Sound Bites of the 1908 Presidential Candidates

roncosmos writes "Science News has up a feature on the first use of sound recording in a presidential campaign. In 1908, for the first time, presidential candidates recorded their voices on wax cylinders. Their voices could be brought into the home for 35 cents, equivalent to about $8 now. In that pre-radio era, this was the only way, short of hearing a speech at a whistle stop, that you could hear the candidates. The story includes audio recordings from the 1908 candidates, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft. Bryan's speech, on bank failures, seems sadly prescient now. Taft's, on the progress of the Negro, sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time. There are great images from the campaign; lots of fun."

Comments

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

[Kratisto]

Spoiled kids today. In MY day, we had to listen to presidential debates on wax cylinders! And it cost us the equivalent of eight dollars, too!

Todays Presidental Race

[[cx]]

McCain must be excited to hear his old wax cylinder recordings again.

Bit-torrenting like its 1908

[MosesJones]

Of course what they don't tell you is that most people just ripped the wax cylinders into an oral history form and passed it on that way via a peer to peer approach.

People complained that the problem with the P2P network was that you couldn't tell what was the original and what was either a bad copy or just some virus put in there by someone else to mislead people, but people in South Texas claimed it was the only way they could do it as the Wax cylinders were not available in their area due to them melting.

Re:Panic of 1873

[goatpunch]

People didn't have the same concept of time in the olden days, two events in the same century seemed practically simultaneous to them. They also walked very quickly, talked in funny voices, and could only see in black and white.