This is what Victorian people sounded like
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 พ.ย. 2024
- In a previous video I introduced the oldest voices that can still be heard through recordings made on Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph and Thomas Edison’s early tinfoil phonograph. This time, we look at how efforts to promote Edison’s new “perfected” phonograph in Britain led to the preservation of the voices of many famous Victorians - from poets and composers like Robert Browning and Arthur Sullivan, to major political figures like William Gladstone. We will also see how his rivals finally succeeded in recording the voice of Queen Victoria.
→ SOURCES
www.loc.gov/st...
aimeecrocker.c...
www.theirvings...
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→ MUSIC
2. Intermezzo in Am - Johannes Brahms
By “Ivan Ilic” (musopen.org/)
Licence: CC BY 3.0
String Quartet no. 12 in F major 'American', Op. 96 - I - Antonín Dvořák
By “European Archive” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
String Quartet No. 1 in A Major - I. Moderato - Allegro - Alexander Borodin
By “Musopen String Quartet” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
FAE Sonata 2nd m (Schumann) - Various
By “Oliver Colbentson” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
Danse sacrée et danse profane - 2. Danse Profane - Claude Debussy
By “United States Marine Band” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
Sonate Es Dur fur Violine und Klavier, Op 18, II Improvisation Andante cantabile - Richard Strauss
By “Oliver Colbentson” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
String Quartet No. 1 in A Major - II. Andante con moto - Alexander Borodin
By “Musopen String Quartet” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
Arabesque no. 1 (string quartet arr.) - Claude Debussy
By “Steve's Bedroom Band” (musopen.org/)
Licence: CC BY 3.0
1 - Andante tranquilo, allegro agitato - Georges Bizet
By “University of Chicago Orchestra” (musopen.org/)
Licence: CC BY 3.0
Symphony in D minor Op.Posth - IV. Finale - Anton Bruckner
By “European Archive” (musopen.org/)
Licence: PDM 1.0
Every modern actor who has done an overly-hammy, olde tyme, harrumph, voice while portraying an aristocrat from that time period is officially exonerated. If anything they should be even hammier.
Sounds like the proceedings of the 1888 convention of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.
@@dubsar This year our members have put more things on top of other things than ever before. But, I should warn you, this is no time for complacency.
@@dubsar They're always upset about the noise from upstairs, the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Don't forget everyone who has done this voice for a D&D character.
Those actors were professionally trained by Victorian theater actors.
0:08 you have to remember that public speaking was done without a microphone and so people over enunciated and projected their voices differently to how we speak today.
This is true. These days we rely on Twitter and TH-cam to voice our opinions. And then get sensored very easily.
And phrases are different from century to century as well lol
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊@@ernesthimself😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
@@GSOHJM he was there
No that's speaking properly for them. they'd think you sound very strange.
And here I am, laying in a large comfortable bed, just got out of a hot shower, holding a tiny screen in my hand, watching a video, listening to some of the the first audio recordings ever to exist.
And now everything I’m typing right now is visible to almost anybody around the entire world.
Makes me truly believe we can create anything into existence. What will come in the next century?
AI and the singularity of money through Bitcoin, for a start 😉
Perhaps 200 years from now someone lying in a comfortable bed on Mars will be watching videos of our times and thinking the same thing
@listeningtoyou Aliens of course!😂😂
Not Entirely Invisible!
Ens-lavement via Elons humanoid AI droids
Something about the idea of several drunk victorians nervously delivering speeches to the phonograph is so wildly funny to me
The brandy and cigars being passed around.
But, isn't that what makes it great? Imagine how they felt recording it. Did they account for so many too hear them now, at any moment in time.
It sounds like a Monty Python skit!
@@brucecombs3108 you're right. Somehow I can envision what it could have looked like that, for whatever reason, was never done.
@@brucecombs3108
My thought exactly!
Crazy how these probably uber rich gentlemen didn’t predict that I’ll be hearing their voice hundred plus years later while I’m on the toilet
You are disgusting
Nice! A brilliantly hilarious observation!
Great success
@@varoonnone7159Cope and seethe. 😂
Your comment fucking sent me 😂😂😂💀 thank you for your service
This video is the kind of thing that makes the internet absolutely wonderful.
And memes
And scavenger hunts
It's fake.
According to the BBC Black people are the ones who created everything.
I don't see any in this video.
True.......
Today is November 10, 2024. Hearing their voices from almost exactly 136 years ago is surreal. Thank you for sharing these recording as well as some history.
I love candid bits of history like this, where you hear peoples' voices, read their words, or get a glimpse of their unvarnished lives; the stuff that doesn't make it into the history books.
My thoughts exactly!
most of the people speaking were already in their 50's and 60's when recorded so the people we are hearing were born close to 200 years ago, they are speaking as we would have heard them throughout the 1800's. Their diction and pronunciation were perfect. They took such great care with their words you can hear it.
Yes it's always so cool to connect ourselves to past humans ❤
Thank you for sharing their voices.
"For myself I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever."
LMAOOOOOO
Yea i was thinking "Dayum, a jab at the orchestra for posterity i guess??" LoL
I think Arthur Sullivan gave such a glorious dig for music to come. Simply hilarious… and has a ring to it. 🤣
He was damn right to be terrified!!
