Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI

In the trail­er below for the world’s first 3D repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Yves Ubel­mann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ide­al, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubel­man’s dig­i­tal-preser­va­tion com­pa­ny Iconem were two of the par­tic­i­pants in that ambi­tious project, along with the Vat­i­can itself. Pope Fran­cis, writes AP’s Nicole Win­field, “has called for the eth­i­cal use of AI and used his annu­al World Mes­sage of Peace this year to urge an inter­na­tion­al treaty to reg­u­late it, argu­ing that tech­nol­o­gy lack­ing human val­ues of com­pas­sion, mer­cy, moral­i­ty and for­give­ness were too great.”

What bet­ter show of good faith in the tech­nol­o­gy than to allow AI to be used to bring the cen­ter of the faith Pope Fran­cis rep­re­sents to the world? In the near­ly 400 years since its com­ple­tion, of course, the world has always come to the cur­rent St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, and will con­tin­ue to do so.

The 3D-repli­ca project “has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 mil­lion pil­grims are expect­ed to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who vis­it on a nor­mal day,” Win­field writes. But no mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, you can vir­tu­al­ly enter St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca right now, and spend as long as you like, admir­ing the basil­i­ca itself, the cupo­la, Bernini’s St. Peter’s Bal­dachin, and Michelan­gelo’s Pietà, among oth­er fea­tures.

How­ev­er impor­tant (and atten­tion-draw­ing) arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was as a tool in the cre­ation of this ultra-pre­cise “dig­i­tal twin” of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, the four-week process of cap­tur­ing every detail of the real struc­ture that could be cap­tured also neces­si­tat­ed the use of drones, lasers, and cam­eras tak­ing more than 400,000 dig­i­tal pho­tos. The “AI for Good Lab con­tributed advanced tools that refined the dig­i­tal twin with mil­lime­ter-lev­el accu­ra­cy, and used AI to help detect and map struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties like cracks and miss­ing mosa­ic tiles,” says Microsoft­’s site. “The Vat­i­can over­saw the col­lab­o­ra­tion, ensur­ing the preser­va­tion of the Basil­i­ca as a cul­tur­al, spir­i­tu­al, and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant site for years to come.”

It makes a cer­tain sense to apply the high­est tech­nol­o­gy of our time for the ben­e­fit of a build­ing known as the great­est archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of its time. But in order to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the kind of knowl­edge that will be revealed by the 22 petabytes of infor­ma­tion that went into the dig­i­tal mod­el (which offers its own guid­ed tour) we’d do well to immerse our­selves first in what was already known about St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca. For a brief intro­duc­tion to the con­cep­tion and evo­lu­tion of this grand church as it stands today, we could do much worse than archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Manuel Bravo’s video “St Peter’s Basil­i­ca Explained.” If you watch it, don’t be sur­prised if you find your­self tempt­ed to engage in pro­longed explo­ration of the mod­el — or indeed, to book a vis­it to the real thing. Enter the dig­i­tal St. Peter’s here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Final Days of Leo Tolstoy Captured in Rare Footage from 1910

114 years ago today (Novem­ber 20, 1910), Leo Tol­stoy—the author who gave us two major Russ­ian clas­sics Anna Karen­i­na and War & Peacedied at Astapo­vo, a small, remote train sta­tion in the heart of Rus­sia. Pneu­mo­nia was the offi­cial cause. His death came just weeks after Tol­stoy, then 82 years old, made a rather dra­mat­ic deci­sion. He left his wife, his com­fort­able estate, and his wealth, then trav­eled 26 hours to Shar­mardi­no, where Tolstoy’s sis­ter Marya lived, and where he planned to spend the remain­der of his life in a small, rent­ed hut. (Elif Batu­man has more on this.) But then he pushed on, board­ing a train to the Cau­ca­sus. And it proved to be more than his already weak­ened con­sti­tu­tion could han­dle. Rather amaz­ing­ly, the footage above brings you back to Tol­stoy’s final days, and right to his deathbed itself. This clip comes from a 1969 BBC series Civil­i­sa­tion: A Per­son­al View by Ken­neth Clark, and these days you can still find copies of Clark’s accom­pa­ny­ing book kick­ing around online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Only Col­or Pic­ture of Tol­stoy, Tak­en by Pho­tog­ra­phy Pio­neer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

Thomas Edison’s Record­ings of Leo Tol­stoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russ­ian Nov­el­ist

Leo Tolstoy’s 17 “Rules of Life:” Wake at 5am, Help the Poor, & Only Two Broth­el Vis­its Per Month

