I’d like for fun today to follow-up on the theme of Oscar Wilde. We have the crisp expressive photograph, indeed photographs, by Napoleon Sarony taken in 1882. Eighteen years later, and just before his premature death at forty-five Wilde visited the 1900 Paris Exposition. Indeed, he stopped at the exhibit of Thomas Edison inventions and was asked to speak into the cylinder phonograph. The result is this rather scratchy and indistinct recording of the “Ballad of Reading Gaol.” There is, of course, the question whether Wilde was captured on any of the Edison film of the Expo. The answer is unclear, but provocative. A short and very inconclusive video has emerged.

We may, I think, reflect on three points. First, is how inferior video record was at its birth compared to its cousin still photography. Second, how rapidly both voice and video recoding has improved in just a hundred years. And third is how much we desire to take those captured moments of the past to suddenly evolve into moving images. We wish to give them life.