Peering at the past

Love being an arts journalist. What other job lets you spend two magical hours poking around the vintage records, tapes and other artifacts of the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound? (Well, besides archivist.)

Yes, I am old enough to still have a few vinyl records. But these wax cylinders developed by Edison: not so much. I'd never seen them before, or the wire tapes (rolled up in the little blue boxes at left) that people used to make magnetic recordings in decades past. If I'm ever props designer for a show about Edison or a 1930s secretary, I'll be ready.

Check out more photos and my story on the archive on page 29 here.

Pictured: A table of artifacts at the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.