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Welcome to—Echoes of History

We invite you to explore vanished eras and forgotten times through the medium of sound. To experience a fresh look at history through the very voices, music and sounds that fell upon the ears of our ancestors. Welcome to "Echoes of History."

Here you will find examples of the kind of historic audio that the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) strives to recover, preserve and make available to the world. Each podcast runs from two to four minutes and includes narration that puts the historic sound clip in context.

Written and hosted by Anthony Wellman—a longtime student of the history of recorded sound and member of ARSC—each episode of "Echoes of History" uses authentic, period recordings that help us witness times past like nothing else can.

Visit this page often to hear more podcast episodes as we add them.

Click on any of the links below to listen or download.

Crystal Palace

Echoes of History – "The Crystal Palace"

Time: 04:01

Stream [Right-click to download]
Step into the audience, on a summer afternoon in 1888, at the magnificent and now vanished Crystal Palace in London, England. Hear 4,000 voices rising in song, accompanied by a 500-piece orchestra. This amazing survivor from the era of Queen Victoria's England is the oldest known recording of a public performance in existence.
Crystal Palace, London, from Tallis' History and Criticism of the Crystal Palace, 1852
  
   
William BryanWilliam Taft

Echoes of History – "First Sound Bites"

Time: 03:37

Stream [Right-click to download]
The birth of the "sound bite." While brief campaign slogans have existed since the beginnings of American political elections, it wasn't until the United States Presidential election of 1908 that political speeches, themselves, were altered to accommodate audio-visual media on a mass-produced and distributed scale. Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan and Republican candidate William Howard Taft learned to tailor their previously long speeches to the short duration of that era's phonograph record so their voice and basic message could reach a larger audience. The medium affects the message as speeches are winnowed down to two minutes or less. A first step towards speeches and catch phrases tailored for the mass media and the "sound bite" popular many decades later on TV, radio and the internet.
Top: William Jennings Bryan, Bottom: William Howard Taft, Courtesy of the Library of Congress
  

 

Opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of the producers, and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARSC. All original audio clips and visuals on this page are believed to be in the public domain. You may download and use these podcasts for any non-commercial purpose, news stories or educational use, so long as they are not modified and credit is given to ARSC and Anthony Wellman.

 

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings -- in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods. Visit us at www.arsc-audio.org.

 

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