In the winter of 2002, a high school librarian named Marian in rural Kansas faced a problem that felt like a betrayal. Her library’s prized possession was a single, dust-covered encyclopedia set from 1995. It had served its community for years, but its pages now claimed that Bill Clinton was President and that Pluto was a firm, unshakable planet.

Then, one day, Encarta updated its "This Day in History" feature. It noted that on this date in 1905, a forgotten inventor named Frank Lambert had died penniless, his Grahamophone crushed by the patent battles with Edison.

The essay won a statewide award. A local news station did a segment on "The Boy Who Listened to the Dead." A professor from the University of Kansas reached out. Eventually, Leo’s research helped locate a surviving Lambert Grahamophone in a private collection in London. It was restored. And in 2010, the Library of Congress added Frank Lambert’s recording to the National Recording Registry.

Leo played the clip for everyone. It sounded like a ghost trapped in a jar. "Listen," he whispered. "That’s a real person from the year before my great-grandma was born."

Leo felt a pang of grief for a man he’d never met, all because a CD-ROM’s worth of data had made him real.