'The Power of Public Speaking' - British Library's interactive exhibition
The Sound and the Fury: The Power of Public Speaking opened yesterday at the British Library, providing a taster of the library’s extensive sound archive collections. It is an interactive exhibition which charts the history and power of public speaking through a varied selection of famous speeches in world history from the last 150 years: from William Ewart Gladstone’s transatlantic greeting to Thomas Edison, the inventor of the phonograph, in 1888, to Obama’s inauguration speech last January.
The phonograph was first invented in 1877. Few eminent individuals were, however, initially captured on sound partly as a result of the rarity of recording equipment. Two exceptions were the recordings of Gladstone, the first British Prime Minister ever to be recorded, and Florence Nightingale, both of which feature in the exhibition. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that sound recordings became increasingly used as an effective and affordable means of mass communication. With the start of radio broadcasting by the BBC in 1922, the production of spoken word material increased significantly; however, it was only in the 1930s that this material began to be selected for preservation in the archives.
The British Library’s Sound Archive is home to over 3 million recordings drawn from BBC broadcasts, commercially issued recordings and private recordings. Visitors to the exhibition sit down to a computer and can sample some of the wealth of the archive by listening to recordings from all over the world, in English and foreign languages, and from a wide range of genres, from politicians, to royalty, actors and sportsmen...
Read entire article at History Today
The phonograph was first invented in 1877. Few eminent individuals were, however, initially captured on sound partly as a result of the rarity of recording equipment. Two exceptions were the recordings of Gladstone, the first British Prime Minister ever to be recorded, and Florence Nightingale, both of which feature in the exhibition. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that sound recordings became increasingly used as an effective and affordable means of mass communication. With the start of radio broadcasting by the BBC in 1922, the production of spoken word material increased significantly; however, it was only in the 1930s that this material began to be selected for preservation in the archives.
The British Library’s Sound Archive is home to over 3 million recordings drawn from BBC broadcasts, commercially issued recordings and private recordings. Visitors to the exhibition sit down to a computer and can sample some of the wealth of the archive by listening to recordings from all over the world, in English and foreign languages, and from a wide range of genres, from politicians, to royalty, actors and sportsmen...