Patrick Feaster easily recalls the moment he first heard the
French lullaby "Au clair de la lune" crackle out of the speakers
of his home computer. Bleary eyed, sunrise fast approaching,
Feaster could clearly pick out the grainy, ethereal voice of a
young girl making herself heard for the first time since she was
recorded a century and a half earlier, in 1860. Feaster is a
hunter of ancient sounds stored in recordings that have been
impenetrable to modern methods of playback -- or that were never
even intended to be heard. But with a clever method the recent
Indiana University PhD developed in his spare time, Feaster
breathes life into timeworn stores of aural information. "I
stayed up all night correcting this sound file," Feaster says of
the lullaby. "Gradually, over the course of the night, this
voice begins to take recognizable form, until somewhere around 3
or 4 o'clock in the morning, I can hear the whole thing, and
it's immediately recognizable -- I know how 'Au clair de la
lune' goes. And I sat there