@article{28a5938162094d42a23ceb7aa77e6c2c,
title = "For Science, Broadcasting, and Conservation: Wildlife Recording, the BBC, and the Consolidation of a British Library of Wildlife Sounds",
abstract = "After World War II, wildlife recordists and bioacousticians took advantage of advances in electronics and acoustics to collect, store, and analyze recordings of animal vocalizations, leading to the establishment and expansion of numerous wildlife sound archives worldwide. This article traces the technological, organizational, and social arrangements that transformed a private collection of recordings by wildlife recordist Ludwig Koch in the 1930s into one of the largest sound archives of its kind. It argues that this sound archive was consolidated through the collective efforts of a recording community—an unlikely alliance of academic biologists, commercial and amateur hobby recordists, and the public service broadcaster British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), each with a stake in the development, use, and popularization of wildlife recordings. Zooming in on the integration of British naturalists with the BBC, the article shows how, despite scientists' oft-noted suspicion of the media, these parties developed a mutually beneficial association.",
keywords = "1950s, economies, fidelity, natural-history, FIDELITY, ECONOMIES, NATURAL-HISTORY, 1950S",
author = "Joeri Bruyninckx",
note = "Funding Information: Joeri Bruyninckx is assistant professor in Maastricht University{\textquoteright}s Science and Technology Studies research program. He gratefully acknowledges funding for research on this article by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, and wishes to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback, and Cheryl Tipp and the late Jeffery Boswall for invaluable support. Funding Information: Aimed at exchanging recordings and discussing and practicing techniques, WSRS meetings solidified a community of wildlife recordists and standardized a set of best practices. The WSRS also concretized the largely informal connections that the BBC had built up with amateur wildlife recordists—BBC staff held roles in the WSRS organization, and wildlife recordists filled temporary positions at the BBC. It was amateur WSRS wildlife recordists and BBC staff (such as Natural History Unit producer Jeffery Boswall), moreover, who jointly mustered the institutional and material support to convince the British Institute of Recorded Sound, established in 1957 to preserve copies of all published records of music and speech, to include animal vocalizations in its collection.68 Earlier plans—such as those by British members of the International Committee for Bioacoustics mentioned at the start of this article—had failed to gain traction, mostly for a lack of funds and material. However, Boswall and the amateur ornithologist Patrick Sellar (not coincidentally, a multiple winner of the European Wildlife Recording Contest) managed to secure an equipment grant from the Royal Society. In 1969, their connections with the BBC helped to convince the broadcaster to duplicate its entire natural history collection— consisting of Koch{\textquoteright}s recordings, published gramophone discs, and various other acquisitions—into a new department of wildlife sounds at the British Institute of Recorded Sound.69 Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2019 by the Society for the History of Technology.",
year = "2019",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1353/tech.2019.0068",
language = "English",
volume = "60",
pages = "S188--S215",
journal = "Technology and Culture",
issn = "0040-165X",
publisher = "Johns Hopkins University Press",
number = "2",
}