Hear Alexander Graham Bell's Voice on 130-Year-Old Recording
Posted on May 1, 2013
The voice of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell's has been identified for the first time. Researchers discovered a loose piece of paper in The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History's collection. The paper was a transcript of a recording. It ended with the words, "in witness whereof, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell."
The transcript was matched to a wax-on-binder-board disc that carries the initials "AGB" and the same date as the transcript, April 15, 1885. A noninvasive optical sound recovery process developed by Berkeley Lab in 2002 was used to scan and recover sounds from the disc. This allowed for the contents of the recording to be audibly matched to the transcript and for the positive identification of Bell's voice.
Bell can be heard counting during most of the audio. Starting at the 4:31 mark, near the end of the clip, Bell says, "Hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell."