[To Be or Not to Be - Hamlet Sound Recording]

Synopsis: Possibly earliest sound recording of the opening lines of Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, spoken by a man’s voice on a wax cylinder disc.

The recording is an example of experiments conducted by the Volta Laboratory AssociatesAlexander Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainterroughly between 1880 and 1885.

The recording had been packed away and deemed obsolete at the Smithsonian Institution for more than a century. But new technology has allowed for early sound recordings to be recovered and played publicly at the LIbrary of Congress on 13 December 2011.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain; United States
Medium: Audio
Year of release: 1885

Production type: Documentary/Educational/News
Plays: Hamlet
Subjects: Drama
Keywords: Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); sound recording; Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922)

Notes: The recording can be listened to at http://irene.lbl.gov/Smithsonian/Audio/Release/Example1-Green-p93.wav
General: Recovering sound from six Volta discs is the first step in an ongoing project by the Smithsonian, Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to preserve and catalogue the museum’s early recording collection and to provide increased access to the collection and its contents for both the academic community and the public.

For more information, visit: http://newsdesk.si.edu/factsheets/early-sound-recording-collection-and-sound-recovery-project (accessed 2/2012)
Reviews: Source: Smithsonian Newsdesk http://newsdesk.si.edu/factsheets/early-sound-recording-collection-and-sound-recovery-project

Online URL: http://irene.lbl.gov/Smithsonian/Audio/Release/Example1-Green-p93.wav

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