More than 120 years after the end of the Victorian era, we have no more or less accurate cultural memory of the Victorians themselves: their social mores, aesthetic sensibilities, ambitions large and small, and their diverse endeavors. You might think you’re holding onto it. -UPS. Some of the most vivid expressions of these qualities have come down to us through primary sources, often texts and works of visual art. Late in Queen Victoria’s reign came photography and, finally, cinema. But how can we be sure what her people actually sounded like?
Technically speaking, the first process of mechanically recording the human voice dates back to 1860, less than half as old as the Victorian era. However, the technology still had a long way to go at the time, and it wasn’t until the 1880s that Thomas Edison’s phonograph and the wax barrel it played with became commercially viable. That’s how I explain it of king and things video aboveabout the widespread use of audio recording and the early possibilities it opened up for capturing the voices of what we now think of as the distant past. Among the voices is the voice of a man introduced as “Mr. Edmund Yates, one of Britain’s most famous after-dinner speakers.”
This cylinder was recorded in 1888 at one of the London soirées held by an American Edison employee named George Gouraud. The son of Francois Grau, the French engineer who introduced daguerreotype photography to America in the 1830s, he decided to bring the phonograph to England himself. He did this in a top-down manner, inviting socially prominent guests to his home for dinner, getting them excited about the novelty of an after-dinner speech delivered by a machine, and then recording a message to Edison himself. . One of Gouraud’s guests, the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, said: “I can only say that I am surprised and a little horrified by the results of tonight’s experiment.”
Astonishment aside, Sullivan also admitted that he was “terrified at the thought that such horrible, inferior music might be recorded forever.” Many people alive today would believe that he had considerable foresight in this regard. But he also understood that the phonograph could produce wonders. The video includes recordings of famous people such as four-time Prime Minister William Gladstone, Florence Nightingale, and Queen Victoria herself. We have examined very blurry recordings of. Long after Edison’s time, humans developed recording technology that could be played over and over again without deteriorating. But given our Victorian image, it may be appropriate that their voices sound ghostly.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter @Colinbemust or facebook.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
