A $25,735 grant from Save America’s Treasures has been awarded to the Schenectady Museum to preserve a tinfoil recording that Thomas Edison created on June 22, 1878 in St. Louis.
The contents of the recording aren’t known, the museum said, because the recording can’t be safely played. But the grant money will allow the museum to recover the sound using a non-contact optical scanner. The recording is believed to be the second oldest surviving recorded voice of an American made using Edison’s phonograph.
The Save America’s Treasures program is administered by the National Park Service, in partnership with the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Edison founded the Edison General Electric Co. in Schenectady by 1890. The Schenectady Museum maintains an archive of GE photos and other items.