GLADSTONE IS TO SPEAK AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 71, 24 March 1934, Page 19

GLADSTONE IS TO SPEAK AGAIN

What did Gladstone say in 188—'? I could tell you, and what is more I coiild prove it by letting the great Victorian statesman say it all over again for'your benefit-(says a writer in the London ''News'-OhTonicle") ■•£,The great voice of:'^ past-is to speak again—out of an^c-li. mahogany box found tucked away lion, a -dusty shelf in London, at the offices of the Edison .Bell Co., 1933, Ltd ' . Mr. Howard Flynn, the composer and managing director of the company told me all about this box. '

Mr. Flynn found it and saw inside a dozen old wax cylinder master records, DO years old, and labelled, in faded yellow ink. They were the voices of— - Wm. Ewart Gladstone, • v Florence Nightingale,. Stanley, the explorer,' Disraeli, ;> Tennyson, ; : ;.

Robert Browning, .-■■■;'■ P. T: Barnuni, and others. Years ago, Edison's phonograph was his hobby, Mr. Flynn told me, and he obtained records of the voices of many famous people. One copy of some of those records is in the British Museum. The old mahogany box held the only other copies. ■ The Edison Bell Company is making electrical records from some, of these relies and they are using in this delicate operation the original machine in which Edison recorded the voices.

Gladstone's voice, impressive and dignified, was sending a message on the new-fangled talking maehiue to Liberals in America. Florence Nightingale referred to her war experiences in the Crimea and to her hospital. Disraeli's voice, said Mr. Flynn, cannot be reproduced. Time has silenced it, even on the wax record.