Listening to the Archive: Sound Data in the Humanities and Sciences

摘要

On 22 August 1940, the German astronomer Harald von Klueber used a gramophone to record a brief speech about universal time. In this wartime recording, von Kliiber discussed the relativity of time and the need for a global time standard. Temporal convergence, he proclaimed, would facilitate punctual communication, travel, and transportation-three aspects crucial to Germany's conduct of World War Ⅱ but also relevant for a range of different research disciplines that were concerned with temporal accuracy. As von Kliiber referred to the newest technologies for measuring and synchronizing time with elaborate quartz clocks and wireless communication, he was also performing what he understood by standardized time, through the medium of sound recording: in order to reproduce his measured, persuasive voice, the gramophone disc needed to be played back at an exact, predefined rotation speed.