- WASHINGTON -- One of America's
most enduring and bitterly debated controversies whether Lee Harvey Oswald
was the lone assassin who killed President Kennedy more than 40 years ago
could finally be resolved.
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- Scientists are to produce a digital copy of the only
known audio recording of the assassination to allow researchers to analyse
the sound of the gun-shots captured on the recording.
-
- The original, preserved on an analogue tape, has not
been played since the early 80s because it is so fragile. The recording
was made through the microphone of a motorcycle policeman's radio and captured
on a portable tape recorder back at headquarters.
-
- The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted
alone, firing three shots from the Texas Book Depository building.
-
- But a Congressional investigation in 1979 concluded that
an analysis of the recording revealed four shots were fired, including
three from the book depository and one from another location. This gave
rise to all manner of theories, most famously that there was a second gunman
on the infamous grassy knoll on the edge of the plaza.
-
- Experts will use a digital optical camera to replicate
the sounds by scanning the grooves of the tape. The sound could then be
cleaned up, peeling away layers of static as well as the sound of the motorcycle
engine.
-
- Leslie Waffen, an archivist with the National Archives,
which holds the tape told the New York Times: "This is big. That's
why we called the experts in."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=547981
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-
-
- Comment
- From Ogre
- 8-7-4
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- This article has a serious flaw: Analog audio tape is
magnetic. There is no optical scanning that could read grooves on the tape,
because there are no grooves.
-
- Optical scanning can only be used on a medium that has
something to "see", like the grooves on a vinyl record.
-
- Regards,
- Ogre
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