Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Rough Transcription Disc

This transcription disc is in really rough shape. Side A is decent. Side B is just vile. Side B was probably exposed to direct sunlight and dried out enough that the shellac has pulled back from the edge and cracked along it requiring some pieces be glued down, and the edge coated in nail polish so the needle not tear off dime-sized flakes. The physical cracks make the most noise so the first in the first 15 seconds are unintelligible, and the rest is a reading from a book on crystals in circuits. But he reads standing away from the recorder leaving us with that tell-tale boxy echo. It also ends abruptly.

So I have not bothered to include any audio from Side B. Side A however, has everything you could want. The opening words are:

"This is Anthony Lisicky speaking on the 15th of February 1950 for Section A. About 11 years ago I entered the Allentown high school and I chose the industrial curriculum with autoshop as my major..."

...And so we have everything we could hope to find out. We have a name, place and date. it gets better from there.

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