Pretty Cool Things

I realize this is old news, but I just came across it recently. Columbia TriStar created an amazing water-hologram to promote the Japanese premiere of their movie, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep. This type of hologram uses a water screen created by light projected on a precisely aimed water jet to create a massive 3-D Loch Ness “Water Horse” monster in Tokyo Bay. I heard the stunt was much more interesting than the actual movie unfortunately.

Here’s the video:

For more than a century, Thomas Edison was generally considered the father of recorded sound. Now researchers have unearthed a recording that predates Edison’s by 17 years. Little known Frenchman, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, invented the phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. The recently discovered recording, dating back to 1860, was made playable by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

The anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The ghostly voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune.

Listen to the recording

Listen to a 1931 version of the same song

Source