When 78man decided to make his vast collection of old 78’s available online, he came up with a rather novel way of doing it – instead of just posting mp3s of the audio, he pointed a video camera at his records while they played on his gramophone/phonograph and uploaded the resulting videos to YouTube.
So far, he's done this to 378 crackly old discs which were released between the 1900’s and 1950’s. The collection encompasses most of the major styles of the time – blues, ragtime, music hall and big-band swing, just to name a few – and even includes some genuine oddities such as a recording of nightingales from the garden of cellist Beatrice Harrison (more on that in an upcoming post), a guide to dancing to "Knees Up Mother Brown", and a couple of laughing records.
(via nickyskye of metafilter)