Prince Philip Leaves Hospital; A Saint In Sin City; Alexander Graham Bell's Audio Recordings Recovered, Restored
CHO: It's 39 minutes after the hour. We have a developing story we want to tell you about involving substandard breast implants sold to nearly 1,000 women in the Netherlands. Officials say these dangerous implants were made by a now defunct French company and sold in the Netherlands under a different name. That's what fooled some people. Now health officials fearing it could actually affect 300,000 women worldwide. The implants are apparently filled with an industrial grade silicone instead of a surgical silicone and that means those implants are more likely to rupture or leak.</s>VELSHI: Britain's Prince Philip is out of hospital this morning. He'll be joining his wife, Queen Elizabeth, and the rest of the royal family at Sandraham, which is where they usually spend Christmas. The duke underwent a heart operation. They put a stent in to treat a blocked artery on Friday. Let's go right to Erin McLaughlin who's live in London with the latest. Good morning, Erin.</s>ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ali. We understand that Prince Philip waved to onlookers as he left the hospital this morning. He thanked hospital staff before he departed for the care he received. As you mentioned, on Friday night, he was admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains. He underwent tests later showed a blocked artery for which he underwent a minimally invasive coronary stent procedure. The Buckingham Palace officials say was successful. Now as a precaution, he was kept under observation at the hospital for the Christmas period. He wasn't without visitors though, Ali. The queen visited him on Saturday. She flew in by helicopter. She was joined by their children, including Prince Andrew and Prince Charles. That visit was followed up by a Christmas Day visit from his grandchildren, Prince William and Prince Harry. They drove to the hospital. They drove some of the other grandchildren as well. We understand the duke was very eager to get back to Sandraham and is very happy to be home -- Ali.</s>VELSHI: He's down right cheerful. So hope they get to pick up where they left off. I know they went ahead without him and had to start celebrating. I guess they're going to repeat Christmas for him. That's what you get when you're the duke. All right, Erin, good to see you. All right, a man finds a couple of envelopes at the Las Vegas Airport. Now what would you think would be inside envelopes at the Las Vegas Airport?</s>CHO: Well, I'm guessing in this case, it was a lot of cash.</s>VELSHI: It's $10,000. Jackpot. It turns out that Mitch Gilbert is a real saint in sin city. Gilbert tracked down the money's owner, who was all the way in Texas. He won the money gambling, but dropped it on the way back home. He reported it missing, but never actually believed someone would return it. Gilbert says giving it back was the right thing to do.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wanted to show my kids the right thing to do. If it happened to me, I sure would want that back. You think about all the bills you could pay. It felt go to be able to give it back to the guy.</s>VELSHI: Good for him. Now, did the guy -- I guess, I wonder how that process went --</s>CHO: Well, exactly --</s>VELSHI: Someone found an envelope --</s>CHO: Name on the envelope? Anyway --</s>VELSHI: It's always fascinating. People carry that kind of cash around. I know it's exciting when you win, have that wad of cash. Good on that guy for giving it back.</s>CHO: No kidding, $10,000. He's right. He'll be able to pay a lot of bills with that money. Meanwhile, Alexander Graham Bell on the cutting edge of technology way back in the 1800s. Well, now, his audio recording experiments have been recovered and restored nearly 130 years later. The Smithsonian Institution has the early recordings packed away in their archives and now they're being revealed. Our Brian Todd reports.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The audio clips among the earliest ever recorded have been virtually unplayable for over a century. In the past year, scientists have found a way to listen to them. After Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, there was a rush of competition among scientists to make sound recording commercially viable.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Edison and the Bells had settled on the cylinder as the format.</s>TODD: Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, was part of the competition. He sent several sealed tin boxes to the Smithsonian Institution with early prototypes of recordings to protect himself in case of a future patent challenge. The recordings have been stored in the Smithsonian since the 1880s, but with no device to play them, they sat on the shelf. Enter Carl Haber of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.</s>DR. CARL HABER, LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY: We can use this camera to take a large number of pictures of the item and create a very, very detailed digital representation of the structure of the surface. I'm going to rotate the record now and you'll see this starting to move up and down, as if a needle was riding up and down in it.</s>TODD: Around 18,000 optical images are taken for each rotation of the disc then the computer does its work to play back sounds from the images.</s>HABER: This kind of bowl is the groove that the stylist would sit in.</s>TODD: There's a reading from Shakespeare "Hamlet."</s>HABER: To be or not to be.</s>TODD: And "Mary Had A Little Lamb."</s>ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, INVENTED TELEPHONE: Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white at snow.</s>HABER: At that point, the first part of the record ends. Something apparently went wrong. It's probably the first recorded example of somebody being disappointed.</s>TODD: The digital imaging system is ideal for archivists trying to protect the historically valuable disc because there is no physical contact needed to hear the audio recordings. (on camera): The Smithsonian has about 200 early audio recorders from Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory. So far, they have used optical imaging technology to decipher six of those recordings. You can listen to them by logging on to Americanhistory.si.edu. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.</s>CHO: Good morning. Headlines are next. Plus, could 2012 be the year we find life out there on one of earth's twins? Ali's going to speak with a top physicist, and one of the greatest minds of our time. Wow. How about that?</s>VELSHI: Yes.</s>CHO: To hear his predictions for the New Year. It's 46 minutes after the hour.