Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
History of sound recording

"Helmuth von Moltke was born in 1800, technically the last year of the 18th century. There's a wonderful irony here: Moltke's nickname was 'der große Schweiger' (the great silent one), because he had a reputation for speaking very little; and yet, of all the hundreds of millions of people born in the 18th century, his is the only voice we can hear today."

Patrick Feaster, 2012

On 21 October 1889, Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke, then aged 88, made two audio recordings with Adelbert Theodor Wangemann, a German native who worked with Thomas Edison and had been sent to Europe with Edison's newly invented cylinder phonograph. Moltke recorded a line from Shakespeare 's Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3, "Dein Ohr leih jedem, wen'gen deine Stimme" – "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice"), as well as a passage from Goethe 's Faust, both of which were engraved onto two wax cylinders. These recordings were then lost until their rediscovery in 1957, though they remained unidentified for decades after. On 30 January 2012, they were among a number of recordings revealed by the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. The two record cylinders made by Moltke are the only known surviving voice recordings of a person born in the 18th century.
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