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Top 10 most bizarre tech stories of 2011 and Alexander Graham Bell goes digital
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(CNN) -- In 2011, the tech world saw the release of game-changing gadgets including the iPhone 4s, Kindle Fire and iPad 2. But along with the good (and, yes, sometimes, the bad) came the bizarre.And by bizarre, we mean the weird gadget creations and unexpected Internet sensations that went viral (cue Rebecca Black's "Friday").Nonetheless, the strangest of the strange in the tech world made headlines by pushing the limits of technology, and this year it felt like there were more than ever.Here are some of 2011's most unusual and out of the ordinary tech headlines, stories we never thought could happen -- which baffled us when they did.As if two ears weren't enough, an Australian artist named Stelarc has decided to implant a third beneath the skin of his arm.This performance artist wants to make his arm an acoustic device by attaching a wireless microphone to the implanted ear. [Read the full article]
Washington (CNN) -- Voices recorded by inventor Alexander Graham Bell more than 125 years ago are being heard now, thanks to digital imaging technology."It's not high fidelity, but you can definitely figure out what they're saying," said Carl Haber of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the scientists working on the project in a laboratory at the Library of Congress.The early audio recordings were made during an intensely competitive time, when scientists were racing to improve on Thomas Edison's phonograph, which was invented in 1877.Scientists like Bell, who worked at his Volta Laboratory in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, were looking to improve both the quality of the phonograph and the nature of the sound to make the product commercially viable. [Read the full article]
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