Feynman Lectures on Physics Tape Recordings Online for Free Listening

[codelieb]

Hello, everyone. I've made a number of announcements in this Forum about publications at The Feynman Lectures Website, but this is one I've long anticipated and am particularly happy to make: You can now listen to the original tape recordings of Feynman's famous Caltech Introductory Physics lectures, the basis of the book The Feynman Lectures on Physics, for free online at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

These are not the commercially available recordings, which are edited and include an "announcer" added by the publisher. The (117) recordings we are publishing are the full archival tapes, which we digitized from the original 1/4" reel-to-reel tapes in 2010.

Included are some interesting and informative "after-lecture" (and "before-lecture") discussions between Feynman and his students and/or colleagues, which few people have heard. Also included are three full lecture recordings that have never been published before: one recording that is missing from the commercial publication (corresponding to FLP Vol. I, Chapter 23) and two recordings of lectures on Quantum Mechanics that Feynman gave twice, once in 1963 and again in 1964 (one version of each has been published in edited form, and now we are publishing both in unedited form).

The lecture recordings are available for listening two ways: (1) in each Chapter of the online edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics an audio player (accessible through the navigation panel) has been added to play the recording(s) corresponding to that chapter, and (2) we publish a page in which the entire collection is available in one player with a very long playlist.

 

[jedishrfu]

This is really fantastic. You can gain so much from hearing his discussion live than from any edited piece of writing And having both available is really great.

Thanks to you and your team for all your hard work.

 

[codelieb]

You're welcome.

 

[jedishrfu]

I listened to the first talk. It was classic Feynman speaking with precision to make his point about the laws of physics being unlike the laws of geometry. I could hear some audio artifacts but you and your team really cleaned them up nicely.

One thought I had was a kind of slide show presentation tied to the recording so that when he mentions a certain diagram or chart, its there to view. I know Khan Academy uses format of the invisible teacher narrating with visuals related to what is being said. This would mean creating a video of the talk though.

 

[Feynman Bongo]

That's great, hats off to you for all your hard work.
I noticed the data rate is 48 kbps and there are much higher-quality audio files. Is it possible to get higher-quality audio maybe 320kbps or something? Also, could I use those audio files in some educational animated videos? If possible, who should I contact for the copyright license?
Thanks again for all you have done.