By Leander Kahney

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Now, a university student from Israel has written a piece of software that goes a step further. Ofer Springer has created a "virtual gramophone" that plays LPs using an ordinary flatbed scanner.

Springer's Digital Needle uses a high-resolution image of an LP captured by a flatbed scanner. (Because 12-inch LPs are bigger than the image glass on most scanners, Springer first takes four pictures and stitches them together into a single image.)

Then, like a needle on a record player, his software follows the image of the groove as it spirals around the record, generating sounds based on the wavelike patterns of the groove.

The results are barely recognizable as the original music, but strangely affecting. Springer has posted samples on the project's Web page.