Jorge Dinoia, the founder of the Word Museum, receives his visitors in his house in Florida, in the Province of Buenos Aires.

It’s not an Official Museum. However, it contains an important collection of records.

Phonograph of 1887

One of these is PIETRO MASCAGNI’s voice presenting the first version of his opera “Cavalleria Rusticana” in a 30 centimetres disc record.

Another very important record is the one of MIGUEL de UNAMUNO stating that: “In the beginning it was the verb… and maybe it will be the verb in the end”; which is very appropriate in relation to what Dinoia states about the value of preserving the world’s voices.

More than 100 years have gone by since Emil Berliner patented the plain disc in 1887. Testimonies of this can be found in the Museum.

Visitors to the Word Museum can run across records in 45 RPM discs; wire recordings with their related reproducers; a phonograph invented by Edison in 1877, which recorded using cylinders, of which a record of Angel Villoldo is kept.

Gramophone of 1903

A completely original Victor gramophone of 1903, with an American oak horn; as well as a victrola of 1925, are also exhibited in the Museum

The Museum also exhibits very important documents, such as an announcement on Radio Magazine of September 1931 stating: “Our cinema transmissions on television!” adding a subtitle: “A half tone movie was transmitted for the first time in South America”.

The announcement adds that the transmissions had been received 2,400 kilometres away. The wave used was the one of L.R.4 Splendid Radio; and a telegram from Curuzu Cuatia, in the province of Corrientes, confirms an unusual distance for the reception of video images from Buenos Aires on the 11th of August of 1931.

One more piece of information, “a radio lover from the city of La Plata, Mr. Jeronimo Chescota, re-transmitted to Radio Magazine a communication received from the Territory of Magallanes, in Chile, where they congratulated Buenos Aires for the clarity of the images received.”

We should try to imagine today, when we find ourselves amazed by the new television technologies, what it could have been to receive the image the famous Carlos Gardel in Curuzu Cuatia.

In relation to Carlos Gardel, the Word Museum preserves a copy of the birth certificate of a Charles Gardes, born in Toulouse, illegitimate child of Berta Gardes. This birth certificate eliminates any other theories in relation to Gardel’s place of birth.