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Leo Tol­stoy, and How His Great Nov­els Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

 

Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time

Pierre-Joseph Red­outé made his name by paint­ing flow­ers, an achieve­ment impos­si­ble with­out a metic­u­lous­ness that exceeds all bounds of nor­mal­i­ty. He pub­lished his three-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Ros­es and his eight-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Lil­i­acées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance at their pages today vivid­ly sug­gests the painstak­ing nature of both his process for not just ren­der­ing those flow­ers, but also for see­ing them prop­er­ly in the first place. While Red­outé’s works have long been avail­able free online, the dig­i­tal forms in which they’ve been avail­able haven’t quite done them jus­tice — cer­tain­ly not to the mind of design­er and data artist Nicholas Rougeux.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Rougeux here on Open Cul­ture for his online restora­tions of a host of ven­er­a­ble artis­tic pub­li­ca­tions that lav­ish­ly cap­ture the nat­ur­al world: Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants; British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy; A Mono­graph of the Trochilidæ, or Fam­i­ly of Hum­ming-Birds; Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours; and Euclid­’s Ele­ments. Even hav­ing deep expe­ri­ence with those works, Rougeux can declare that, “sim­ply put, Redouté’s illus­tra­tions are stun­ning. His atten­tion to detail in stip­pling and water­col­or has earned him the title ‘the Raphael of Flow­ers’ and is con­sid­ered the great­est botan­i­cal illus­tra­tor of all time.”

Hence Rougeux’s deci­sion to under­take a restora­tion of Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, an “oppor­tu­ni­ty to become inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his tech­niques and devel­op a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion for his efforts.” The project end­ed up demand­ing eleven months, only some of which were tak­en up by bring­ing the orig­i­nal col­ors back to Red­outé’s paint­ings, which “not only depict the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ros­es but also con­vey their del­i­cate beau­ty and fra­grance.” Rougeux also had to dig­i­tal­ly re-cre­ate the read­ing expe­ri­ence of these books for the inter­net, cus­tom-design­ing a dig­i­tal gallery for view­ing their ros­es and lilies as they pop out against their new­ly added dark back­grounds.

Plac­ing all of Red­outé’s flow­ers against those back­grounds entailed the real Pho­to­shop labor, tak­ing each image and “mak­ing the lay­er mask man­u­al­ly by care­ful­ly and slow­ly trac­ing along every edge” — for all 655 plates of Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, as Rougeux writes in a detailed mak­ing-of blog post. “No mat­ter the com­plex­i­ty, I traced every flower, every leaf, every stem, every root, and every hair to pre­serve all the details and ensure that Redouté’s hard work looked as good on a dark back­ground as it did on a light one.” Trans­lat­ing art from one medi­um to anoth­er can be a supreme­ly effec­tive way to cul­ti­vate a full appre­ci­a­tion of the artist’s skill — and in this case, a no less full appre­ci­a­tion of his patience. See the online restora­tion of  Les Ros­es et Les Lil­i­acées here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

The New Herbal: A Mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance Botan­i­cal Illus­tra­tions Gets Repub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful 900-Page Book

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)

In April, 1983, 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers watched the illu­sion­ist David Cop­per­field make the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty dis­ap­pear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you per­haps remem­ber the spec­ta­cle. How did he do it? 40 years lat­er, the YouTube chan­nel Mind Blown Mag­ic Illu­sion demys­ti­fies the large-scale mag­ic trick, explain­ing how Cop­per­field dis­tract­ed the audi­ence, rotat­ed the stage, and shift­ed Lady Lib­er­ty out of view. That’s appar­ent­ly the gist of the illu­sion. How­ev­er, in the com­ments sec­tion on YouTube, one com­menter adds a lit­tle more impor­tant detail:

You missed the most impor­tant mis­di­rec­tion. He had a heli­copter with a bright spot­light shin­ing on the stat­ue for a con­sid­er­able length of time dur­ing which he apol­o­gized to the audi­ence and said they were hav­ing “tech­ni­cal prob­lems.” Even­tu­al­ly the cur­tain came across and the stage began to revolve imper­cep­ti­bly slow­ly. How­ev­er the heli­copter moved in sync with the stage. The beam of light appeared to be sta­tion­ary in rela­tion to the stage. When the cur­tain was lift­ed they saw the heli­copter in the same place but with no stat­ue. The beam of light also helped black out the back­ground. Oth­er­wise the audi­ence would have seen a dif­fer­ent sky­line. Pure genius!

