New sound technologies? Sure, okay, I guess. But haunted dolls of the 1890s as made by Thomas Edison? Oh, now you’ve got my attention.
So in case you haven’t discovered this before, Tempest Instruments, a “small team” led by TV/film and video game composer Alex Davis, has been collected strange sound ephemera of the 19th century. That fits with the milieu of the more esoteric sound libraries for which he’s a purveyor. (We’re imagining it’s the 1800s, so really, we’re even more likely to say “milieu” and “purveyor.” You know, I do sort of suspect that I’m part of the group of people who screwed up how AI talks. Anyhoo…)
You came for haunted dolls, and you came to the right place.
If you’re surprised that Thomas Edison would invent something that exploited cheap labor, terrified small children, and was lacking in basic human empathy, I think you need to do some more reading on who Thomas Edison was. But this is fantastic. Even The New York Post (bless them) picked this one up:
Dunno, really, maybe the kids were into it and it was the parents that said absolutely no. (On a scale of one to Teddy Ruxbin, this only ranks about a six for me.)
Maestro Alex takes a deep dive.
Even the Smithsonian Institute refers to this one as “expensive, heavy, non-functioning and a little scary looking,” though I would argue the same of most presently available multifunction printers.
The Epic Failure of Thomas Edison’s Talking Doll
The Edison Archive also takes this one on, with more details about how the mechanism worked, or more to the point, how it mostly did not work. They also hit my earlier point — it’s unclear what children thought of these, so much as parents returned them when presumably the mechanism proved impossible to operate. All that being said, has anyone gotten to this point of the article and sort of wished you did own some dolls with mechanical sound-producing innards? I feel like someone in CDM Nation is going to launch some peculiar sound art project out of this story. Send me the invites to the opening.
Thomas Edison’s Talking Doll: The Famous Invention Children Hated
Let’s go earlier, because Alex also takes a look at some of the earliest human vocal recordings — predating the doll, though with more shouting into weak recording mechanisms.
There’s also this wonderful bit on a man born in 1800 — Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke, Prussian Generalfeldmarschall. This is timely, as I believe the area of Prussia around me is working on bringing back this era of governance. (Ahem.)
Actually, don’t just call him von Moltke — make sure you say von Moltke the Elder, as in “von Moltke is my nephew’s name!” (Yes, yes, I’m reading Wikipedia.)
How old is he? Old enough that he was born in what was still the Holy Roman Empire. Listen:
Okay, Tempest Instruments, you’ve gotten my attention. These are the kinds of people who control orchestral libraries on an iPad and sample 1848 instruments played by Chopin. I’m in:
Sona/Chroma is even available free if you want some sound inspiration but don’t have the dough (possibly because you spent it on parts to build an electro-mechanical talking doll).
Bonus round!
Some of you may know this, but for Alien fans, this scene was a temp track! (Goldsmith’s Freud score, which evidently he hated?)
That’s close to the most famous “accidental music” cue in Hollywood history, but that probably goes to Top Gun:
Anyway, some children probably need tucking into bed, so Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star it is! Sweet dreams!
Look how far technology came in a century: