Mistake in the quote of the main page

[Il Musico (imported)]

I just noticed the quote on the main page, that says:

> There is a recording of a eunuch that was castrated to keep his voice. It was done on a wire recorder in the early 1900's.

Surely the recordings of Alessandro Moreschi are meant. They are the only ones I know of, which would fit the time given.

But these were NOT done on a wire recorder! The recording equipment was purely mechanical (at least for the 1902 recording), using discs. The poor guy had to sing loudly into a giant funnel, to move a diaphragm at the end that directly vibrated a recording stylus that cut the waveform into a soft layer on a spinning disc. He got mighty nervous, and that can be heard on the recording. I'm not sure whether the second session, in 1904, still used mechanical equipment, or some sort of electric setup (with carbon microphone and voice coil), but it too used discs. In any case, Moreschi was less nervous then, so I guess the funnel was less intimidating!

The wire recorder came into widespread use only much later, and more for reporters (recording speech) than for music.

Il Musico.