TELEPHONE CONTEST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22193, 21 August 1935, Page 20

TELEPHONE CONTEST

GIRL'S " GOLDEN VOICE" LONDON OPERATOR'S SUCCESS SEVERE TRIAL IMPOSED Miss E. W. Cain, of the Victoria Exchange, London, was recently declared the winner of the Golden Voice competition run by the British Post Office to discover the most suitable voice for informing telephone subscribers of the time by means of " talking clocks." Nine girl operators selected from over 15,000 in exchanges throughout the country met for the last stage oi a contest which made telephonists "voice conscious" and aroused great interest and local rivalry. A panel of judges consisted of Mr. John Masefield (the Poet Laureate), Dame Sybil Thorndike, Lord Iliffe, Mr. S. Hibherd (chief announcer of the 8.8.C.), and Mrs. E. D. Atkinson, of Burn'ey-in-Wharfdale, who had been chosen by ballot as the ' perfect telephone subscriber.'" They did not see the competitors until their task was completed, but, seated together at a table, listened through gilded handmicrophones to test passages read by the operators. Passage Irom Milton The final trial was a severe one for the girls. They learned from their instructions that, the judges demanded that " the voice must be beautiful in quality. It must have a fullness of tone, with nothing niggardly about it and nothing rasping in the breathing or in the note. The speech must be impersonal. It should be as detached as the voice of a bird, without trace of over-emphasis or personal advertisement. It should be without any trace whatever of the theatrical." Other stipulations were that the speech must be clear and free accent, urban or provincial. The candidates balloted for the order in which they were to go to the microphone, and then'in turn they repeated the test passages put before them. First, they were required to read some 30 lines of a passage from Milton's " L'Allegro," beginning:— Mirth, admit me of thy crew. To live with her, and live with thee. In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight; And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies; . . This was followed by a short extract from R. L. Stevenson's " Treasure Island " and a strictly practical test made up of such sentences as " At the third stroke it will be one twenty-four and fifty seconds." First and Second Places At the end of the trial the competitors met the judges and Mr. Masefield announced the result. Miss Cain, who was placed first, has been a telephone operator for five years. After being congratulated she admitted that 26 was a good guess concerning her age, and said that she had taken part in amateur theatricals and studied elocution. Mr. Masefield remarked that Miss Cain had a golden voice. " It is beautiful," he said. Second place in the competition was taken by Miss I. H. Dunn, of the Trunk Exchange, London. Major G. C. Tryon, the Post-master-General, presented a prize of 10 guineas to Miss Cain and one of five guineas to Miss Dunn.