Smithsonian unearths 130-year-old recordings

• Rich Strauss, courtesy National Museum of American History

First the kids went crazy over vinyl. Then, when you were able to buy LPs at Best Buy, they started putting out cassettes. Cheap Trick and Fucked Up trumped all of that with releases on 8-track and reel-to-reel, respectively. Now, what’s a lo-fi fetishist supposed to do? How about wax cylinders and glass discs? The Smithsonian recently figured out how to get sound from recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell more than a century ago. Take a listen to some of the recordings at the Smithsonian magazine blog.