Abstract
The paper in vestigates the history of the Phonographic archives, which existed at the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1919 to 1957. The main method of the study was archival retrieval in the Masaryk Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Charles University Archives.
The paper draws attention to the national aspects of founda tion of the Phonographic Archives, and also to the financial conditions of its beginnings. International responses to its existence are also mentioned.
The connections among the archival resources show which aspects prevented fulfilment of the original aims, i.e. especially support of mother tongue teaching: dramaturgical fractionalism, a too wide thematic spectrum, and also wrong decisions based on overestimating personal contacts. The research shows that despite the effort of the Phonographic archives organisers and the huge costs, the archival audiorecordings remained rather unused and even today represent a wealthy source of period audio documents.