Opening Today: "Hear My Voice" at National Museum of American History

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"Hear My Voice" at National Museum of American History

Arts & Entertainment : Picks
Monday, Jan. 26

By Tim Regan • January 23, 2015
Most students of American history will remember that without telecommunications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell, the iPhone would never have been invented. But Bell’s trailblazing work in the field of sound recording is frequently overlooked. In the late 19th century, his D.C.-based Volta Laboratory invented the first method of capturing and playing back sounds. One of the first sounds the researchers recorded was Bell’s own voice, but those recordings were thought to be lost—until recently, when researchers from Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress discovered a wax-on-binder-board disc inscribed with Graham’s initials (pictured). Using a special sound recovery process developed at California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the historians made the disc audible to human ears. Now listeners can access those recordings in the museum’s new exhibition, “Hear My Voice.” Attendees can examine documents, recordings, laboratory notes, and equipment from the Volta Laboratory, plus listen to Bell’s until-recently unknown voice with their own ears. Though Bell spends most of his time on the disc reciting numbers and simple phrases, his work marked the first step toward our MP3-ruled world. The exhibition is on view daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the National Museum of American History, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. [phone]. americanhistory.si.edu.

“Hear My Voice”: Alexander Graham Bell and the Origins of Recorded Sound

January 26, 2015 to October 25, 2015
Second floor east



Alexander Graham Bell is best remembered as the inventor of the telephone, but he and his associates were also instrumental in the development of sound recording at his Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. In this exhibiton, see documents, recordings, laboratory notes, and apparatus from the Volta Laboratory dating from the 1880s; learn about the early history of sound recording in the United States; and hear some of the earliest sound recordings ever made. The recordings are made audible through a 21st century sound recovery technique developed by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory staff in partnership with the Library of Congress and the Museum.

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1. What Did Alexander Graham Bell’s Voice Sound Like? Berkeley Lab Scientists Help Find Out

I walked over to the National Museum of American History at lunch yesterday and saw the exhibit. It's not large, but the recordings are wonderful. Here's an article about the men who recovered the recordings:

What Did Alexander Graham Bell’s Voice Sound Like? Berkeley Lab Scientists Help Find Out

Science Shorts Dan Krotz • April 25, 2013
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Berkeley Lab’s sound-restoration experts have done it again. They’ve helped to digitally recover a 128-year-old recording of Alexander Graham Bell’s voice, enabling people to hear the famed inventor speak for the first time. The recording ends with Bell saying “in witness whereof, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.”

The project involved a collaboration between Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the Library of Congress, and Berkeley Lab.

The Smithsonian announced the identification of Bell’s voice today. A Smithsonian magazine article on this research was also published online this week. You can listen to the full recording below and learn more about the project here.

Berkeley Lab’s Carl Haber and Earl Cornell developed the noninvasive optical sound recovery technology that gave Bell’s recording a second life. Their method is derived from work on instrumentation for particle physics experiments. It acquires high-resolution digital maps of the surface of audio media without touching them. It then applies image analysis methods to recover the data and reduce the noise of scratches and other damage. A few years ago, Haber and Cornell set up this technology at the Library of Congress, where it’s used to digitally restore audio recordings that are too fragile to play.



Carl Haber and Earl Cornell developed the technology that gave voice to Bell’s 130-year-old recording. (Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt)



A voice recording of Bell’s father was recovered on this wax-coated drum, which was shipped to Berkeley Lab earlier this year for analysis. (Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt)