Old cylinder recordings (1890-1920) archive now online...

Original link still works!

Sorry, wasn't thinking about original link just repurposing thread a little to be links to old time recording methods references, such as the Audio Engineering Society Recording Technology History page I just linked to, since I was not aware of some such other thread.

NY Times profile of WFMU's gramophone/cylinders specialist (and a high-school classmate of yrs truly) Mike Cumella:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/a-gramophone-dj-cranks-up-the-volume.html

And the original UCSB archive site has been updated.

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

also related, at IU-Bloomington:

http://news.iu.edu/releases/iu/2015/10/media-digitization-preservation-initiative-opening.shtml

Meantime, there's this -- Archeophone has a lot of good stuff in their catalog.

http://archeophone.com/catalogue/waxing-the-gospel/

No "A Day in a Country School" by George Graham :(
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Thursday, November 17, 2005 12:09 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Eureka! I have found it!

https://i78s.org/preview/6d691a230a67c765dd0998f8f30f48cd

This "monologue" or speech or whatever you want to call it is listed in Harry Smith's liner notes to the Anthology of American Folk Music as one of several Berliner discs that were a precursor to folk music. It "includes a unique recording of chanted mathematical problems." Great stuff, and from what I can discern through the static it sounds like he's using the word "five" as a synonym for "double".

Five one is two
Five two is four
Five four is eight
Five eight is sixteen
Five sixteen is thirty-two
Five thirty-two is sixty-four
Five sixty-four is... five sixty fours is... oh stop that nonsense never mind. Well that's good enough for today.

Ha!

People people, oh dear gentle ILX folk, I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS RECORDING FOR LITERALLY LIKE TWENTY YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is he saying "twice"?

Inventing the whole bit system!

Nice! Wish the site played on mobile. I'm having a go at doing a bit of careful restoration on the track, will see if I can make it any clearer.

Well it's clearer but the restoration is more drastic than careful, might have another go tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOh3iTlrLj8

Oh and this is the best (and most annoying) archive, it's not on this thread for some reason

https://www.russian-records.com