June 29, 1888: One of the earliest sound recordings - of Handel’s Israel in Egypt - is recorded.
Though Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph recordings (which date back to 1860) have since been discovered, George Gouraud’s recording of Handel’s oratorio is still one of the oldest in existence. Because he recorded it a long-ish distance away from the chorus performing, the quality is worse than it might have been, and old age has degraded it even further. The result is a sort of eerie track that sounds mostly like music but dissolves into static by the end. Still, an interesting bit of history. When Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London at a press conference later that year, this was one of his demonstration pieces.