Foyles Literary Luncheon - The BBC Recorded Programmes Department

In this recording of the proceedings at a Foyles Literary Luncheon, guest of honour Lynton Fletcher, who ran the BBC Recorded Programmes Department, exhibits some of the items preserved for posterity. After an introduction from Chairman Philip Guedalla, Fletcher reveals some of the highlights of the burgeoning BBC collection, including recordings of former Prime Minister William Gladstone, George Bernard Shaw and a talking budgie called Beauty Metcalf. As a finale, Fletcher plays his own dramatised futuristic vision of a sound archive in 2041.

This speech was recorded for the BBC Sound Archive's own departmental history and has never before been broadcast in full. Lynton Fletcher was the inventor of the parallel tracking arm, a device that allowed a gramophone needle to be accurately suspended over a particular word or phrase on a recorded disc. The use of this tool was an essential technique in the days before magnetic recording tape existed and banks of four or five gramophones were often used to 'jump cut' between discs when playing-in effects, music or pre-recorded inserts to live broadcasts.

Originally broadcast 30 September 1941.