New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-02-22
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES.

A commission was appointed year or two
! ago by the Imperial Academy of Sciences to
! inquire into the utility of the photograph for
| preserving records of spoken language. Should
the scheme prove feasible, it was proposed to
follow the matter up by the establishment of
bureau in the Austrian capital for the accumu-
lation of such archives. Two expeditions were
| organized to make experiments. One visited
| Croatia and Slavonia, and the other went to
| Lesbos, the birthplace of Sappho From the
report Of the commission, recently published,
it would appear that fairly satisfactory results
were secured. Unfortunately, the apparatus
| employed was too heavy to be readily carried
| to any great distance from a railway station
a difficulty which can probably be obviated in
| the future. The main point to be determined,
| though, was the possibility Of getting an ac-
curate reproduction of speech. When nickel
| plated electrotypes had been made from the
| original wax cylinders, and new copies in wax
derived from the metal, the latter were tested
| in the presence Of the leaders Of the expeditions
| and other linguistic authorities 1t was decided
| that the methods pursued had been successful
| in the main. although some doubt still remains
| as to the fathfulness with which certain con-
| sonants registered.
Although the Vienna Academy's project is
probably the most comprehensive and important
especially new or exceptional. Other efforts
to record strange tongues and peculiar dialects
have been made. Garner, indeed, went so far
| as to try the monograph on apes in Central
| Africa while explorers in Mexico have sue
| cessfully caught the rude strains of Maya
| dance by similar means. OF course, simple
variations in musical pitch are much easier TO
register than articulate utterance; and for
| pathological purposes a tune, isolated from
| words would not count for much. Nor could
one expect equally good results with simian
| chatter and highly developed language. Still.
| ignoring these two classes of evidence. there
remains a good deal to corroborate that OBJ
| tanned by the Austrian commission The testi-
mony of the latter does not stand alone. The
fact that the monograph is now being used,
in place OF direct speech TO teach the pronuncla-
ton of modern languages is alone significant.
Such records the Vienna Academy has in
view might be useful in various ways When
they were obtained In far off lands they would
save the philologist a costly and difficult jour
ney Mahomet would not need to go to the
mountain From metal negative no end
of copies could be secured for distribution
among students. Comparisons could be made
between dialects spoken contemporaneously,
and also between the speech of one age and that
of another. If the photograph had been in ser
vice at the beginning of the Christian era. for
instance, it would not be uncertain to-day how
the ancient Greeks and Romans pronounced
their own languages. In like manner the Eng
lish of Chaucer and Shakespeare could be re-
produced So. too, future generations might
know exactly how people talked at the opening