"Well, here goes something into nothing."

July 28, 2015 4:47 PM

In 2010, nearly fifty years after her death, and more than a hundred years after she became the first person to sing on the radio, the remains of Eugenia Farrar were finally laid to rest. Fittingly, her porcelain memorial urn has her own recording of that first song -- "I Love You Truly" -- etched into its surface using a lathe (similar to the process used for early cylinder recordings). Laura LaPlaca's thoughtful essay -- musing on the materiality of this final remaining artifact of a historic broadcast that otherwise left little trace -- describes this final resting place as Farrar's "ashen physical remains protected by the materialized solid form of her voice."

Fifty years after that historic broadcast by Farrar and radio pioneer Lee de Forest, she joined him on a 1957 broadcast of "This Is Your Life."

(“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.")

posted by orthicon halo (2 comments total)

Don't miss the "This Is Your Life" link. She's charming, as is Mr. de Forest and Naval Engineer Wycoff.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:02 PM on July 28, 2015

What a tremendously interesting story. The cemetery where she is buried also sounds like a great place to visit, with so many radio pioneers buried there. And to have a non-related someone's ashes randomly floating around your family for almost 50 years? Thanks for digging this up (uh, so to speak), orthicon halo.
posted by librarylis at 12:27 PM on July 29, 2015