The rousing words of Winston Churchill that spurred Britain on during the dark days of the Second World War are among national sound treasures a Bradford firm is preserving for the 21st Century.

The prestigious British Library has chosen Mitsui Advanced Media's specialist CD-Roms -- which have a 100-year guarantee - to record and store the audio data in the National Sound Archive, one of the largest in the world.

Churchill, whose inspirational speeches were broadcast by the BBC, was recently voted the greatest prime minister of the 20th Century by Radio 4 listeners.

The archive also includes the speeches of other key 20th Century figures such as David Lloyd George, Christabel Pankhurst, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald.

Mitsui's Gold CD-Roms will be used to store more than a million discs, tapes and videos at the new state-of-the art building at St Pancras in London.

The discs have been chosen because they give high-quality reproduction and carry the 100-year guarantee. The British Library has bought thousands of them to transfer its recordings on to the discs. Jovan Kudra, Mitsui's UK sales manager, based in Woolston House, Tetley Street, Bradford, said: "We are proud to be associated with such a prestigious national project.

"Our CD-Rs have long been used by industry professionals in a wide variety of sectors because they represent the absolute pinnacle of technology and performance."

Crispin Jewitt, director at the National Sound Archive, said: "The Mitsui Gold CD-R is a product that meets the National Sound Archive's requirements. We are also looking for long-term data integrity."

Jovan, who heads up Mitsui Advanced Media's European division in Bradford, has a long association with the city and chose to base the division here instead of London.

Set up in 1997, the firm is a global media company and has a CD-R production facility at Ensisheim in Alsace, France.

Mitsui Advanced Media is part of the influential Japanese petro-chemical group Mitsui Chemicals. The group has worldwide sales of billions of pounds and employs 12,000 people.

Churchill's most notable speech followed the Battle of Britain in August 1940, when he said: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

He also announced Britain would give 99-year leases on naval and air bases in Newfoundland and the West Indies, forming a relationship that would last 100 years.

He added: "No one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it keeps rolling along. Let it roll on in full flood, inexorable, irresistible, to broader lands and better days."

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