This seems to suggest that elocution is not a very worthwhile art, since Bell’s voice, pronunciation, etc., are all quite unimpressive. (Was that your point?)
After listening to that video, my best guess is that it’s purpose was to record him saying a bunch of numbers, with a pronunciation optimized to make it so that you can understand it when played back, and as such the pronunciation feels highly unnatural to me and probably doesn’t reflect his normal elocution skills.
I don’t really have a point beyond “this is a piece of evidence, I’m not entirely sure how to evaluate it because it’s such a distorted fragment of the past recorded in a very particular context”. This post was after all a request for evidence, so I don’t mind providing something interesting without having my own spin to put on it.
This seems to suggest that elocution is not a very worthwhile art, since Bell’s voice, pronunciation, etc., are all quite unimpressive. (Was that your point?)
After listening to that video, my best guess is that it’s purpose was to record him saying a bunch of numbers, with a pronunciation optimized to make it so that you can understand it when played back, and as such the pronunciation feels highly unnatural to me and probably doesn’t reflect his normal elocution skills.
This would be my counterargument to Said Achmiz’s comment if I were inclined to make one.
I don’t really have a point beyond “this is a piece of evidence, I’m not entirely sure how to evaluate it because it’s such a distorted fragment of the past recorded in a very particular context”. This post was after all a request for evidence, so I don’t mind providing something interesting without having my own spin to put on it.