author
Leslie J. Newville
Best known for a concise Smithsonian study of Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory, this writer helped preserve an important chapter in the early history of sound recording. Later in life, he became Father Archimandrite Jerome in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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About the author
Leslie J. Newville is remembered for Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory, a paper published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1959 as part of the United States National Museum Bulletin. In that work, he wrote about Bell's experiments and the development of early sound-recording technology.
Contemporary library and public-domain records connect him with the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, where he was attached to the office of the curator of Science and Technology while writing that paper. His work remains of interest to readers exploring the history of invention, recorded sound, and Bell's lesser-known experiments beyond the telephone.
Later sources identify Leslie J. Newville as the man who later became Father Archimandrite Jerome, an Eastern Orthodox priest. That unusual path gives his brief body of published work an added human interest: it preserves the voice of a researcher whose life eventually moved from museum scholarship into religious vocation.