Volta Laboratory Experimental Sound Recording, Green Wax on Brass Disc
Volta Laboratory Experimental Sound Recording, Green Wax on Brass Disc
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- Description
- This is an experimental sound recording made in the Volta Laboratory, Washington, D.C., about 1884. The wax, poured into a brass holder, has been dyed a bright green.
- Sound was recovered from this recording in 2011.
- Content summary: Hamlet’s soliloquy
- Content transcript (17 seconds):
- “To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die, to sleep…”
- References:
- Patrick Feaster, “A Discography of Volta Laboratory Recordings at the National Museum of American History”
- Leslie J. Newville, “Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory,” in Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, United States National Museum Bulletin 218, Paper 5 (1959): 69-79.
- Steven E. Schoenherr, “Charles Sumner Tainter and the Graphophone,”
- Wile, Raymond R. "The Development of Sound Recording at the Volta Laboratory," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 21, No. 2, 1990, pp. 208-225.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- experimental sound recording disc
- Physical Description
- brass (overall material)
- wax (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 1/4 in x 10 7/8 in;.635 cm x 27.6225 cm
- ID Number
- ME.287920
- catalog number
- 287920
- accession number
- 58498
- Credit Line
- Dr. Alexander Graham Bell
- subject
- Technology
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Mechanisms
- Hear My Voice
- Communications
- Computers & Business Machines
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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