He would have loved WAP 😂
Had kind of a mark twain feel to it.
This is absolutely the most fantastic thing. Hearing them laugh, roast each other, consider the future when they're gone.... The more that things change, the more that they're really the same, in a way.
And just a side note, hearing them admire American invention was truly inspiring. I honestly choked up a bit. When I consider that this was only about 100 years after our American Revolutionary War... Wow. Our forebears accomplished so much in that time.
What a treasure. I really enjoyed this video.
Well put. I too was moved by being able to listen to and enjoy these oldest of recordings. It reminds me of the tall stacks of mostly coverless 78rpm records that were stored in my own bunk's cubby hole at the cabin when I was little. I wanted to listen to them, was fascinated by them. But always got in trouble if I bothered them or tried to play them on our old cabinet stereo at the family cabin. Not sure why still. Why would my narcissistic grandmother not take this opportunity as a teaching moment to a new generation? She was a mean person is why.
Sad then for you to be here at the end of the great American Empire with the election of a dictator/oligarcy sure to destroy American democracy as an example for the world. I am so sorry for your loss.
@@chelseafisher6881strange how people see things so differently I’m a limey who thinks the best thing that could have happened was Trump getting the presidency back.If you want to see dictatorship forming just keep your eye on the Uk where people are already getting locked up for wrong think while pdf iles walk free from court.
@michaelc237 there is absolutely no evidence you are a 'limey'. Trump is a sack of shit and a disgrace to the president, and Russia and Russians can go fuck themselves.
For a bit of context, Oct 1888, Jack The Ripper was still in the midst of his murderous killing spree and just 9 days from now, Louis Le Prince will film what many people will call the first moving pictures at Roundhay in Leeds
I was literally about to say the same thing. Crazy how the people at that event would have personal accounts of the news about Jack the Ripper first hand.
And 15 years after this voice recorded we got our first flying machine.
@@kinghenry100Every Single Time
@@kinghenry100 I was about to say the same thing.
@@kinghenry100 by one of the investigators. Most of the investigator's thought he was wrong.
The Recording Industry - "Getting wasted and making a record since 1888"
🤘😂🤘
True
😂
Wax cilinders?
😂😂😂😅😅🤣🤣🤣👍👍
I want that T-shirt ❤
Interesting. The Victorian British accent to me is eerily similar to the English accents heard in much of Subsaharan Africa even today, down to the forced pronunciation of words and rhotic trills. And it would totally make sense, since the Victorian era was the time of vast colonialism in Africa, and when it seems English language and culture would have had its biggest impact and influence on the continent.
This is an extremely interesting observation
That we can hear the voice and bugle of a then-surviving veteran of the Light Brigade 170 years after their famous charge is both mind blowing and astonishing.
I wonder how he would feel knowing that Tennyson's poem would still be memorized and recited by schoolchildren in the US a hundred years after his bugle recording was made. Knowing that that same bugle was at Waterloo makes it even more special.
It’s fun to think that maybe 136 years from now, iRobots and replicants might be used to be the opening host for fancy dinners to welcome and direct guests the way they thought these recordings might be used haha 😂😂
[HELLO 2160 from those of us in 2024! Hope all is well during your time on this Earth. The world is much different from when these recordings were made. I hope those generations after me were able to better this world in that same time so that the world in which you live is beautiful and free of the issues of mine.]
@@ronjones-6977No, the Light Brigade is known for its disastrous charge in the Crimea, not Waterloo which was some 40 years earlier.
@@petek7822 You misread. The bugle used in the recording was the same bugle used at Waterloo. The guy playing the bugle was the guy who sounded the charge at Balaclava. Hope that clears it up
@@CommonContentArchiveThen I stand corrected 😊
This part made me chuckle...
Sullivan:
"And terrified that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever"
He has a point
If they knew how low the music industry would go they may have destroyed the invention.
OH WHAT A MAN OF VISION!!!!
🤣the more times change, the more they stay the same! #KSIforNever
😂😂😂😂😂😂
My Great-grandmother was raised in the Victorian Era. She passed in the late 1960's when I was 12 years old. Believe me when I tell you she spoke and sounded just like the rest of us.
But was she from England or was raised in England?
Similar recollection of my great-grandmother - born in the 19th century, but sounded like anyone else in her area. Maybe slightly old-fashioned language - "gay" still meant bright and happy to her, even in 1990 when she was well into her 90s!
...and she wasnt a member of the house of lords, did not not likely have an education equivalency past 8th grade. critical thinking is so rare these days... so im sure she sounded just like YoU
My grandmother was born in 1899 in upstate NY. USA. Certainly no politician, but an educated teacher born in the Mennonite home of her grandfather. She never cursed, but she did speak with the authority of a teacher and her messages were always quite clear!
The fancy speech of high society circles particularly when it involved political the arenas, likely were not only following the carefully prepared crafted words to be spoken but well rehearsed use of vocal inflections and gestures to influence their audience.
Actors today may look like they are overacting, but I suspect the drive of those they were portraying we're even more exaggerated. The motive of politicians being driven by real passion to influence others as opposed to actors attempting to accurately simulate another person's for only the performance, would be a vast difference in authenticity.
I enjoyed this video showing us the first attempts at remote public speaking. What a wild thought that must have been for people who only knew the effects of witnessing a first hand speech compared to the far less accurate or stimulating second hand reports on it.
