Volta Laboratory Experimental Recording
From the collection of National Museum of American History. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
This is an experimental sound recording made in the Volta Laboratory, Washington, D.C., in October 1881. Made from an original recording of paraffin and wax, it is a negative electrotype copy for stamping out multiple recordings. The recording is laterally cut, that is, a stylus cut across the record surface side-to-side rather than vertically. It was part of the proof of invention that the Volta Associates—Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter—deposited in a sealed tin box at the Smithsonian on October 30, 1881, in case of a patent fight. The box was opened in the presence of Bell relatives in 1937.
National Museum of American History’s own description
