I know we’re all delighted to finally hear the voice of Alexander Graham Bell speaking into one of his experimental recording devices back in 1885. New modern technology has unlocked the secret of playback from old modern technology – a wonder that’s bound to be repeated 500 years from now when some determined tinkerer manages to liberate the contents of a bafflingly mysterious ABBA cassette.

Listen as Bell makes his declaration and you will notice one thing right away. People used to be a lot more comfortable about relishing the spaces between words.

I can only guess what was going through Bell’s mind when he made the above recording. He knew (or hoped) he was speaking to the ages. I would have frozen in the same way I do when I’m asked to come up with a password for a device or a website. What are the right words? Especially if they’re going to be remembered! He did OK with “Hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell”, although really, that’s a deer-in-the-headlights response.

It would have been cooler had he said:

“Hello people of the future! What’s the price of bananas?”

But at least we know what he sounded like – scratchy and distant, the way historic people are supposed to sound. Which is too bad, because I prefer the thought that A.G. Bell had voice like Barry White. At least that’s the voice I imagine when I mentally re-create Bell’s other famous, unrecorded utterance – issued 9 years earlier into a paper cup that is somehow connected to a Droid Razr MaXX HD.

“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”

Good thing it wasn’t recorded. In what we now know as the reedy tenor voice of Alexander Graham Bell, those words would sound like a lead-in to a demand for more apple juice at a nursing home sing-a-long. But if they had been issued in the smooth rumble of Barry White, those words would carry an entirely different meaning. At least Mr. Watson would straighten his tie before responding.

How do you feel about the sound of your own voice?