The World of Sound: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The World of Sound, credited to Sir William Henry Bragg, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The World of Sound by Sir William Henry Bragg (1862 - 1942), read in English by Ruth Golding. The World of Sound consists of six lectures delivered before a juvenile audience at the Royal Institution, Christmas 1919. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, except several years during the Second World War. The lectures present scientific subjects to a general audience, including young people, in an informative and entertaining manner. Michael Faraday initiated the first Christmas Lecture series in 1825, at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. This series of lectures is still interesting for its basic explanation of sound and hearing, and the history of the research into it. The last chapter, Sound in War, was of course written at a time when submarines - and aeroplanes - were in their infancy. Acoustic mirrors, used as early warning devices of approaching aircraft before the invention of radar, are described, but the reader suspects that at the time of writing, the new invention of ASDIC (the predecessor of Sonar) was still secret and so was not mentioned in this lecture. Summary by Ruth Golding & Wikipedia.

Recording facts

• Recording title: The World of Sound
• Author credits: Sir William Henry Bragg
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 6
• Listed recording duration: 4:33:51

Catalogue topics

• war
• education
• lectures
• science
• sound
• sound-wave
• vibration
• Royal Institution

Track guide

1. 01 - What is Sound? — 40:47
2. 02 - Sound in Music — 52:32
3. 03 - Sounds of the Town — 44:36
4. 04 - Sounds of the Country — 44:04
5. 05 - Sounds of the Sea — 44:00
6. 06 - Sound in War — 47:52

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.