14 DAY TRIAL // Here's a history lesson that will surely give you the creeps and probably make you wish you had just skipped it: back in 1890, American inventor Thomas Edison introduced the world to the very first talking dolls.
The dolls, standing about 2 feet (0.6 meters) tall, had a metal body and limbs made of wood. Sure, they weren't the absolute best-looking things ever to come out of a toy factory, but it wasn't their looks that seriously freaked people.
Rather, it was their voices. As it turns out, these dolls created by Thomas Edison sounded downright demonic. Let's phrase it this way: if killer doll Chucky were polygamous, they would have all ended up as his brides.
No, really, they had the creepiest of voices
By now, you're probably curious about just how scary Thomas Edison's talking dolls were. Since we're not ones to keep you wondering, here are a few recordings, courtesy of the US National Park Service:
“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
“A Child's Prayer” (brace yourselves, this one is the worst)
Since the dolls were made in 1890, recovering the audio recordings Thomas Edison was gracious enough to gift them with wasn't exactly easy-peasy. Instead, scientists had to turn to a novel technology.
Thus, they employed a three-dimensional optical scanning system dubbed IRENE-3D. The system, developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers together with Library of Congress experts, made it possible to reproduce the recordings.
“The IRENE-3D system creates a digital model of the surface of a phonograph record. With the digital model, image analysis methods are used to reproduce the audio stored on the record, saving it as a WAV-format digital audio file,” US National Park Service specialists explain.
Although Thomas Edison made quite a few dolls, just eight recovered audio recordings are currently available in digital form. These recordings are included in five distinct collections.
So why did the inventor create these dolls?
Word has it that Thomas Edison himself wasn't a big fan of these dolls. Add to this the fact that people were simply refusing to buy them, and it should not come as a surprise that he stopped making them about a month after the dolls had made their debut.
As for why he created them to begin with, historians say that he did it in an attempt to popularize the wax cylinder photograph. Since the sound quality was fairly poor, he had the dolls recite easily recognizable verses. Unfortunately, the dolls failed to appeal to people.
Interestingly, the prototypes of these talking dolls mumbled in the voice of Thomas Edison himself. When moving on to making dolls meant for the public, the inventor is believed to have hired a factory worker to recite the verses in a child-like voice.
