Incredible WW1 recording reveals moment guns fell SILENT after four years of war in 1918
A WORLD War One recording captures the moment the guns fell silent on the battlefield in 1918 after the Armistice.
WWI: Moment guns fell silent at the end of First World War
The newly released audio was recorded on the American front near the River Moselle in France a minute before the Armistice at 11am on November 11, 1918. The clip reveals how gunfire and shelling on the western front continued until the very final moments of the Great War. Artillery was still active at 10.58am on the final day of the four-year conflict, which killed up to 19 million people.
The Imperial War Museum released the “graphic record” in the week leading up the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Allies used the sound raging technique to identify enemy artillery positions.
Photographic film recorded when gun fire was picked up by six different microphones whose signals were recorded simultaneously.
The sound was recorded onto photographic paper when it was picked up by the microphones.
This document gives us a great insight into how intense and chaotic the barrage of gunfire must have been for those fighting on the western front
Experts would then use the recordings to identify where German guns were placed.
The sound ranging technique was crucial to British progress from 1917 until the end of the war a year later.
It would be used to locate and destroy enemy artillery before infantry troops went into battle.
Sound designers Coda to Coda teamed up with the Imperial War Museum to recreate the sounds recorded on the documents.
Coda to Coda director Will Worsley said: “This document from IWM’s collections gives us a great insight into how intense and chaotic the barrage of gunfire must have been for those fighting on the western front.
“We hope that our audio interpretation of sound ranging techniques through bone conduction enables visitors to project themselves into that moment in history and gain an understanding of what the end of the First World War may have sounded like.”
Two British scientists developed the recording technique with one - William Lawrence Bragg - hatching the idea while sitting on the toilet.
Every time a gun fired he was moved from the toilet seat when the weapon’s pressure wave hit the toilet’s pipe.
A fellow boffin, William Sansome Tucker, then realised that puffs of air causing him to shiver were crated by pressure waves from guns.
He designed a microphone that could identify these puffs of air on a piece of wire.
The sound of a gun firing would create a large blip on the film, making it stand out from other sounds.
The Imperial War Museum’s Making a New World exhibition will continue until March 31, 2019.