Best of all, those records come from Alexander Graham Bell's Volta laboratory where Bell, along with his colleagues, were working to improve sound quality and fidelity in the 1880s, reports PhysOrg.com.
Bell sent samples of the lab's work to the Smithsonian Institute for safe-keeping. The inventor, however, didn't think to also send a record player and so the recordings were never played.
Now, 125 years later, the beaten up and decaying records have new life thanks to a system called IRENE/3D which can scan and play any type of record without having to physically touch -- and thereby damage -- the original. The system takes high resolution images of the spinning records. Restoration specialists, such as Carl Haber and Earl Cornell, can then remove errors from the digital images and play back the recovered recording by passing a virtual stylus over the results.
The system essentially digitizes the original record, with all restoration and correction happening on a computer. The Smithsonian Institute has approximately 400 discs which include people reading from books or reciting Shakespeare.
While the content itself -- mostly sound experiments and audio backups -- may not be impressive, the discs could be an important window into how Bell's lab developed early sound technology.
It will be some time until a system like IRENE/3D makes it to consumers, but we can already hear vinyl enthusiasts and amateur restoration-ists champing at the bit.