The BBC Sound Archive is a collection of audio recordings maintained by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and founded in 1936. Its recordings date back to the late 19th century and include many rare items including contemporary speeches by public and political figures, folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, British dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s and sound effects.

Foundation and early years

The BBC began broadcasting in 1922 but nothing was recorded until ten years later. At that time, only one recording machine, a Blattnerphone, was available, so few programmes were recorded.

By 1936 a number of gramophone record

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

ings had been made, and a temporary secretary, Marie Slocombe

Marie Slocombe

Marie Slocombe founded the BBC Sound Archive in 1936. Her keen interest in audio recordings and folk music have made her legacy important in the history of recorded sound.-Early life and career:...

 was given the task of sorting and disposing of them. However, noticing that some included speeches by George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

 and others, she decided that they should be kept. With the then Head of Recorded Programmes, Lynton Fletcher, she continued maintaining the BBC's collection, as well as making recordings herself in the field, encouraging others to do so, and acquired Ludwig Koch

Ludwig Karl Koch

Ludwig Karl Koch MBE was a broadcaster and sound recordist. An expert on recording animal sounds, he played a significant part in increasing the British public's appreciation of wildlife....

's collection of birdsong

Birdsong

Birdsong may refer to:* Bird vocalization, the sounds of birds* Birdsong , a 1993 novel by Sebastian Faulks* Birdsong, Arkansas, USA* Birdsong , a channel on the UK Digital One digital radio multiplex...

 recordings. By 1939 the collection had grown to 2,000 discs, including the voices of Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 and Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

. This had increased to 7,000 by 1944 and in 1941 Slocombe had become Recorded Programmes Librarian, a title she held until her retirement in 1972.

Coverage, access and development

The archive includes material dating back to the 19th century, including about 200 wax cylinders, one of which is an 1890 recording of Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...

. The collection has continued to grow over the years, and from 1998 was regularly drawn on for the BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 series The Archive Hour. In 2007 a limited sample was made available online as part of the BBC Archive Trial.

Resource constraints mean that the BBC has been selective in maintaining items in the archive. About 66% of radio output is now archived, about 350,000 hours in total. Automatically available are "live major news sequence programmes, live music sessions and concerts, drama, arts, features, events, light entertainment, science and education programmes", while "DJ shows with commercially recorded music, local radio and World Service output" are less likely to be retained.

Access to part of the archive is made available to researchers and the public through the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

.

Technological advances have increasingly improved the durability of early recordings, requiring their translation into digital formats, and enhancements such as noise reduction

Noise reduction

Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal.All recording devices, both analogue or digital, have traits which make them susceptible to noise...

.