It's so rare today to take part in direct in-person information from a primary source. Most everything we learn is second, third or further away from the original and almost always presented and prefaced by the more added opinions than the actual words spoken and often embellished with extraneous motives and dishonest intent put in by the presenter or reporter. Confusing the true meaning of the words entirely.
These are huge draw backs to social media and AI interpretations that are the majority of information sites on the internet. With logarithmic recommendations for us to see it's so difficult to find the real truth amongst the mass of rubbish in the way.
Simple truth is often boring to listen to. And is just not as popular to watch and we mainly get exposed to what is popular and trending.
Unfortunately, that which is the most shocking and outrageous gets most of the attention. It can be hard to discern the truth through an abundance of disinformation as there is no indication on the presentations about what has been validated by facts from reliable sources. Or the expertise and reputation for factual reports from the individual presenter.
We are going to need that type of honest guidance at some point if Internet information is to be trusted at all. Honesty and facts from reputable sources vs Dishonesty and fiction from dishonorable sources who are expressing one uneducated controversial opinion. Certainly not to be accepted as fact on any subject.
Yes. I'd say this type of communication, and those more advanced that have come later on, HAS become a frightening source of information these ancestors of audio recordings would never have imagined in the late 1800's!
Gosh why are you so mean?@@TrueHelpTV
Arthur Sullivan instantly foresaw how this charming invention would perpetuate bad music
Yeah, like the monotonous popular music I hear in supermarkets and doctor's offices. Nothing more than autotuned chanting.
And several mental issues.
Reggaeton
@@caroh3158 the worst of the disgusting noise they dare call music
He had a premonition of SoundCloud
It is an odd thing to be watching this time capsule on a mobile phone, listening through wireless headphones, and reading your comments from around the world... And then thinking it may only be a 10th of the time where people in the future will look back on this video and be struck with the same awe...
True
Great comment!
Sent from my computer using wireless headphones on a sheep ranch in Treinta y tres, Uruguay.
Check us out on a light pollution map. Middle of nowhere.
Have a great day.
@MarcoMasseria I frequently take for granted the fascinating technology that is for our *_everyday_* use. 😊
@@MarcoMasseria
Lucky you.
From the USA.😢
@@MarcoMasseriathat sounds amazing. 💖✌️
This is proof that every child in a school play doing a Victorian character had every one of their line deliveries nailed.
I like how after his line at 14:57 "He has his lucid intervals" you can hear faint laughter in the background
Absolutely fascinating. I really warmed to Gladstone! 😊
Clearly Sullivan was as funny as his reputation suggests
His whole intro message to Edison was pretty funny, I'm sure they drank and ate good that night 😅
@@pupskin123 fascinating 👏
People really did used to laugh in the past. Confirmation 👍
@@pupskin123that was Sullivan not gladstone
The guy was doing podcasts in 1888!
The OG joe rogan
Just the opposite. The podcasters are just a modern version of recording.
In 2024, here we are listening. They are still trending ❤
"Skip this cylinder. It's just the ad for Brilliant."
Ancient Talk Tuah
There is something so deeply human and personal, touching and alive about hearing actual voice recordings of these influential people who are so long gone. Thank you so much for sharing this video.
Honeybunch - an undeterminable number of the recordings on this video are fake. The first one is certainly a fraud. Anything where you can understand the people very clearly is probably fake: If you can hear "S"s, that is a giveaway that you are listening to a concoction. If you ever get to listen to cylinder records, they always tend to be noisy, unintelligible, and unpleasant in the long run to listen to. A recording recently exhibited, that is, a tape of a recording from 1888, is barely audible. People speaking totally audibly on a cylinder in 1888 in England is b*******. And please don't kid yourself and think I'm making fun of. Just go on TH-cam and listen to recordings of early speakers, both on cylinder and on disc records. That's all. Enjoy, best to you. 🔵👹🐸🦖🫏🦃. PS. The choir is perfectly on pitch, no variation, with a ton of background noise. Old records never ever sounded like that. 🐸
The recording of Florence Nightingale speaking got me all choked up. "...when I am no longer a memory, but just a name..." She did so much and left her mark. Bless you Florence, and may you rest in peace!
Yeah, me too. As a child growing up in England ( I am 71 now, in Canada) and with a Great Aunt who was a nurse who owned her own nursing home and UNDERSTOOD what care for a patient really was, this recording of Florence Nightingale actually brought a tear to my eye. one of deep gratitude and love.
time stamp?
@@beverleypeacockShe was a racist who put hate above helping patients and stole all her ''revolutionary'' knowledge from another country and took all the credit. She was a typical European who rewrote history in her favor and erased the others. She's not the mother of nursing, just another European copycat and thief. You're welcome.
@@beverleypeacockShe was a racist who put hate above helping patients and stole all her ''revolutionary'' knowledge from another country then took all the credit. She was a typical European who rewrote history and erased the others. You're welcome..
@@beverleypeacockShe was a racist who put hate above helping patients and stole all her ''revolutionary'' knowledge from another country and took all the credit. She was a typical European.
For a man born in 1809, Gladstone's speech is suprisingly modern compared to the other gentlemen. Disciplined voice, no unnecessary flourishes, hardly any words not in use today. Except maybe "appertains." Which I still understood.
