OLD CLIMBER WAS FIRST BOY TO MAKE A GRAMOPHONE RECORD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 49, 31 May 1940, Page 38

OLD CLIMBER WAS FIRST BOY TO MAKE A GRAMOPHONE RECORD

A. P. Harper to Talk on Whymper P. HARPER _ the well-known A New Zealand mountaineer and eexplorer, who has recorded a talk on the centennial of Edward Whymper’s birth, to be broadcast by 2YA, relates that it is not his first experience of recording. In 1875, when on his way to England with his parents, they stayed a day or two in Chicago. The phonograph had just been invented, and there was to be a public exhibition of the machine. The party were invited. But as they were leaving Chicago too early for the public show, they were invited by Thomas Alva Edison to go to his workshop to have a "private view." Mr. Harper recollects a small machine with a cylinder which was turned by hand behind a large funnel. A piece of tinfoil was wrapped round the cylinder. The speaker spoke into the funnel, while the roller was turned until the tinfoil was fully used. Then the roller was reversed, and the voice came out of the funnel. | Mr. Edison said that he’d never tried a boy’s voice, and after much persuasion, young Harper recited "Sing-a-song 0’ Sixpence," and it was duly reproduced, The result was so satisfactory that Edison. asked him to repeat another verse. Instead of "unwinding" this record, he took the tinfoil off the cylinder, gave it to the reciter and said: "You keep this, it will some day be interesting, because you are the first boy to speak into a phonograph." Unfortunately, the record has been lost. But many years afterwards, in May, 1940, to be precise, Mr. Harper made another recording, through a microphone for broadcasting. The parings that came off the disc as he spoke, were duly presented to him as his "voice." This talk by Mr. Harper was made for the centennial of Edward Whymper, the great alpinist, father of modern mountaineering, who made the first, and tragic, ascent of the Matterhorn. Mr. Harper met and corresponded with Whymper. Mr. Harper has a great store of alpine memories, from which he will draw for the two talks scheduled at 2YA-one on the Whymper Centennial on Friday, May 31, and one on the history of mountaineering in New Zealand on June 7.