Bell's actual voice was recorded 130 years ago, and we can listen to it today

Another fact on the list of "interesting facts about Alexander Graham Bell," would you believe it, Alexander Graham Bell's voice on display at American History Museum.

The capital of the country was without a doubt the center of recording in the 1980s. Alexander Graham Bell relocated to Washington at that time to be nearer to the patent offices and the Smithsonian Institution, which assisted him in establishing his Volta Laboratory, after inventing the first usable telephone and inheriting hundreds of patent challenges in the process. He created a large number of the earliest sound recordings there.

In order to protect his patents well before the turn of the 20th century, Bell donated his inventions to the Smithsonian in sealed boxes. His descendants opened the boxes in 1937 to much fanfare. Bell's voice, recorded nearly 130 years ago, was broadcast for the first time a few years ago thanks to research done by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. They were able to do this by optically reading the grooves in Bell's recordings. The National Museum of American History has a new exhibit called "Hear My Voice: Alexander Graham Bell and the Origins of Recorded Sound" that includes that recording as well as others. The exhibit also includes tools, documents, and lab notes from Bell's Volta lab.