I still use “appertain”.
What's appertaining? Is a very common phrase in Cardiff.
@@sparky71a verb
(appertain to)
relate to; concern:
"the answers generally appertain to improvements in standards of service"
Similar:
concern
have to do with
bear on
affect
involve
be appropriate or applicable:
"the institutional arrangements that appertain under the system"
lol I still use appertains a fair amount
@@StrangeScaryNewEngland We just shorten it to pertaining to things, today.
i love how you can tell Gouraud is deep in the wine by the end of it. he starts talking more freely and laughing like anyone might at that point. the 1880s seem like a magical time. a point between the new and old. what's so great now is our ancestors will have limitless access to out thoughts like i dearly wish we had for these fine gentlemen.
I'm jealous of the people who will have video going back hundreds of years
@@omegaweapon116i dont envy sifting through trillions of videos to find the good stuff.
@RSpracticalshooting I don't know about you but if I had access to video from the 1500s I'd be looking at everything
@omegaweapon116 well arguably you wouldn't have billions of mindless videos to sort through because they wouldn't have filmed literally everything.
It's like trying to find the best movies by just watching every movie ever made. You're gonna watch so much shit that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
It is my solemn duty to inform you that our ancestors are dead
LOL, Arthur Sullivan had me laughing over his joke about the awful music that could now be recorded, over 150 years later. Well said, sir.
Yep... Arthur was a bit of legend for sure.
He probably thinking of that infernal nonsense Pinafore
A true visionary.
That delivery was so dry 😆
He never got to hear “Wap” by Cardi b and “Body” by Megan Thee Stallion 😂😂 or even worse, Lucille Bogan’s “Till the Cows Come Home” and “Shave ‘Em Dry” 😮😂
Can you even imagine how excited they were. The future was in their hands
and so it is in ours
@@bigb4515 this is the end of times (as we know)
@@walterweiss7124always has been.
@@phoenixliv you don't have a clue
The very first television broadcast was that of an Austrian Painter, so stranger things have happened.
Amazing to hear the first machine that created a profession that I do, that is a sound engineer, when you think how far we have now come, which is also restoration, I’m sure I, or one of my colleagues could take these recordings, isolate only the speech elements, then emulate the missing frequencies and bring these old voices back to a realistic and natural sounding form
Do it 👍
How does sound travel down a wire?????
It doesn't. The sound pressure gets converted to a voltage or an amperage, then either recorded or transmitted to somewhere to be recorded, or converted again, and turned back into sound.
@curt2742 aren't white people amazing 🤩 all the awesome shit they created
It's weird that I find an odd comfort in this. I'm a lover of things lost, and I die a new ego death every time it dawns on me how many cool people I'll never have the chance to meet because they've died long before I was born. This closes the gap somewhat. It's one thing to read about things from times long past. It's another thing to hear them in such a raw and real manner.
What an awesome comment. I agree.
Same here.😢
Beautifully put, and I feel the same way.
Yes, wow. We really get to hear how some of those famous people sounded. It's so cool & mind blowing at the same time.
Ever had a true ego death.
It's scary. Terrifying. Panic is the only word we have for it but it's so much more. I can't explain it
What I can explain is that they change your life afterwards. Take mushrooms 🍄
I wonder if people will be amused by our comments hundreds years after we’re gone as we do with these.
Some of the most renowned composers and performers from Russia in the 1890s were recorded amusing themselves on an Edison photograph brought to them by a merchant named Bloch. Tchaikovsky and Rubenstein and incredible opera singers... faffing about yelling things and whistling. :-P
I will give them uck
comments on internet isn't exciting in the future compared to great inventions from decades ago
I got to thinking of the video about future France. Much literature having been burned due to it being of little value or story, like dime novels. Funnily enough, Sherlock Holmes started out as such and is cherished by many today, including me :)
Singular. 😊@@Abraxium
I expected a video poking fun at recorded Victorian speech, but was delighted by an educational and fascinating encounter with famous voices from nearly 140 years ago. Bravo!
The fact that we are now, in the year 2024, able to hear, performed by the same man, the exact same bugle call that the members of the Light Brigade heard for the very last time as they rode to their deaths in one of the most famous actions in all of military history is just...so surreal that it literally brought me to tears.
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
Pussy
It's the moments that people went "off script" that I find the most valuable.
It humanizes the speakers significantly. Sometimes we view history more as stories than actual fact about real people, so hearing people from antiquity crack jokes and stumble over their words makes them much more relatable.
I have a recording fro 50 years ago (cassette tape) of my grandmother yelling to my grandfather to take a mattress up to the twin bedroom… it was caught by mistake but it shows how the real conversations went in the grandparents house. Like you say it’s most valuable because it’s “off script” 😄
@sdct50 That's the holy grail right there. If only we could find a recording of a Victorian Era man stubbing his toe.
This is a beautifully researched and produced documentary that moved me to tears. I had no idea that voice recordings existed of these well known people. It was both haunting and remarkable to hear them speak. Today we can use laser or video scanning of early wax recordings, interpreted by software, to prevent further damage to the original medium. If only that technology existed 100 years ago to preserve them all!
My grandfather was born in London in January 1888 so its intetesting to hear a voice of his contemporaries.