For Open Cul­ture read­ers, it’s worth men­tion­ing that the leg­endary film­mak­er Frank Capra (It’s a Won­der­ful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, It Hap­pened One Night) played an unlike­ly role in the pro­duc­tion. In an inter­view with Judd Apa­tow, Cop­per­field recalls how he enlist­ed Capra to help write the script for the episode:

So then I said [to myself] “Now the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty is going to dis­ap­pear, but I’ve got to make this have more mean­ing.” So I went to vis­it Frank Capra, one of my idols, and did a kind of Judd Apa­tow inter­view with him. I said, “I’d like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty to dis­ap­pear, but I want to do it as a les­son in free­dom, how valu­able free­dom is and what the world would be like with­out lib­er­ty.” And Frank Capra looked at me and said, “David, I love your idea, but here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to try and it’s not going to work; it’s not going to dis­ap­pear.” And I said, “Mr. Capra, I can’t do that.” You know? [laughs] And I got to watch Frank Capra, in his eight­ies, in action.

You can watch some of the orig­i­nal 1983 footage below. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together

There’s an eXo­dus tak­ing place, and mil­lions are find­ing a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decen­tral­ized social media plat­form has been gain­ing 10,000 new users every 10–15 min­utes, or about 1 mil­lion new users per day. Open Cul­ture is already there, shar­ing the cul­tur­al posts you once enjoyed on Twit­ter. We hope you will join us. Find us at @openculture.bsky.social, or just click here.

PS. If you’re are on Threads, you can also find us there too.

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Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That hard­ly means he han­dled every such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: take note of his three divorces, the first of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the year he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer ideals — and, before long, two chil­dren — the cou­ple found­ed the exper­i­men­tal Bea­con Hill School in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their young pupils’ devel­op­ment as not just thinkers-in-train­ing but full human beings.

A few years lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture mag­a­zine called Every­man, and you can read it in full in this 1978 issue of the Rus­sell Soci­ety News. (Go to page 5.)

“Every­body, I sup­pose, has his own list of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels shame quite inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, so far at any rate as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by way of intro­duc­tion. “I have tried to put the virtues that I should wish to pos­sess into the form of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

  1. Do not lie to your­self.
  2. Do not lie to oth­er peo­ple unless they are exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
  3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons close­ly.
  4. When you desire pow­er, exam­ine your­self close­ly as to why you deserve it.
  5. When you have pow­er, use it to build up peo­ple, not to con­strict them.
  6. Do not attempt to live with­out van­i­ty, since this is impos­si­ble, but choose the right audi­ence from which to seek admi­ra­tion.
  7. Do not think of your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.
  8. Be reli­able.
  9. Be just.
  10. Be good-natured.

In the full text, Rus­sell elab­o­rates on the think­ing behind each of these virtues.  “When you wish to believe some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which will increase your income, you will, if you are not very care­ful, give much more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to those against”: hence the impor­tance of not lying to your­self. When it comes to lying to oth­ers, not only should gov­ern­ments tell the truth to their sub­jects, “par­ents should tell the truth to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may seem.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those who are intel­li­gent but weak can­not be expect­ed to forego the use of their intel­li­gence in their con­flicts with those who are stu­pid but strong.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment also applies to rela­tion­ships between the old and the young, since “those who deal with the young inevitably have pow­er, and it is easy to exer­cise this pow­er in ways pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor rather than use­ful to the child.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest a whole set of hum­drum but nec­es­sary virtues, such as punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, refrain­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest forms.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I think, failed to pro­duce reli­able human beings where social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress placed on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — may have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­sell edi­tor Andrew Bone. But Rus­sell still revised his deca­logue long after he left the Bea­con Hill School in 1932, with world events of the sub­se­quent decades inspir­ing him to use it in the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­cast on the BBC in 1951 includes such com­mand­ments as “Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing,” “Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which more of the last few gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents could have done well to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell: Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)

Bambi Meets Godzilla: #38 on the List of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time (1969)

In 1994, Jer­ry Beck edit­ed the book, The 50 Great­est Car­toons: As Select­ed by 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als, which chal­lenged experts to cre­ate a rank­ing of the best short, cel ani­mat­ed car­toons ever made. To no one’s sur­prise, the experts chose 10 Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tions craft­ed by Chuck Jones. They also gave a nod to Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ orig­i­nal Super­man car­toonDis­ney’s first ani­ma­tion with Mick­ey Mouse (1928’s “Steam­boat Willie”), and the Don­ald Duck-star­ring WWII pro­pa­gan­da film,“Der Fuehrer’s Face.”

