The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv

Abstract

Shortly after the invention of the phonograph, Felix von Luschan, who later became Director of the Berliner Museum fiir Volkerkunde (Berlin Museum for Anthropology), suspected that this new type of equipment might someday be an important aid to anthropological research. However, he soon gave up the practical experiments which he had started in the mid-eighties, mostly because others convinced him that such a thing belonged in a public fair and not in the Museum. Thus Berlin lost the distinction of being the first to make scholarly recordings with a phonograph.