It's so cool to be able to hear something like this. Was he wealthy? Or do you think he would have sounded a bit different? The people in the video were fairly posh I think
@devanman7920
The last time I saw my grandfather was when I was 8 years old which is a long long time ago. However, he wasn't a member of the upper classes so I don't think he would have spoken like them. Nevertheless, it still very interesting to hear an accent he would have heard and would have been familiar with.
@@johnbrereton5229 ya of course this stuff on TH-cam is very cool
Yes very intetesting.
My grandfather was born in 1896 in New York City. I knew him for many years, and he spoke like a New Yorker today.
I get so fed up of the garbage on the internet, and then it sents me something haunting and wonderful like this. Gives me hope for humans. Studying history is changing, because now we are into an era when we can see and here the people of the past. Imagine studying our time 300 years from now.
It is wonderful but I'm still fed up with the garbage on the Internet and disappointed that they rather work on more garbage to argue with than to improve what's wrong with the garbage they put out. I mean we've got computer systems tell us something is completely different than what it is, gaslighting us and causing unnecessary hardship. Yet they want to create more devices and more power with the same defective communication. We spend too much money and stress on AI.
We live in a time when we constantly have to spend an hour on the phone with tech support in another country because our magnificent smart AI system told a lie and it's our stupidity for not understanding it.
You have only yourself to blame if you're incapable of finding non-"garbage" online. It really isn't that difficult ;)
if you’re seeing a lot of garbage it’s bc you’re seeking it. the internet is literally limitless. you get what you want to get.
"Open your mind to the past-art, history, philosophy...and all this may mean something."
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "The Samaritan Snare" (1989)
One of the most fascinating videos I’ve ever seen on TH-cam. Thank you Kings and Things (oh, and the algorithm!).
So basically... Eddison leaves his phonograph there... and a bunch of drunk old buggers decide to have some fun.
Pure gold this comment. 😂
Edison*
Hip hip hip hurray 😂
A bit like Samuel Johnson leaving his first draft of the Dictionary for his mates to read and they spend the evening looking up all the rude words.
Just a little trolling
It is fascinating how far we've come in just 150 years. The fears that some of the Victorians would've had were not unfounded. The wiser ones would've known about the new powers this technology would bring to the world, and that scared them. The world would never be the same again.
Every major technological advancement has affected us thusly. Gutenberg's printing press no less than Edison's phonograph, or Babbage's first computer...or the internet.
@rikk319 That is correct. I suppose our modern-day equivalent is AI. I've always wondered how far we will go until everything comes crashing down if that is the final outcome.
My grandmother who was born during WW1 never trusted her TV, as she was convinced it filled the room with electricity. She had no such fears about her radio, probably because it was familiar to her.
One of the modern fears that springs to mind is the Hadron Collider. Does anyone else remember when it was switched on and people objected because they thought it would create a black hole that would swallow the planet?
Not even 130.
There has always been new technology that changed society, usually for the better. Only fools try to fight progress.
So cool that they thought to carefully include dates and names for posterity. Love it!
Its 2024 im watching this on a cell phone. Its crazy to think i met my great great grandmother. She was born in the 1880s when this was recorded and im only 43. Its possible she met someone from the late 1700s. Thats mind blowing to me. Seems so far in the past.
My g/g/g-grandfather told my g-grandmother who told my mother who told me, that he remembered when news of Trafalgar reached his town and all the church bells were ringing and there were bonfires and cannons firing salutes. Then they were told Nelson had been killed and there was genuine grief amongst the adults, but he was too young to understand why adults who’d been cheering one second were tearful, the next.
My g-grandmother spoke with someone born in 1799, her grandfather: and she may well have spoken to me, but she died when I was only about 18 months old so it would only have been baby talk.
@@GK-cb3vc
I was born in 1944, my mother lived 1912 -2010, my grandmother 1881 -1977: my g-grandmother, 1855 -1945, g/g-grandfather 1822 -1862 and g/g/g-grandfather 1798/9 -1871.
I’m an atheist, but a family Bible has its uses. My daughter is it’s current curator.
ETA: My parents and their siblings all made it into their 90s. One grandfather killed in WW1, other grandfather and both grandmothers were over 90. More people lived to great age than you imagine. The low average age of death was because there were so many more infant and childhood deaths. My g-gm was the only one of her mother’s five children that survived to adulthood.
@@q.e.d.9112
I wasn't answering you sir, I was addressing the comment from a person born in the 1980s (that is currently in his 40s).
But even if I didn't, my point still stands.
A person born in 1880 would not remember encountering a person born in the later 1700s unless perhaps someone was born in 1799 and call them "a person from the 1700s".
@GK-cb3vc There are many verified cases of people living to their 90s and even to 100 pre-20th century.
@@GK-cb3vc That's not at all true, I have multiple ancestors who lived into their 80's-90's, I'm sure like today there would have been a few individuals who lived to be 100 years old.
The trumpeter sounding the charge gave me shivers! Pretty awesome that a trumpeter using the same trumpet as from Waterloo and Balaclava can still be heard today
It is powerful and sort of mind boggling!
Bugle, but yeah!
God what a miracle to hear these. It’s making me tear up, thinking about how this, and how it’s led to everything today.
