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.
Edison's 19th-Century Phonograph
12013-11-17T10:48:12-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca53392496Thomas A. Edison, US Patent 386974 A, for the phonographplain2013-12-13T13:43:00-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339
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12013-11-26T14:30:08-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339MediaJentery Sayers4All Media for Making the Perfect Record, American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U Pplain83872013-12-19T08:30:57-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339
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12013-10-11T13:34:29-07:00The Spirit of Sound12The notion of the aura of immaterial sound preceding the recording process is a cultural constructionplain2013-12-12T10:56:56-08:00Of course, the very idea of an immediate or immaterial sound somehow preceding the recording process was itself a cultural production imbricated with the popular emergence of audio technologies (including Edison's phonograph) during the 1870s and 1880s. If recording was invented, then so, too, was the spirit of sound. A speaking spool was at once aura and artifice. That said, Smith’s magnetic thread is curious neither as a vehicle for deconstructing the metaphysics of presence nor as an opportunity to interrogate copies as aberrations of their originals. As Jonathan Crary (2001, 4) asserts, critiques of presence are now well rehearsed, and perseverating on them simply ignores larger historical issues related to how the senses are enculturated, organized, and disciplined. Equally familiar to media studies is what Jonathan Sterne (2003, 286) calls the “ontological split between an original and copy,” which “only offer[s] a negative theory of sound’s reproducibility, where reproduction can reference only that which is not reproduced.” As goes the fallacious assumption, copies are always at a loss.
A more complex question, then, is how media and their metrics co-construct (rather than merely compensate for) human perception and memory, manufacturing faith in what eyes cannot assess and what ears cannot replay. And to push this inquiry a step further, scholars invested in the materiality of media must unravel how particular procedures of inscription, transfer, and playback facilitate particular forms of record making, including—to return for a moment to love “warranted 200 yards long”—how the physical specifications of magnetic storage shaped the processing of proof and fostered a faith in evidence.
