Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1942)

Mary had a little lamb Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go WITH those words, the late Thomas Alva Edison first recorded the human voice, his own, on tinfoil in 1877. Some ten years later, he sent the following jingly phonogram on a wax cylinder to Colonel George E. Gouraud in London: Gouraud, agent of my choice, Bid my balance sheets rejoice; Send me Mr. Gladstone's voice. From Gladstone came a wordy tribute to Edison. Among the voices of a host of others in London of that period (all recorded for posterity) were those of Florence Nightingale, Sir Henry Irving, and Phineas Taylor Barnum. Elsewhere Edison's staffs recorded hundreds of others. This, to the Sage of Menlo Park, seemed to be the most important use of his machine. His dream, ten years before the turn of the century was that henceforth, it would be possible for our Washingtons and Lincolns to be heard in every hamlet in the country. He did not visualize nickel-dance machines bringing out the dulcet strains of Flat Foot Floogie to millions of stomping jitterbugs. But within a few years, the gramophone industry became too preoccupied with ragtime and Uncle Josh to stick to the course that Edison had plotted for it. However, thanks to 20 years of rummaging by enthusiastic Manhattan hobbyist Robert Vincent, every town and hamlet today does have the opportunity to hear the voices that Edison and others recorded, speaking from the past. Set in modern radio-dramatized transcriptions, Voices of Yesterday recapture moments calculated to stir the memories of oldsters and give youngsters shivery earfuls from beyond the grave. 88 First CDmmercial Radio Prog:(| Gave Its Support, and Howi Most thrilling record: Kenneth Landfrey, a trumpeter for the Light Brigade, sounding again in 1890 the tragic charge at Balaclava in 1854. Most moving: the words of Florence Nightingale at 70, shrill, wavering, full of emotion: "When I am no longer even a memory— just a name— I hope my voice brings to history the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore." Another good bit: Ambassador James W. Gerard after his recall from Germany in 1917: "The Foreign Minister of Germany once said to me: 'Your country does not dare to do anything against Germany, because we have in your country 500,000 German reservists who will rise in arms against your Government if you dare to make a move against Germany.' Well, I told him that that might be so, but that we had 500,000 lamp posts in this country, and that that was where the reservists would be hanging the day after they tried to rise. . . ." When several boxes of these old phonograph recordings were discovered in the basement of the Edison Laboratories at Menlo Park, modern day radio engineers went to work. After a long period of experiment, they evolved methods for filtering, amplifying and transferring the contents of these cylinders to electrical transcription discs. Once this became possible, it was but a short step for researchers and dramatists to dig out authentic material and episodes in the lives of these famous people; to reconstruct the scenes and circumstances of their eras, and thus to surround the presentation of their actual, living voices with scenes and actions pertinent to the epochs which they high lighted. RADIO SHOWM ANSH I P