It's one thing to hear a short recording, but a whole party?? From the 19th century, with people drinking wine, laughing, trying to compose themselves and give a coherent congratulatory speech to Thomas Eddison, it's honestly incredible. It gave me some time to immerse myself and for a short time feel like I was looking through a portal back to that party.
Well now imagine, if you were able to rip a portal to that time point to walk/go back to that time period, without having to hear the recording. Or a very simplified time machine, whether on a watch or as a large bulky machine, to take you back to the past to see what life was like.
It's quite amazing to be able to hear voices from 1888 , but what's even more amazing is by 1910 you could buy a 78rpm record of anything in great fidelity . Things moved fast
This has been amazing. I am always in awe when i see pictures of the past, but hearing their voices is something else entirely!
Thank you for this. It is an absolutely astonishing thing to listen to/see, and i am glad that the algorithm finally showed me something good for a change!
You could almost _hear_ the existential dread in Robert Browning’s pauses. Even the greatest of that generation’s orators could be shocked into stage fright when their intellects are confronted with an audience of unborn billions to come. Nowadays, the idea of one’s voice and image being perfectly preserved forever is taken for granted. No matter what faults one might find in our modern society, Victorians like Robert Browning would consider us to have impeccable fortitude in the face of eternity.
I think you may be underestimating the ephemeral nature of our technology. Who today can play a cassette tape or a Betamax video?
@@AndyJarman
Being a child of the 80s, I still have access to cassettes and VHS.
I can’t personally play Betamax but I can find their preserved contents in another medium.
We’re listening to the preserved/restored (if imperfect) contents of phonographs from the 1800s in this very video.
Eternity is a stretch as nothing lasts forever, but you can’t deny the extreme longevity technological advances have afforded us compared to the limitations of the past.
Not impeccable fortitude. Bliss through ignorance.
Let’s get it straight. A LOT of this digital information is going nowhere.
@jmass4207 A lot of tinfoil and wax information went nowhere. What's your point? That digital information is fleeting? No, it's not especially more fleeting than anything else, especially considering hard drives and backups are a thing, only needing a basic computer, monitor, and electrical power we can now generate by something as simple as a wind-up motor.
In the late 70s, I remember chatting with my great grandmother. She was born not long before these recordings. The pace of technical advancement is astounding.
I only came out of curiosity, but have been profoundly amazed at hearing these famous people’s voices having been captured way before I had expected. A very well detailed and documented video
Started as interesting background noise, wound up totally enthralled with this presentation of history. So well done, Bravo!! Hip hip hurray!!!
Hip, hip, hurrah!
@@sjm9876 Hip, hip, hurrah!
When I listened to that ghostly recording of a choir of 4,000(!) singing a section Handel's Israel in Egypt, it made me want to find an audio or video of that oratorio. Just amazing that we have recordings that old.
It sounded haunting on that primitive recording. Someone should sample it.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for making this time capsule available.
What an historical document! Incredible to hear the voices of Gladstone, Florence Nightingale and a veteran of the Crimean War. I have a much greater appreciation for Peter Cushing whose diction, it seems, is very close to the pronunciation of the Victorians. Marvellous. Thank you for sharing.
an istorical document indeed…. or as we say across the pond a historical one
i didn’t know who she was until just now, but florence nightingale is such a cool name that i just had to look her up lol. i had learned about nurses during this time in school (probably in regard to the US civil war) but i don’t think they ever said her name. i’m also a math major and get pretty excited to learn about women who had great/significant contributions to the field, such as ada lovelace :)
Our Flo invented the pie chart.@@wooogie672
@@tadhgmccain7785 i saw that on the wiki! wish the contributions women like her made were as discussed as much as some of the men. obviously she probably wasn’t as prolific as riemann, leibniz, or cauchy, but it still matters :(
Florence Nightingale voice and what she said really brought a smile to my face.
You have a very easy to listen to voice. I clicked off the video but your voice alone almost made me stay. Like the chillness of it
I was moved to tears listening to the 4000 people singing however faintly, to Me across the bridge of time. Such magic, all of them, thank you for sharing and stirring my emotions and heart. ❤
It's always been fascinating to see really old photographs, but it's more surreal to HEAR them
So crazy to look back at history and clearly see which direction we are heading as juxtaposed to that era.
I'm very sorry for how unkind the algorithm was to this video, it was all excellently put together, fantastic work.
(EDIT: The video blew up after two weeks. It only had four thousand in the first week)
Well, it's brought me here, so it can't be working too badly
@@capitalb5889Video had 3000 views 4 days after release
What do you mean? It’s got 151k already
@@KizzMyAbs Video had 3000 views 4 days after uploading
@ well it’s picked up now
The audio quality on these cylinders really is remarkable when you compare them to other recordings of the era
As a sound engineer I find these recordings absolutely fascinating!
Fascinating, wonderful. Florence Nightingale brought tears to my eyes, so genuine and warm. Queen Victoria does sound suspiciously modern to my ears. Perhaps it's simply that she doesn't have a formal, "elocution voice" manner like the others.
And probably isn't drunk.
She wasn’t raised British, so….
@@annwilliams6438except she was... Even her parents were raised as English. They'd all long gone native.
