Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

They found a box of wax cylinders in Thomas Edison's office that were made during an extended trip to the Paris World's Fair in 1889. Edison sent an engineer to keep the recorder working, and after the fair was over, the engineer took a vacation to Germany and traveled around a bit making recordings which included Bismark.

The second link is the site for the device that read the wax cylinder. Apparently it can read a variety of cylinder sizes and playback speeds, which I think is pretty awesome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings.html?_r=4

http://www.archeophone.org/warcheophone_specifications.php

This is interesting. They actually put people in full plate on a treadmill to measure the metabolic load. Their conclusion is that it might have been a decisive factor at Agincourt and perhaps other battles.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14204717