A wizard's words finally set free

Via-Times Union

Three men use some modern-day inspiration to retrieve 80-year-old Edison radio broadcasts from old technology.

By PAUL GRONDAHL


SCHENECTADY-- To hear an ailing 82-year-old Thomas Edison speak, with the great inventor's voice, wheezy and high-pitched, growing husky and choked as he praised his good friend Henry Ford who stood alongside President Herbert Hoover on a stage on Oct. 21, 1929 is catching lightning in a bottle.


Earlier that night, the crowd heard Albert Einstein offering words of praise for Edison in German from Berlin.
It is contained in one of the world's oldest surviving radio broadcasts, recorded on an obscure machine that General Electric developed in 1922 and called a pallophotophone -- which means "shaking light sound" in Greek.

Listening to the elderly Edison lose his place, become confused and nearly weep over the depth of his admiration for Ford more than 80 years after he spoke those heartfelt words to a live audience has the power to cause a lump to rise in one's throat.

This aural treasure might have remained lost in history's silent dustbin were it not for a curious archivist, a dogged engineer and a fixer.

The unlikely resurrection story began when archivist Chris Hunter grew curious about 13 undocumented film canisters tucked away on a bottom shelf among 5 million items in the basement archives of the Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium.

Hunter had no idea what they contained, aside from a few vague jottings that indicated they involved radio programs from the 1920s.

There was an even bigger obstacle to solving the mystery. He had no machine that could play them.

He might as well have been looking at ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The canisters were not going to give up easily their mute secrets.

Enter John Schneiter, a former GE engineer and holder of 16 patents, who was taking a tour of the museum and its archives while being wooed as a trustee.

Hunter shared with Schneiter his interest in the long-forgotten film canisters and dilemma in trying to crack the code. It had already stumped sound engineers and technology experts Hunter had contacted.

Schneiter knew who to draft for the assignment, his old co-worker, Russ DeMuth, an engineer at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna and a technology expert some have likened to a latter-day " wizard of Menlo Park." DeMuth is no slouch in the patent department himself, with seven patents and four pending. The two worked together in the control systems lab at GE for many years and had their hands in everything from research on jet engine and wind turbine blades to charging stations for electric hybrid vehicles.

DeMuth accepted the challenge to try to unlock the film canister mystery. Using modern digital equipment and tinkering for hundreds of hours spread out across two years of nights and weekends, he created what is believed to be the only functional pallophotophone in the world.

With that, the trio magically loosed Edison's voice, which had essentially been frozen in time for more than 80 years.

They lost their way plenty of times during the project, but never their faith.

DeMuth is not only brilliant, he also happens to be very stubborn. What he eventually fashioned was so original they didn't know quite what to call it. They settled on "the Gizmotron."

The pallophotophone was a technology developed by GE engineer Charles Hoxie in the early 1920s and it bridged the gap between cinema's silent era and "talkies." The big, boxy recorder used 35 mm sprocketless film, with each strip containing a series of eight to10 parallel soundtracks etched on acetate and nitrate film. It used light bouncing off a tiny mirror to expose each strip of film and to capture the sound.
DeMuth had very little to work with, aside from a few archival photographs of the original machine. He had to scour eBay for old film reels and other long-out-of-production parts to build his device. He was not at all confident of its functionality.

Using modern motors and computer controls, DeMuth cobbled together a machine that used a photo transistor in place of a photoelectric cell that read the recordings originally.

"We didn't know whether this thing was going to work at all," DeMuth recalled. "We were prepared not to hear anything."

When Edison's newly digitized voice rose, Lazarus-like, from a computer speaker, it was a Eureka moment for the three collaborators.

"I got goose bumps when I heard it," Schneiter said.

"Our jaws just dropped," DeMuth said.

The canisters's 20 hours of radio broadcasts were first heard on WGY radio station in Schenectady between 1929 and 1931. Several feature Edison, the GE founder and holder of 1,093 patents, widely regarded as the greatest inventor of all-time and arguably called "the most influential figure of our millennium."

There are other nuggets among the recordings, such as a portion of a high school basketball game believed to be the second oldest surviving sports broadcast and the earliest known recording of the famous NBC chimes.

In one of the recordings, Edison spoke about the creation of the incandescent light bulb on its 50th anniversary.

In his remarks for "Edison Light's Golden Jubilee" program on Oct. 21, 1929 in which he shared the stage with Hoover and Ford, Edison offered a stirring, emotional oratory even though he was nearly completely deaf and in declining health. He died two years later, nearly to the day, at 84.

"I am told that tonight my voice will reach out to the four corners of the world," Edison said, his voice squeaky and thin, as he occasionally stumbled and lost his place. "It is an unusual opportunity for me to express my deep appreciation and thanks to you for the countless evidences of your good will. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

"I would be embarrassed by the honors heaped upon me on this unforgettable night were it not for the fact in honoring me you are also honoring that vast army of thinkers and workers of the past and those who will carry on, without whom my work would have gone for nothing," he said.

Edison might have added these names to that honor roll: Hunter, Schneiter, DeMuth.