STORING SOUNDS FOR CENTURIES

Shannon News, 11 August 1925, Page 1

STORING SOUNDS FOR CENTURIES

l-'rom the minaret came the sound of a Tartar voice summoning the faithful to prayer. It was in no Mohammedan country that I heard this, says a writer in “Tits-Bits,” but in a lecture room of the University of London. Teachers and students were gathered there to hear a lecture

by professor W. Doegen, of Berlin, who has made over 2000 records of different sounds.

“1 made no progress until the war came,” he told me afterwards. “Then in camps for prisoners. I found the menus of obtaining over one hundred and fifty languages and dialects. The .Africans alone provided me with eighty-seven records.”

X listened to the musical voice of a Sikh telling the fable of the monkey and a parrot. Then the photograph of a native of the Congo appeared on the screen and 1 heard his voice trolling out a rowing song. Finally I heard a nightingale sing, and a clever imitatioh of the bird by a gipsy band from Central Europe. "The matrices of the records are of brass,” said Profesor Doegen, “and they should for 10,000 .years. My library of sounds contains twelve rooms full of records, in which languages of 250 nations are. represented.”

Professor Doegen has invented a sound stopper that will be of great service to those studying languages from his records. By its use a record can be stopped at any point, and the instrument then repeats a word or phrase. A bird, for exapiple can be made to repeat a trill again and gain.

“The more I study voices.” he went on, “the more 1 am struck by the way they show character. Amongst my records are examples of the voices of the ex-Kaiser .and the late President L’bei-t. Each reflects in an extraordinary manner the character of the speaker.”

liindenburg has a deep voice, and Ms guttural words were punctuated by frequent pauses.