Technology: Playing Vinyl Records The Rube Goldberg Way

Give a geek, a scanner, a computer, and one of those dusty, vinyl disks stored next to the CDs, and you get, well, music. "Remember those flat round things you may have found lying around the house," writes Ofer Springer. "Those that never really worked well as flying saucers? Well, the other day I happened to have a good look at one through a magnifying glass. I was able to discern something waveform'esqe in the shape of the grooves. I thought, 'groovy, there must be a way to extract something sensible off of that' (actual thought quoted). At which point I came up with some great excuses...reasons...to have a go: A) These round objects could have some archeological value[;] B) I could waste some time. Happily convinced by these, I tried to recall an old legend I once heard concerning these objects. This legend being of technological nature, entailed a diamond needle that would vibrate when placed atop the revolving flat things, these vibrations, when amplified would produce music." A hero to pencil sharpeners everywhere, Ofer scanned a high-res image from a copy of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (Stokowski), dashed off some code to decipher the image, and "played" the music. <http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/>