There were no voice recording machines around to capture John Wilkes Booth’s performances, but the C. Robert Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University has a recording of Edwin Booth performing Othello.

The scratchy recording is difficult to access at the Vincent Library site, but it’s been posted on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM82m1MJn_g

The Vincent Voice Library doesn’t include President Lincoln, but go to http://www.lib.msu.edu/cs/branches/vvl/presidents/index.html to listen to the voices of Presidents Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan.