“Pack up your seven plums and don’t forget to take your sewing… and the jam… and come here soon.”
Composer Arnold Schönberg sent this request for a visit – including a longing for jam from Old Vienna – to his mother from the USA in 1935. However, it was not sent as a letter, but as a voice message. You can also hear Schönberg’s wife Gertrud, who actively supports the desire for “Jam” and the three-year-old daughter Nuria, who is looking forward to the “grandmother”.
In fact, such voice messages weren’t uncommon at the time—in fact, they were quite en vogue. So more than a hundred years ago, before they experienced a new hype through services like Whatsapp.
The first phonograph
Inventor Thomas Edison paved the way for this in 1877. At that time he introduced a phonograph, an audio recorder that could be used to record and play back sound. An invention that was also used in many private households. A passionate hobby phonographer was the peace activist Bertha von Suttner (see right).
The speaking letters were first sent via wax rollers, later on discs, sound wire, tapes and finally cassettes, says historian Eva Hallama. Together with restorer Katrin Abromeit, she heads the research project “Sonic Memories” (Sonime), which is being carried out in cooperation between the Austrian Media Center and the Phonogram Archive in Vienna.
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