I just attended the American Sociological Association Meetings in San Francisco, and while there my friend Marion Fourcade told me about a remarkable little piece of sociological history. It’s an audio recording of Émile Durkheim delivering a talk.

Emile Durkheim recorded in 1911 in Bologna.

I had no idea such a thing existed. The recording is about two and a half minutes long. It’s a fragment of a piece titled Jugements de valeur et jugements de réalité, which you can read in French here. It was recorded in 1911 at a meeting in Bologna, which I think is one of only quite few times that Durkheim left France in order to attend a conference. Here it is. (There’s a short bit of dead silence at the beginning.)

(If you don’t see the player, download the clip directly).

The original is held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Here’s the catalog entry for the recording. I think what’s needed to top this is maybe some decent video footage of Marx’s speech on the anniversary of the people’s paper.