Book contents
- Technology and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Technology and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Timeline
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Chapter 8 Prostheses
- Chapter 9 Clocks
- Chapter 10 Compasses
- Chapter 11 Telescopes
- Chapter 12 Steam Engines
- Chapter 13 Wires
- Chapter 14 Cameras
- Chapter 15 Phonographs
- Chapter 16 Waves and Rays
- Chapter 17 The Bomb
- Chapter 18 Networks
- Part III Applications
- Index
Chapter 15 - Phonographs
from Part II - Developments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2023
- Technology and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Technology and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Timeline
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Chapter 8 Prostheses
- Chapter 9 Clocks
- Chapter 10 Compasses
- Chapter 11 Telescopes
- Chapter 12 Steam Engines
- Chapter 13 Wires
- Chapter 14 Cameras
- Chapter 15 Phonographs
- Chapter 16 Waves and Rays
- Chapter 17 The Bomb
- Chapter 18 Networks
- Part III Applications
- Index
Summary
This chapter considers the influence of emerging technologies of audio reproduction on literature. The phonograph, also called the gramophone, was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison; in the form of Edison cylinders and the flat discs introduced by Emile Berliner in the 1890s, sound recording was rapidly popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Camlot traces the twofold nature of the literary engagements with sound recording: On the one hand, they “suggested a direct, unmediated experience of events from the past”; on the other, in drawing attention to the material limitations of this new technology, which “worked to shape the real-time sonic events it recorded,” these engagements “revealed how indebted our sense of reality is to mediating factors.”
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- Technology and Literature , pp. 286 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023