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 race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
    —Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)

    “... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
    —Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    “He is said to have been the last Red Man
    In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed
    If you like to call such a sound a laugh.”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    “Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
    —Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)