Voice of a man born in 1800 — Transcript

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1. 0:00This is the earliest born human being
2. 0:02ever recorded and for over 100 years
3. 0:04nobody knew it still existed. His name
4. 0:06was Helmuth von Moltke. He was born in
5. 0:09October 1800, 10 months after George
6. 0:11Washington died. Beethoven had just
7. 0:13premiered his first symphony. He grew up
8. 0:15to be the general who won the three wars
9. 0:17that created Germany. Three wars in
10. 0:19seven years. He was also famous for
11. 0:21barely speaking. They called him the
12. 0:23great silent one. In 1889, Thomas Edison
13. 0:26[music] sent his brand new phonograph
14. 0:27across Europe to collect famous voices.
15. 0:30On October 21st, it reached Moltke's
16. 0:32estate. Moltke was 88 and the quietest
17. 0:35famous man in Europe recorded his voice.
18. 0:37He read [music] from Faust and on the
19. 0:39next cylinder, a line from Hamlet. It's
20. 0:41a father's advice to his [music] son.
21. 0:43Give every man thy ear but few thy
22. 0:45voice. Then he said his name. [music] He
23. 0:47died a year and a half later. The
24. 0:49cylinders got shipped back to New Jersey
25. 0:51and nobody saw them again for 68 years
26. 0:53and in 1957 somebody found a box of
27. 0:56unlabeled cylinders in a cabinet in
28. 0:58Edison's library. Nobody could tell what
29. 1:00was on them, so they sat for another 55
30. 1:03years. In 2012, sound historians finally
31. 1:05matched the faint German to Goethe and
32. 1:08to Shakespeare and that's how we know
33. 1:09that the voice on that wax belonged to a
34. 1:11man born in 1800. It's faint. The wax is
35. 1:14137 years old, but listen for the last
36. 1:17thing he says because it's his name.
37. 1:19This is Helmuth von Moltke in 1889.
38. 1:23>> I
39. 1:25like
40. 1:26hearing it.
41. 1:27Pay attention
42. 1:29to the sound.
43. 1:31I like hearing it.
44. 1:33Pay attention to the sound.
45. 1:35>> He was the great silent one and the one
46. 1:37time a machine was recording, what he
47. 1:39chose to say was listen more, talk less.
48. 1:43What would you say to someone 137 years
49. 1:45from now? Follow me for more stories
50. 1:47from the strange world of sound and
51. 1:49music.