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The late Paul Fussell (1924-2012) was a noted cultural and literary historian, who taught at Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote about such diverse subjects as Samuel Johnson, travel, and the American class system. His numerous books include Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, The Great War and Modern Memory (for which he won a National Book Award), and The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-45. Fussell was a veteran of World War II, fighting in Europe, where he was wounded and decorated with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

Last week we presented an allegory for retrieving audio, where we compared it to listening to a distant radio station. Of course, that is only half of what audio archivists do: the other half is to try to extend the reach of that signal into the future.

Picture yourself on a weekend retreat in a rented cabin in the woods, not far from your home. Although you love the isolation (no wi-fi, no TV), you would like to listen to your favorite radio show on Saturday afternoon¹. After looking around, you find a cheap clock radio in the bedroom and, at the appointed time, you fiddle with the (maddeningly small) tuner wheel, tune the (analog) dial, and hope that your favorite station's signal reaches your receiver's dinky little antenna.

Celebrate the retreat of winter with an extraordinary performance of The Waters of March. It's not just a song about Spring, it's a song about "the rebirth of the human spirit."

In 1951, jazz superstar Hazel Scott boldly spoke against Jim Crow. At least a decade before Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the former "Darling of Café Society" talked about her own hopes of a future with "all racial prejudice eliminated."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of what some call "the most important public health document of the 20th century": the Surgeon General's first Report on Smoking and Health.

We celebrate the end of the Cold War 25 years ago this year with Oscar Brand giving us a taste of 1950s civilian defense.

At the height of World War II, WNYC invited concert pianist Irene Jacobi and her husband, composer Frederick Jacobi, to perform some of his works for the station's fourth annual American Music Festival.

            Think back to last December. Or other Decembers. Maybe you received a holiday card sealed with a Christmas Seal from the American Lung Association. These stamps have been used as a fundraising element by the American Lung Association for over a hundred years. The tuberculosis epidemic of the ...

How is the digital world affecting the role of audiovisual archives? Last week the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) and New York University's Moving Image and Preservation Program (MIAP) presented a workshop on preserving locally-produced digital audiovisual content, which tried to provide some ...

“May heaven speed the day when the length and breadth of our United States shall be peopled with men and women, and boys and girls, solely by those of this type: strong bodied, true hearted, big souled patriots, athletes all for the land they love and the God they worship.”

Beginning in February 1957, a new influenza strain virus (known to virologists as H2N2) emerged in China.  Throughout April, May, and June, it spread steadily and rapidly across Asian and Middle Eastern countries.  There was one question in everyone’s minds: Would the new virus behave like the feared 1918 virus, which had caused tens of millions of deaths? Or would it behave like the ordinary influenza strains with which physicians were familiar? This November 1957 conference, organized by the New York Academy of Medicine and broadcast by WNYC, attempted to provide some answers.

Most of us are familiar with the sad story of the passenger pigeon: the North American bird whose immense numbers (believed to have been up to forty percent of the wild bird population) and intensely social habits (being unable to thrive or breed successfully in small groups) prevented its recovery ...

Imagine a newly constructed hospital with room for over 300 occupants, sitting idle and standing empty in a time of great need.

By the mid-1920s the Bronx Hospital, originally founded in 1911, had outgrown its original facility and began construction on a state-of-the art hospital at Fulton Avenue and 169th ...

The WQXR Archives celebrates Month of Mozart with highlights from Lloyd Moss's WQXR show This is My Music.

On April 17, 1937 WQXR invited Evan Roberts, the Managing Director of the WPA Federal Theatre Project Radio Division, to talk about the wonders of radio and its potential to be entertaining, educational, amusing, exciting and appealing to the intellectual as well as the average person.

Listen to a chilling account, created only days later, of President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.

The recently published National Recording Preservation Plan from the Library of Congress includes a recommendation to "encourage scientific and technical research leading to the development of new technologies to recover, reformat, and preserve audio recording media". Although at first sight this passage seems to refer to high-tech projects such as IRENE, there may be other, more modest ways to advance audio preservation technology. Here is an example.

If it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for you and your child - On the birthday of the city's first female Health Commissioner, we honor Dr. Leona Baumgartner and the New York City publicity campaign for the polio vaccine.

Frances Foley Gannon was described as “a brisk little woman with a smiling Irish face.” Her advice was two-fold: in her daily five minutes on air, she told mothers what foods were in season and how to use them to plan family meals.