When my mom help to elderly gentleman come to live with us he was born in 1886 and he died in 1988. Now that I'm thinking about it I believe he had some of those affectations still left in his voice and somewhere I have a cassette where I interviewed him about some of his memories from his childhood. They were not all there and some of them could easily be mistaken for just old person's voice. But there were still quite a few now that I'm thinking about it. Plus the vocabulary was definitely there. If you've ever had any doubts about those old movies yes that is an accurate depiction of what these people actually sounded like. And these are all recordings on wax just proved it.
If you ever can, find it and upload it on here! :)
0:10 yep, sounds about as cliche as I imagined
Haha I don’t mean to laugh but I thought the same thing
Very Elegantly put together, with attention to detail and impeccably good taste. This is how such things ought to be, Thank you very much!
Indubitably, incontestably and incontravertibly, sir! 🥂
@@hamishanderson6738 And not wthout hyperbolic charm yourel sir :) I trust you have a pleasant weekend, sire :)
Victorian people search history: "How to overcome fear in speaking through phonograph?" "Anxiousness when recording speech solution"
😆
Bro imagine back in the day when you had to go to the library to look up what was wrong with you in a medical textbook and if it wasn't there you would have to wait years for a new one to come out and maybe diagnose you ☠️
@@charlesmason4493 Might as well discover a new medical condition and name it after you.
I love this, jumping right into the recording without some long preamble, then following with the rest of the history.
Beautiful , clear, impeccably prounounced victorian English.
HA! That 1st voice from upper Norwood south London. I'm in Croydon/Mitcham and that's 15 minutes drive away from me. The old crystal palace location is also about the same. Some of the people you have heard are probably buried either in Norwood cemetery or Croydon cemetery next to my house. I bet when they recorded these they had absolutely no idea that we'd be listening to them over 100 years later.
I was born in 1972. There were people that were alive in 1888 also still alive when I was a baby and child. It's not that long ago. 100 years isn't that much time. People live to 100 years and beyond.
My daughter was born in 1971. Her oldest great grandmother was born in 1879. This great grandmother held my daughter in her arms while resting in her bed. This was about two years before great granny died aged 92. If my daughter lives to a great age, God willing, that could be a lifetimes’ link of nearly 200 years!
If you watch british or american movies of the 1930s or even 1940s the accents hadn't appeared to have changed all that much over the course of 50 years or so.pretty much the same.
Yea that's what I was thinking too.
I am reminded of Margaret Dumont in the Marx Bros. movies!
Received Pronunciation or "RP" began as a taught accent in Britain and anyone who'd been to a posh school learned to speak with it. The aim was to remove all trace of regional dialect so you could no longer tell where the speaker was from. RP could be very much a show voice though, and in private many whose used it may have spoken more informally. RP is still around, although it's less manicured than it used to be. Recent PM David Cameron has a good example of a modern RP accent.
It is very weird hearing so many Americans of that late 19th/early 20th century era using RP, but I guess wealthy US children were getting the same kind of elocution lessons as those in Britain. My understanding is that the Mid-Atlantic accent as it came to be known was mostly a Northeastern thing. Not always though. One eccentric case I recall case was the famed American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who despite starting out as a highschool jock from Missouri ended up speaking with a meticulously clipped RP accent and adopted aristocratic English manners and dress - much to the confusion of those meeting him!
Unlike RP in the UK, the Mid-Atlantic accent seems to have all but died out now, which is a shame because like in all those old movies, I find it has a nice fluid sound to it.
@@CountScarlioni Today's RP sounds very differne tthough. Today it's baically a posh Eastuary accent. This RP sounds almost French.
@@playlist9980 I wouldn't call it very different, just softer and more natural. It's not got as much as that sense that it's being spoken from the top of the mouth. I doubt they'd have been keen to hear it described as sounding like French lol!
Wonderful! All these should be run through the CEDAR system. The system will make the most crackly audio sound like it was recorded yesterday. Check out 1890: Trumpeter Landfrey's Charge of the Light Brigade.
Looking forward to when that will happen! ❤
@@Maderlololohio ❤
when I was a little girl in the 1950's one could buy a little recording aparatus and record on small discs that looked like records, and had that wax like substance, then you could use on your record player. Pre casset recorder. I recorded my voice. But the little records were ver brittle and eventually it broke. So sad. Because It facinated me, and I would be thrilled to hear myself now at age 73. You young people have an advantage over us folks born in the 1950's.
Upon clicking, I thought there was going to be a long introduction before we got to listen to the actual audios.
Glad that didn't happen
The uploader should have denoised it because the original recoreding were most definitely not this noisy sounding. The whole reason some recordings are lost to time is because the physical wax records deteroiated and got noiser over time. The noise misleads people into thinking the original machines sounded horrible and were filled with noise.
If you want a more common Britsh accent recordings look up the the British WW1 POW recordings done by germans for the purpose of germans to trrain their spies in our accents, they took records of people from nearly all over the UK, granted its in WW1 but they would have been born during the victorian era
Also, the recordings are organized and cared for in the most methodical and typically German manner.
@@lanctermann7261Germans are very precise about almost everything they do and I respect that.
This is absolutely fascinating, historical gold. Very well documented, I will share!!
Incredible to hear the voice of Florence Nightingale. Very moving to hear these long-gone voices.
