Bishop Museum hopes that the long-lost voice of King David Kalakaua — recorded on a wax cylinder as he lay on his deathbed 118 years ago — might be heard again through modern technology.

Kalakaua was a fan of the technology of the late 19th century and allowed a representative of the Edison Phonograph Company to record his voice as he lay dying in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 1891.

Kalakaua died four days later of Bright's disease of the kidneys and urmia — and the wax cylinder recording accompanied his body back to Honolulu. The cylinder has been stored at Bishop Museum since 1918 and long ago deteriorated to the point that Kalakaua's words can no longer be heard.

Attempts to retrieve Kalakaua's voice in 1989 failed. But new techniques developed at a lab in Berkeley, Calif., are raising the museum's hopes that laser technology can reproduce the sounds without actually touching and further deteriorating the wax cylinder — possibly allowing modern-day people to hear the voice of a Hawaiian king.

"We hope that possibly we will be able to once again hear King Kalakaua's voice speaking to us," DeSoto Brown, Bishop Museum's collections manager, said yesterday after a news conference announcing the project. "If so, that will be a very momentous and very important and very significant occasion for all of us.

"I know everybody will be very curious to hear King Kalakaua's voice and will surely be emotionally touched by what we will have achieved."

According to an Aug. 2, 1936, account in The Honolulu Advertiser, Kalakaua is recorded to say, "Aloha kaua — aloha kaua. Ke ho'i nei no paha makou ma keia hope aku i Hawai'i, i Honolulu. A ilaila oe e ha'i aku ai 'oe i ka lehulehu i kau mea e lohe ai ianei," which translates to:

"We greet each other — we greet each other. We will very likely hereafter go to Hawai'i, to Honolulu. There you will tell my people what you have heard me say here."

Perhaps in the fall, Brown hopes to hand-carry the wax cylinder to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by the University of California.

Berkeley lab physicists have applied the same technology used to study subatomic particles to re-create old recordings, according to the lab. The physicists have been able to model how a stylus would move up and down with each wiggle, bump and ridge in a recording, according to the lab.

All of it — the original 1891 recording and the 2009 technology to try to retrieve it — would have appealed to the king who brought hot and cold running water, flushing toilets, telephones and electricity to 'Iolani Palace.

"The king embraced technology," said Kippen de Alba Chu, executive director of 'Iolani Palace. "He was extremely curious about the world around him."

Hearing the long-lost voice of Kalakaua "would be chicken skin," Chu said. "Not just for Hawaiian culture; to be able to hear something from that long ago, it's fascinating."