Alexander Graham Bell would weep with joy if he knew that his audio-recording experiments in a Washington, D.C., lab could be retrieved 130 years later and played for a gathering of scientists, curators and journalists.

"To be or not to be..." a man's voice can be heard saying in a recording as it was played on a computer at the Library of Congress on Tuesday. The speaker from the 1880s delivers a portion of Hamlet's soliloquy as a green wax disc crackles to life from computer speakers.

The recordings of recitations of Shakespeare, numbers and other recognizable lines had been hidden and considered obsolete at the Smithsonian Institution for more than a century. Innovative technology has allowed them to be improved and played. This technology reads the sound from tiny grooves with light and a 3D camera.

The recordings offer a glimpse into a time when inventors were rushing to construct new discoveries and secure patents for the first telephones and phonographs. A second recording, on a copper negative disc, played reveals a trill of the tongue and someone narrating the numbers 1-2-3-4-5-6.

A third recording catches what may well be the first sound of disappointment as Bell's recording device appeared to run into a technical glitch. "Mary had a little lamb and its fleece was white as snow. Everywhere that Mary went - Oh no!" The recording reveals.

On Nov. 17, 1884, Bell's lab recorded the word "barometer" a number of times on a glass disc with a beam of light. That and about 200 other experimental records were given to the Smithsonian, apparently never to be played again. The recordings date back to the 1880's.

Most are wondering how the famed inventor would react if he could only see how his recordings amaze people in different ways even now.