Ronald Surgeson, personal assistant and protegee of G. Robert Vincent, a pioneer in the field of recorded sound and Head of the National Voice Library of the Michigan State University Libraries, talks about his relationship with Vincent as student and friend. John D. Shaw talks about his forty year career at the Voice Library and working for Dr. Maurice A. Crane, who became Head of the new G. Robert Vincent Voice Library in 1974 after Vincent's retirement. Vincent's famous recording of President Theodore Roosevelt, made in 1912, is played along with Vincent's description of the event, which marked the beginning of his life long passion for recording the human voice. Surgeson reflects on Vincent's long career and his roles in World War One, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and the birth of the United Nations. Surgeson also marvels at Vincent's ability to adapt to the great changes in recording technology throughout the Twentieth Century. Shaw explains how Vincent and his collection were brought to MSU in the early 1960s by Dr. Richard E. Chapin, then Director of the MSU Libraries and outlines the Voice Library's ongoing efforts to record, preserve and catalog the spoken word.
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