The 1945 voice mail sent to Coventry
Newly-weds Len and Peggy Tasker sent a voice mail from a holiday in Wales in 1945.
In 1945 newly-weds Len and Peggy Tasker sent a voice mail during a trip to Wales. It would have cost them sixpence to make the recording onto an aluminium disc, which was then sent through the post in an early example of "voice mail".
The recording was found by their daughter Pauline whilst clearing her mother’s things after her death in 2011. Pauline sent the recordings to be digitised and they have become part of an archive of thousands of discs from all over the world at Princeton University in the United States. Professor Thomas Levine from Princeton University has collected thousands of similar voice recordings, including others from Coventry, which, he says, "open up an entire landscape of cultural stories and details."
The voice recording machines were popular in the 1930s and 40s in department stores, railway stations, and amusement arcades, across Britain, explained the academic. "You walked up to it and stood in front of the microphone, put a coin in the slot and could record one to two minutes, and then you could get an envelope with which you could send it to your loved one," he explained.
The Taskers were a couple who helped change the lives and rights of disabled people in Britain. Former Coventry Labour MP Bob Ainsworth said that Len was "heavily involved" in campaigning and knew his father who was also part of the Enterprise Club. The club was co-founded by the couple in 1938.
