Originally shared by Edward Morbius
Apropos some of my recent posts on the news and my little Burkefest, Tom Bolitho pointed me to two archived audio recordings of HG Wells speaking on the matter of newspapers (if you think the current state of the news is, well, anything new, or that what eventually became the WWW was somehow not foreseable … tune in).
His comments on motorcars and consequences of invention is also wonderful.
My biggest shock was that he lived long enough to have made high-quality sound recordings (well, reasonably high quality — recording technology progressed much further in the next decade, and musical recordings from the 1950s are often considered superior to contemporary performances). I’d always somehow considered him a 19th century figure. Checking Wikipedia: born 21 September 1866, died 13 August 1946, aged 79. The recordings would be about 3 and 13 years prior to his death.
The BBC archive also looks to be a rather appealing place to explore at more length.