Friday, 28 March 2008

Earliest voice recording causes Radio 4 giggles






video

After a studio colleague said in her earpiece that the earliest known voice recording (from 1860, of someone singing "Clair de la Lune") sounded like "a bee buzzing in a bottle", BBC Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green completely lost it and collapsed into a fit of giggles live on the Today programme. Absolutely hilarious, I love "corpsing" stuff! Her hysterics were so popular with listeners that the BBC reported it officially on their news site and even the Times picked it up.

You can hear the extract of the voice recording and her giggling direct by clicking on the pic above (the converted MP3 was combined with a screenshot and saved to Blogger using this MP3/picture combo technique, as Blogger don't let you upload audio files to their servers, only photos and videos), or you can just click the arrow to play an MP3 version. (How to make MP3 files playable direct like that.)

The excerpt is of course on the BBC site, which if you're impatient you can listen to direct by clicking the links below (but only if you have Windows Media or RealPlayer - hey I'd prefer MP3 too, don't blame me, complain to the BBC and ask them to provide non-proprietary non-DRM protected MP3 or video files! If enough British licence payers ask it, you never know, we can but hope. Maybe we could request the ability to embed BBC audio or video clips easily in blogs/sites too, while we're at it...?):
I am hoping the BBC won't mind the video or converted MP3 of the clip as I believe it's fair use reportage, but if anyone at the BBC does has an issue with it please don't go over my head to Google or get me fired, just contact me (see sidebar) and I'd be more than happy delete the audio. (The screenshot has got to be fair use, surely!)

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