Scientists have used AI to enhance a historical recording of Amelia Earhart, making her voice sound clearer than ever before.
asserted
voice → use → Earhart
The clip, first broadcast in 1935, is a snippet from a speech the trailblazing pilot gave on radio about a woman’s place in science.
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pilot → broadcast → science
While her words remain intelligible, the recording is plagued by muffled audio and persistent background noise.
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recording → remain → audio
Now, a new AI tool called Diffio has stripped away much of the static and distortion, making it sound as though Earhart is speaking directly into a modern microphone.
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Earhart → call → microphone
The result offers one of the clearest listens yet to the pioneering aviator's voice – and it was recorded just two years before she disappeared on one of the final legs of a circumnavigational flight of the globe.
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she → offer → globe
Nathanael Harmon, Diffio’s founder, said: ‘History feels different when you can hear someone speak.
'
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someone → say → ?
With Amelia Earhart, it’s a chance to hear the person behind the photographs and the extraordinary story.
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it → ’ → photographs
'Making these recordings easier to listen to can help future generations connect with people they’ve only read about.'
Amelia Earhart (pictured here with her plane) wanted to be the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe
In the 1935 radio address, Earhart argues that women have benefited more than almost any other group from advances in science and technology.
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women → make → science
It has reduced the ‘drudgery’ of domestic life and given women greater independence, she argues.
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she → reduce → independence
To enhance the original recording, the AI restoration tool removed much of the static, hiss and distortion that had built up over the decades
By isolating and rebuilding the voice, it transformed the crackly historic audio into something that sounds far closer to a modern recording.
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that → enhance → recording
In the improved clip, Earhart can clearly be heard saying: ‘Profound and stirring as have been accomplishments in the remoter fields of pure research, it is in the home that the applications of scientific achievement have perhaps been most far-reaching, and it is through changing conditions there that women have become the greatest beneficiaries in the modern scheme.’
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women → improve → scheme
She goes on to highlight aviation as one of the most dramatic achievements of modern science, describing flight as a field where women have an important role to play.
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women → go → role
Just two years later, on July 2, 1937, Earhart’s final fatal flight departed Lae Airfield in Papua New Guinea.
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flight → depart → Guinea
She, along with navigator Fred Noonan, were heading east with a destination of Howland Island, a trip of 2,556 miles.
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She → head → miles
Both were communicating with a nearby Coast Guard ship, USCGC Itasca, before their plane lost contact.
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plane → communicate → contact
Both Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan, 44, were communicating with a nearby Coast Guard ship, USCGC Itasca, before their plane lost contact in 1937
In the last in-flight radio message heard by Itasca, Earhart said: 'We are on the line 157 337….
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We → communicate → line
We are running on line north and south.'
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We → run → line
The numbers 157 and 337 referred to compass headings – 157° and 337° – and described a line passing through their intended destination, Howland Island.
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numbers → refer → destination
A popular and relatively straightforward theory is that the plane crashed into the sea when it ran out of fuel and then sank.
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it → crash → fuel
Both Earhart and Noonan were either instantly killed upon impact or were unable to get out and drowned, the theory goes.
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theory → kill → impact
The tragic loss has spawned more fantastical theories, including that they were eaten by crabs and imprisoned by the Japanese.
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they → spawn → Japanese
It's generally agreed that the wreckage lies beneath the waves near the planned destination Howland Island or another island around 350 miles south-east called Nikumaroro.
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wreckage → agree → destination
The Aporia
