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Excellent work and a great example of how sometimes the best presentation of archival assets is remediation.
Really interesting article. Unfortunately it looks like media preservation only goes so far: I'm getting 404s for all of the embedded audio files.
While the author used software to retrieve the sound, I bet it could be done with photochemical methods onto a copper disk, similar to how circuit boards are etched.

Or how soundtracks are photographed onto movie film.

I never thought about this until your comment. Fascinating!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-on-film

I'm blown away by the complexity of sound that can be conveyed in what seems a simple manner.

That's because in essence even the most complex sounds change just one environmental variable: local air pressure.
I'm falling in love with sound all over again. Yes, that is obvious now that you say it, but I never realized it before. Thanks!
I like the suggestion from 1890 to use cotton in the ears as a low pass filter to increase fidelity.