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Thomas Edison National Historical Park - News Release For Release: November 27, 2013 Contact: Karen Sloat-Olsen Phone: 973-736-0550 x17 Special program by miSci Curator Chris Hunter: �Restoring the 1878 St. Louis Edison Tinfoil Recording� Friday, December 6th, 2013 at 2:30 pm WEST ORANGE, NJ � On Friday, December 6th, 2013 at 2:30 pm, Thomas Edison National Historical Park welcomes Chris Hunter, Curator of �miSci� Museum of Innovation & Science, who will give a one-hour presentation titled �Restoring the 1878 St. Louis Edison Tinfoil Recording.� Last summer, miSci of Schenectady, New York announced that physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had recovered sound from one of the oldest recordings in existence � a phonograph record made on tinfoil in June 1878 in St. Louis, Missouri. In this special presentation at Thomas Edison National Historical Park, Hunter will describe the innovative scanning process used to restore the recording, and he will explain how his archival research identified the talking and other sounds heard in the recording. The 1878 St. Louis Edison Tinfoil is the oldest recording of an American�s voice that can be heard today. The recording opens with a 23-second cornet solo of an unidentified song, followed by a man's voice reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Old Mother Hubbard." The man laughs at two spots during the recording, including at the end, when he recites the wrong words in the second nursery rhyme. Hunter determined that the man's voice on the tinfoil recording is probably that of Thomas Mason, a St. Louis newspaper political writer who also went by the pen name I.X. Peck. Edison company records show that one of the new tinfoil phonographs, serial No. 8, was sold to Mason for $95.50 in April 1878, and a search of old newspapers revealed a listing for a public phonograph program offered by Peck on June 22, 1878 in St. Louis. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in December 1877. It was the first device that could both record and reproduce sound. Only a very few recordings from this very early period survive today. Those that survive are delicate artifacts, effectively unplayable until recently. The Thomas Edison National Historical Park Visitor Center is located at 211 Main Street. The Laboratory Complex is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. year-round. The Glenmont Estate is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. All special programs are included with $7.00 park entrance fee unless otherwise indicated. Children under 16 are free. Car passes and tour tickets must be obtained at the Laboratory Complex Visitor Center for all Glenmont programs. Reservations are required for some programs. Visit our website at www.nps.gov/edis or call 973-736-0550 extension 11 during visiting hours for more information. -NPS- Thomas Edison National Historical Park National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 211 Main Street West Orange, NJ 07052 973 736-0550 phone 973 736-6567 fax