Volta Laboratory Experimental Recording

Unknown artist

This is an experimental sound recording made in the Volta Laboratory, Washington, D.C., in October 1881. Made from an original recording of paraffin and wax, it is a negative electrotype copy for stamping out multiple recordings. The recording is laterally cut, that is, a stylus cut across the record surface side-to-side rather than vertically. It was part of the proof of invention that the Volta Associates—Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter—deposited in a sealed tin box at the Smithsonian on October 30, 1881, in case of a patent fight. The box was opened in the presence of Bell relatives in 1937.