Off the Record : The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America
Paperback
Rutgers Univ Press; ISBN: 0813527473 ;
Dimensions (in inches): 0.70 x 9.05 x 6.07
Other Editions: Hardcover
When, in 1877, Thomas Edison and his associates invented the phonograph, he thought
that it
would be used primarily as a device for making home recordings, not as a tool for
listening to
recordings produced by others--a development, John Philip Sousa complained in 1906,
certain to spell the end of "talent and taste."
In the more than a century that has passed, new technologies have come to make it ever
easier for
both the mass and individual production of recorded sound. David Morton traces the
development
of these audio-recording technologies, from wire spools to eight-track and DAT tapes,
paying
special attention to those that are available to the individual consumer. He notes that
many of these
technologies evolved to improve the quality of "highbrow" music despite the fact
that most listeners
used the resulting flood of audiophile goods to listen to anything but classical. He also
follows the
fortunes of voice-based recording devices such as the Dictaphone, which met with curious
resistance (middle managers felt that the use of the machine was beneath them, while
stenographers
saw it as a threat to their specialization). Morton's sweeping survey ends just shy of the
new era of
MP3 and home-CD recording technologies, but fans of the new formats will doubtless be
interested
to see parallels with standards introduced in earlier years. --Gregory McNamee
(Amazon.com)