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, sound and/or recording:

    “We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “We can say that the sound is the primary object of the act of hearing, and that the act of hearing itself is the secondary object.”
    —Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917)

    “Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)