La noticia vale más por el titular que por el contenido, pero sigue siendo una curiosidad. Se ha encontrado una grabación de un militar alemán nacido en 1800 en el Archivo Edison. La noticia, más que darnos a oir algo insólito, muestra ese afán arqueológico, casi espiritista, por recuperar los sonidos del pasado.

The soundtrack of history goes silent sometime in the late 19th century. We have no sound to attach to the great figures of those earlier times. But one voice thought lost has now been recovered, officials at the Thomas Edison Historical Park told the The New York Times yesterday. Sound historians Patrick Feaster and Stephan Puille have managed to pull the sound of Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German Empire, off of a century-old wax cylinder onto which it had been recorded on October 7, 1889. Additionally, they have also recovered audio from two cylinders holding the voice of German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke, who was nearly 90 at the time. According to Puille, “These are the only recordings of a person born in the eighteenth century which are still audible today.” (Von Moltke was born in 1800, so he sneaks in just under the line.)

The Atlantic