3D Scanner May Save Vanishing Languages from Extinction (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 20, 2007

3D Scanner May Save Vanishing Languages from Extinction
http://www.imls.gov/news/2007/092007.shtm

[photo inset - Vitaliy Fadeyev (rear) and Carl Haber beside some of the
instrumentation at Berkeley Lab used in the optical scanning of cylinders
and disc records.]

Washington, DC—Fragile field recordings of American Indian speech and song
gathered in the early 1900s may be saved for future generations through
breakthrough technology supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and
Library Services (IMLS). The Institute is funding the research and
development of a 3D optical scanner through a $507,233 interagency
agreement with the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL) announced Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and IMLS Director
Anne-Imelda Radice, Ph.D. Sept. 20.

“This agreement underscores the federal commitment to making critical and
irreplaceable collections held by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of
Anthropology – and thousands of museums, libraries, and archives around the
country – available to the widest possible audience while and respecting the
sensitive nature of the recordings,” said Lee who represents Berkeley in the
9th Congressional District of California.

“The 2,700 wax cylinder recordings held by the Hearst museum are jewels in a
treasure trove of early recordings that we hope will be rescued,” Radice
said. “Saving the delicate recordings, which literally may keep alive some
of these Native American languages, fits squarely within the goals of
IMLS’s conservation initiative -- Connecting to Collections: A Call to
Action.” Nationwide, there are approximately 20,000 Native American
fieldwork recordings on fragile wax cylinders, the earliest method of
recording and reproducing sound.

Other rare recordings that would benefit from the technology include:

• Field recordings of linguistic, cultural, and anthropological materials,
such as early 20th century Mexican-American folk recordings from Southern
California and Hawaiian folk music recordings.

• Field recordings of American and European folk music, including those
recorded and collected by John Lomax.

• Speeches of historical figures such as Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt,
William Jennings Bryan, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and P.T. Barnum.

The new 3D system builds on a 2D system also developed by the Berkeley Lab
called IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), which gathers digital
sound from grooved discs (flat recordings such as traditional 78 rpm shellac
disc records) by illuminating the record surface with a narrow beam of
light. The flat bottoms of the groove -- and the spaces between tracks --
appear white, while the sloped sides of the groove, scratches, and dirt
appear black. The computer turns this information into a digital sound file
and corrects areas where scratches, breaks or wear have made the groove
wider or narrower than normal. IRENE then “plays” the file with a virtual
needle without damaging or destroying the original media. The technology
was adapted from methods used to build radiation detectors for high-energy
physics experiments.

IMLS is funding the next stage of the project: development of the 3D imaging
sound player that can read foil, wax, plastic cylinders (which preceded the
development of flat records), plastic dictation belts, and discs. The 3D
technology is required to read cylinders since the sound is held in
vertical movements of the groove. The 3D device is based upon a type of
confocal microscope. White light directed at the surface of a cylinder or
disc passes through a special lens, creating a spectrum. Each color of the
spectrum comes into focus at a different depth so the color of the
reflected light reveals the height of the scanned point. A computer
assembles these points into profiles for each groove and translates the
data into a sound file. The 3D scan would extract information based on
20-30 points – compared to IRENE’s 2-4 points – also offering the
possibility of higher quality sound files. Tinfoil and wax cylinders were
developed in the late 1870s and 1880s, and cylinders remained in use until
1929, when commercial production for these music recordings ceased.
However, cylinder technology continued to be used for dictation recordings
for office use into the early 1950s.

"IRENE and its 3D offspring have the potential to recover great recorded
sound collections in libraries, museums, and archives across the United
States," said Carl Haber, a senior scientist in LBNL’s Physics Division who
developed the technology with fellow Physics Division scientist Vitaliy
Fadeyev. “The project could revolutionize the preservation of early
recordings because it will use digital imaging to recover sound from
three-dimensional recordings without contact with the media.”

IMLS is funding development of two 3D prototype machines: one will be
evaluated at Berkeley, the other at the Library of Congress. Both systems
could be available to the national community of museums and libraries. By
the project’s end, the path to reproduce the technology should be clear and
the raw hardware costs should decrease significantly over time. The
prototype’s open design will enable improvements to the hardware and
software as more experience is acquired.

In addition to potentially providing preservation-quality transfers of all
mechanical formats, the project would provide a comprehensive assessment of
the media’s condition. The Heritage Health Index, a survey on the state of
the nation’s collections supported by IMLS, reported that American
collections contain 46.4 million items of recorded sound, and 9.6 million
(21 percent) are in grooved formats that could be affected by development
of the prototype. A comprehensive assessment is needed because of the 9.6
million grooved carriers, 59 percent were in an unknown condition. With the
new system, even cracked or scratched cylinders could be reproduced.