How Genius Carl Haber Restores Long-Lost Sounds
Some historic sounds were lost—until the physicist began digitally restoring them.
Haber, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is a recipient of a 2013 MacArthur "genius grant."
Several years ago, he heard an NPR report about the delicate condition of historic sound recordings at the Library of Congress. That report inspired him to look into restoration of these audio artifacts.
"I'm really trained to think about how to measure things," Haber explained. "We were already using a suite of optical methods to measure things in our lab. I just saw a connection between [that] and what I perceived to be a problem. I just thought it would be a good thing."
Haber's work uses physics, photography, and image processing to mathematically extract information from recordings.
"We focus on sound
