Sounds of history
Before TV there was the radio. In the evenings, after dinner, everyone would pull up an easy chair around a radio in the living room and listen to the news of the day or the antics of the characters in their favourite radio serials.
Thanks to the internet and your audio players, you can take a trip back in time to revisit some of the sounds that made history.
Before you can hear sound clips on the various websites around the world, you will need one or more audio players.
There are many different audio file formats used on the web and not all players can play all of them, so you'll generally need two or three players. The main players are QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.
If you're using a Windows computer you will probably have Windows Media Player already installed. To find a download for the RealPlayer, visit www.real.com/realplayer.html for the free player. A free Windows version of the QuickTime player can be downloaded from Apple (www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html).
Once the players are installed you should be able to play just about any sound clip you find on the web. And there are plenty of them.
To take a trip down memory lane, whether you remember these clips because you heard them in their original context or if you're just wondering what all the fuss was about, visit the History Channel's audio archives.
Here you'll find four pages of links to audio clips of speeches and interviews including those of Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps on the Moon, King Edward VIII's abdication speech, Thomas Edison on the development of electricity and even the inimitable Mae West talking about men, women and diamonds and speaking her famous line: "Come up and see me sometime. Anytime. The sooner the better."
There are also excerpts from the rousing WWII speeches of Winston Churchill at the BBC's history site.
One of the radio serials that kids in the US listened to around the same time Churchill was making his speeches were the antics of Captain Midnight. At the Radio Days archives (www.otr.com/cm_archives.shtml) you'll find MP3 audio files of nearly 60 early episodes of the Captain Midnight radio show which ran from 1938 until it finally morphed into a TV series. Each episode kicks off with ads for the Captain Midnight New 1940 Flight Patrol that kids were encouraged to join.
There are excerpts from two popular Australian radio serials Blue Hills and Argonauts Brains Trust (in addition to the calling of the 1932 Melbourne Cup) at the ABC's site.
If the classics are more your interest, you can hear excerpts from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and From the Legend of Good Women read by professors in Middle English. They emphasise the pronunciation of the texts and, if this is confusing, there are also transcripts of what is being read so you can follow along at the same time.