Yes, the big ani­ma­tion stu­dios (Warn­er Bros., Dis­ney, etc.) dom­i­nate the list. But a few “indies” man­age to squeak in there. Take for exam­ple Win­sor McCay’s sem­i­nal 1914 cre­ation “Ger­tie the Dinosaur.” Or Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la. A stu­dent film cre­at­ed by Marv New­land in 1969, Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la (above) runs only 90 sec­onds. Of which, 48 sec­onds are devot­ed to the open­ing cred­its, and 27 sec­onds to the clos­ing cred­its, leav­ing only 12 sec­onds of “action,” which is most­ly still­ness. The tim­ing is the fun­ny.

The short film cir­cu­lat­ed in the­aters across the U.S., shown before screen­ings of Philippe de Bro­ca’s fea­ture film King of Hearts. Over the years the pub­licly-avail­able ver­sions of Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la became worn and fad­ed. So, in 2013, Coda Gard­ner pro­duced a frame-for-frame HD re-cre­ation. You can watch it below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Trip­py 1970s Ani­mat­ed Film Qua­si at the Quack­adero: Vot­ed One of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

Watch the Oscar-Win­ning “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” (1950): It’s Ranked as the 9th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

Don­ald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons

What Victorian People Sounded Like: Hear Recordings of Florence Nightingale & Queen Victoria Herself

More than 120 years after the end of the Vic­to­ri­an era, we might assume that we retain a more or less accu­rate cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of the Vic­to­ri­ans them­selves: of their social mores, their aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, their ambi­tions great and small, their many and var­ied hang-ups. Some of the most vivid rep­re­sen­ta­tions of these qual­i­ties have come down to us through pri­ma­ry sources, which tend to be texts and works of visu­al art. Late in Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign came pho­tographs, and at the very end, even the motion pic­ture. But how can we be sure how her peo­ple real­ly sound­ed?

Strict­ly speak­ing, the ear­li­est process for mechan­i­cal­ly record­ing the sound of the human voice dates back to 1860, not even halfway through the Vic­to­ri­an era. But the tech­nol­o­gy still had a long way to go at that time, and it was­n’t until the 1880s that Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph and the wax cylin­ders it played became com­mer­cial­ly viable. So explains the King and Things video above, on the spread of audio record­ing and the ear­li­est pos­si­bil­i­ties it opened for cap­tur­ing the voic­es of what we now regard as the dis­tant past. Those voic­es include that of a man intro­duced as “one of Eng­land’s most famous after-din­ner speak­ers, Mr. Edmund Yates.”

That cylin­der was record­ed in 1888, at one of the Lon­don soirées held by an Amer­i­can Edi­son employ­ee named George Gouraud. The son of French engi­neer François Gouraud, who had intro­duced daguerreo­type pho­tog­ra­phy to the Unit­ed States in the 1830s, he took it upon him­self to bring the phono­graph to Britain. He did so in a top-down man­ner, invit­ing social­ly dis­tin­guished guests to his home for din­ner so that they might thrill to the nov­el­ty of after-din­ner speech­es deliv­ered by machine — and then record their own mes­sages to Edi­son him­self.  “I can only say that I am aston­ished and some­what ter­ri­fied at the results of this evening’s exper­i­ments,” said one of Gouraud’s guests, the com­pos­er Sir Arthur Sul­li­van.

That aston­ish­ment aside, Sul­li­van also admit­ted that he was “ter­ri­fied at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record for­ev­er.” Many alive today would cred­it him with con­sid­er­able pre­science on that count. But he also under­stood that the phono­graph would pro­duce won­ders, such as the record­ings includ­ed in this video of such nota­bles as four-time Prime Min­is­ter William Glad­stone, Flo­rence Nightin­gale, and Queen Vic­to­ria her­self — at least accord­ing to the con­sen­sus of the schol­ars who’ve scru­ti­nized the high­ly indis­tinct record­ing in ques­tion. Only long after Edis­on’s time would human­i­ty devel­op a record­ing tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of being replayed again and again with­out degra­da­tion. But giv­en our image of Vic­to­ri­ans, per­haps it’s suit­able that their voic­es should sound ghost­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

100-Year-Old Music Record­ings Can Now Be Heard for the First Time, Thanks to New Dig­i­tal Tech­nol­o­gy

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Thomas Edison’s 1889 Record­ing of Otto von Bis­mar­ck‎ Dis­cov­ered

The Old­est Voic­es That We Can Still Hear: Hear Audio Record­ings of Ghost­ly Voic­es from the 1800s

Hear the First Record­ing of the Human Voice (1860)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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