Archival Cylinder Box: An ARSC Design
and Engineering Project

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Bill Klinger
Association for Recorded Sound Collections

The world's oldest sound recordings have yet to benefit from objectively calibrated audio extractions.

Cylinder records dominated the U.S. recording industry throughout its first 23 years (1889 to 1912). However, in 2007, the 82,000 titles known to have been commercially issued on cylinders, worldwide, still await proper archival transfer and preservation.

Promising advances in non-contact playback methods, now in development, may eventually provide the necessary calibrated extractions. In the meantime, at least one million surviving cylinder records are housed in historical containers that threaten the continued survival of the audio information carried on those cylindrical artifacts.

Commissioned by the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board, the Cylinder Subcommittee of the ARSC Technical Committee is developing an Archival Cylinder Box (ACB). The objective of the project is to define, design, and produce an optimized, low-cost, archival-quality container for use in safely storing and transporting a single “standard-size” cylinder phonograph record.

This talk presents 3-D CAD models, renderings, and animations that illustrate the advanced tools, processes, and materials employed to meet the technical challenges posed by the demanding ACB requirements. A prototype ACB will be available during the symposium, for review and comment.

Bill Klinger
Bill Klinger is a consulting engineer. For more than thirty years, he has been researching the history, technology, and products of the cylinder record industry. His personal collection includes more than 7,000 cylinder records. Bill chairs the Cylinder Subcommittee of the ARSC Technical Committee. He reports on the subcommittee’s progress in developing an optimized Archival Cylinder Box.