Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic RecordingMain MenuAboutAbstract for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PIntroductionIntroduction to Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic RecordingNotesNotes for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PMediaMedia for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PAcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PTechnical InformationTechnical Information for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PReferencesReferences for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PJentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339This essay is part of the “New Media” special issue of American Literature (volume 85, number 4, December 2013). See http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230. Version 1 of the site is (c) 2013 by Duke University Press.
Reeve's Scientific Detective Fiction
12013-10-11T14:05:05-07:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca53392495Reeve demonstrates the applications of science in his detective fictionplain2013-12-19T18:59:06-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339One case study for these chimerical mystifications is the scientific detective fiction of Arthur B. Reeve, who first published in Cosmopolitan in December 1910, just ten years after Poulsen’s team publicly demonstrated the telegraphone in Paris and roughly three years after the device received mass attention in various magazines and journals. In a preface to The Silent Bullet (1910), Reeve would briefly explain what a scientific detective story entailed: “‘I am going to apply science to the detection of crime; the same sort of methods by which you trace out the presence of a chemical, or run an unknown germ to earth’” (3). Here, his famous protagonist and professor of criminal science, Craig Kennedy, is speaking to Walter Jameson, who is Kennedy’s sidekick, a newspaper reporter, and the story’s first-person narrator. If this scenario resonates with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, then there is certainly no coincidence. Reeve advertised his scientific detectives—such as Kennedy, Guy Garrick, and Constance Dunlap—as the American versions of Holmes, with one key difference: they rely far less on intuition. In a piece from 1919, “When the Criminal Takes to Science,” Reeve argues: “The ‘science’ in Conan Doyle is of the most elemental sort. Here is a grass blade—somebody has stepped on it. Here are some tobacco ashes, let’s work them up” (36). Meanwhile, Reeve is invested in a nascent form of forensic science, premised on tracing out the presence (the fingerprint) of bodies at the scene of the crime. Grounded empirically in the physical world, such evidence is—at least according to Reeve—irrefutable and objective.
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1media/background.png2013-10-30T16:19:36-07:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339AboutJentery Sayers34Abstract, Acknowledgements, and Technical Information for Making the Perfect Record, American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U Pplain83862013-12-19T09:54:37-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339
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12013-10-14T12:16:35-07:00The Silent Bullet8Publication History of The Silent Bulletplain2014-01-01T06:03:15-08:00The Silent Bullet was published as a book in 1912. The stories contained in it were first published in Cosmopolitan in 1910. In 1918, the book was republished as the first volume in the twelve-volume set titled, Craig Kennedy Stories.
(This note comments on the page titled, “Reeve’s Scientific Fiction,” as well as the attached image titled, “The Silent Bullet (1910).”)
12013-10-14T12:14:15-07:00Cosmopolitan in December 19107The Full Title of Reeve’s Storyplain2014-01-01T05:56:20-08:00The long title of the story is: “The Case of Helen Bond: The First of a Series of Unusual Detective Stories in Which the Professor of Criminal Science Adopts the New Method of Making the Criminal Discover Himself.” At the time, Cosmopolitan was known for fiction, often publishing serials such as Herbert George Wells’s War of the Worlds (1897).
