone recordings from them and would cover the
>> time spectrum then to now.
> ----- I have gone one further: I have proposed that a linear re-recording 
> of
> the groove waveform could be sent to a suitable driver or vibrator to 
> drive
> directly the reproducing stylus when sitting in the soundbox in the 
> machine.
> You would get all the acoustic of the original machine. That way there 
> would
> be no wear of the recording, nor of the needle. The only thing you would 
> not
> get would be the rumble of the machine, nor the sometimes crunchy noises 
> from
> the spring unwinding inside its can. On the other hand, you would not even
> need to restore the drive train of the machine, certainly halving the cost 
> of
> restoration.
> I actually proposed this in 1989 in my "Comment on "International Re-
> Recording Standards" that I mentioned in my first post.
>
Isn't this the same thing that the various NON-mechanical record "players"
are trying to accomplish? I have seen numerious approaches which try to
"read" the groove via reflected light; are there any currently-working such
sonic "players?"

Steven C. Barr