Robert Browning - History of Sound Recording

History of Sound Recording

At a dinner party on 7 April 1889, at the home of Browning's friend the artist Rudolf Lehmann, an Edison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white wax cylinder by Edison's British representative, George Gouraud. In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part of "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" (and can be heard apologizing when he forgets the words). When the recording was played in 1890 on the anniversary of his death, at a gathering of his admirers, it was said to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond the grave."

Read more about this topic:  Robert Browning

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, sound and/or recording:

    The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
    Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)

    Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    How little it takes to make us happy! The sound of a bagpipe.—Without music life would be a mistake. The German even imagines God as singing songs.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)