Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic Recording Main Menu About Abstract for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P Introduction Introduction to Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic Recording Notes Notes for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P Media Media for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P Acknowledgments Acknowledgments for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P Technical Information Technical Information for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P References References for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P This 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.

Inspiration

249
Acknowledging this same sentiment twenty-seven years later, well-reputed science fiction publisher, Hugo Gernsback, introduced a Scientific Detective Monthly essay by Reeve with these acclamations: “Mr. Reeve, as the creator of Craig Kennedy, has perhaps done more for the dissemination of science through the medium of detective stories than any other man alive. Mr. Reeve has always kept within the strict bounds of science” (qtd. in Locke 30).47 Only a sentence later, Gernsback speculates that, because of Reeve’s work, police forces in the United States are integrating new technologies into their departments in order to solve crimes and increase efficiency (30). For Reeve, this tangible correlation between actuality and fiction was—at least for a writer of detective stories—how to differentiate a modern approach from its predecessors (e.g., fiction by Poe and Conan Doyle). From his perspective, scientific detective fiction did more than represent rationalist instrumentality. It had a populist, real world accessibility to it. It was more applicable to everyday life than Romantic analysis or even Holmesian deduction.48