Jack London speaks in rare recording

Scientists using cutting-edge technology have brought Jack London back to life.

The voice of the famed author can be heard in a 2?-minute recording, the only recording of London known to exist. It was made almost a century ago and recently recovered from a wax recording cylinder.

?Just a rush letter, ?ere I sail for Hawaii,? London says in the scratchy recording. ?I merely want to tell you that everything concerning California prisons in the Star Rover is true.?

The letter, dated Dec. 2, 1915, the year before London died, was written to Max Ehrmann, an Indiana lawyer, philosopher and poet, and goes on to deplore the conditions of the state?s prisons and the execution of Jake Oppenheimer for assault and battery.

London dictated the letter into a Dictaphone, probably in his cottage den in Glen Ellen, now the Jack London State Historic Park.

The voice on the recording is slow and halt, the voice of a man in failing health who would die 11 months later.

The author?s voice was recovered from the wax cylinder by UC Berkeley?s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where physicists developed an optical scanning method to lift sound off of wax cylinders without physically touching them.

A full story will be available Saturday in The Press Democrat and at pressdemocrat.com.

? Bob Norberg