The phonograph must have seemed like a miracle. Yet in 1897, merely 9 years after its introduction in England, in Stoker's novel "Dracula" Dr Seward uses a phonograph as a journaling device! Not to preserve voices for the future but for his very personal thoughts. Though a fictional character, maybe he was the very first audio-diarist. The effect doesn't seem to have lessened since its introduction, since Mina Harker is astonished at hearing Seward's anguish in his recordings (chapter 17).
The Edison phonograph was specifically designed as a journaling device (like a dictaphone). It was utterly unsuitable to pre-recorded music (but the round peg was hammered into that square hole).
"It had not been previously understood that the phonograph shown and incorporated in Jules Verne's *1879* novel ..."
(edit)context: I am certain that Jules Verne would have incorporated a phonograph .... google.... there you have it.
I was about to add this very same comment about Dr. Seward's diary!
Funny thing here is we have basically gone back to this basic technology. I buy cds still, but now i am building a collection of records. There is something nice about listening to a record over a cd. And its nice to actually own media as opposed to all digital.
Trumpeter Lanfried's Irish accent is unmistakable, how he says 'surviving' and the soft 't' in Waterloo. Joined up in Dublin, aged 14, though born in Gibraltar.
So true, and his accent sounds reasonably modern, could be an older middle class Dublin man today almost
At the end,I can hear a slight West Country accent,as he retired to Sussex.I wonder how he went from Gibraltar to Dublin,maybe merchant shipping?
I love Gladstones message, it was so kind and positive, it really tugged on my heart strings
The feeling that I got when I heard the trumpet sound the charge of the LIGHT BRIGADE was awesome....
I really hope that the historic Bugle is safe in some museum.
Queen Victoria sounded remarkably like her great-great-grandaughter.
i had to look it up, but i’m assuming you’re talking about elizabeth II?
My thoughts exactly!
@@titian-red
Ditto!
I've read that Queen Victoria actually had a German accent, so it may not be her on the recording.
@@trollking99 Considering this was towards the end of her life it's not unreasonable to think it may be a little less German sounding, especially in the late-victorian period nationalism was starting to rise, and perhaps she'd want to sound more "British". A similar sentiment is why the Royals are the "Windsors". That being said I did actually hear a bit of a German accent in there. Super posh of course, but certainly in there nontheless.
your channel seriously hits all of the points that interest me about the past. keep doing what you do!
The Crystal Palace is such an enigmatic building.
Thank you for bringing these recordings and the context around them to the wider public audience where they can easily access it. It's easy to see why the people marveled at such an invention, as we still marvel at it to this day.
This channel is criminally undersubbed, great videos!
Thank you for this excellent presentation. I was born in 1958 and heard my grandmother speaking many times. She was born in the1880s and so an adult in the Victorian era.
Arthur Sullivan's comments will never not be hilarious. If only he knew. But it is wonderful hearing these old recordings. We take so many things for granted that for the people of the past would have seemed like magic. To have been alive then and to hear pre-recorded sounds for the first time would have been nothing short of a revelation.
My great grandad was born in 1883 and his accent was much like mine. I know this, because I spoke to him as a kid in the 1970s. The interesting thing is that he, my grandad (born 1916), my dad (born in the 1940s) and me (born 1960s) all have a similar London working class accent. And yet my nephews (born early 2000s) all have totally different accents to us, even though they are also from London.
Immigration, rap.US films.
The internet has made the world a lot smaller i think
Television and films have a lot to do with it.
Hearing the quality of the sound I’m amazed it caught on!!
15:18. Dude correctly predicted the future. Great vid.
Dude? Watch your English, American ignorant language...
A ghostly ring resounding truth. Just repeat it for the folks in the back.
Terrified that such hideous and bad music will be put on record forever
He foreheard atonal music.
I’m glad he didn’t have to live through island boys.
"For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of these evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed and TERRIFIED AT THE THOUGHT THAT SO MUCH AND BAD MUSIC MAY BE PUT ON RECORD FOREVER." 15:00
Good ol’ Sullivan
Hearing the real voice of Florence Knightingale brought me to tears. It was so hauntingly beautiful!!
Oh my gosh! Florence Nightengale! Tears in my eyes! 25 years in Nursing; I am so grateful for this incredible opportunity.
We all experienced that nervousness and behaved very differently when tape recorders or cameras were on us back before mobile phones in the 70s and 80s.
Oh my, do I remember! In the late 60's home reel to reels were becoming broadly available and I witnessed so many people were quite displeased at their first hearings of their voices. Surprised and shocked, most often. I remember hearing my voice and being very critical about it. Now, I was just 13 or so at the time; perhaps older kids or adults might have felt quite different.
And God bless Florence Nightingale. I served four decades as a Nurse. Your spirit is not dead, great lady.
Such a sweet comment! ❤😊
The Gladstone speech is so beautiful.
arthur sullivan’s one made me tear up a bit. after he joked about all the horrible music that would be permanently recorded, he said that despite his fears, seeing the phonograph at that dinner was one of the most wonderful things he’d ever experienced (paraphrasing). idk he just sounded so genuine when he said that :,)
What a wonderful treasure, to hear the recorded voice of one of my greatest life inspirations, Florence Nightingale!
Absolutely beautiful and haunting. Thank you for making this video!
Victoria was Queen and Jack the Ripper was out and about in 1888. Fascinating.
Agree Jack the Ripper was on his killing spree.