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1. 1 2013-11-26T14:30:08-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339 Media Jentery Sayers 6 All Media for Making the Perfect Record, American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P plain 8387 2013-12-19T08:58:37-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339

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• 1 2013-10-11T13:09:45-07:00 Clarity, Even at a Distance 5 The high aesthetic quality of recordings enhances the clarity of communications and induces alienating effects plain 2013-12-12T11:30:24-08:00 Smith (1888, 116) hypothesized the results in aesthetic terms: “The cord . . . therefore contains a perfect record of the sound, far more delicate than the indentations in the tin-foil of the mechanical phonograph.” Not only would it be cheap and flexible; it could also “talk back” if rewound on a reel and redrawn through the helix at roughly the same speed of recording.13 Importantly, though, a recording could occur on the receiver’s end of the telephone, too. For example, Smith (1888, 116) writes: “our hypothetical young lady might, while listening to the impassioned pleadings of her chosen young man, be preparing the evidence for a future breach-of-promise suit.” Comments such as this one correspond with contradictions common to early representations of magnetic audio and the forms of listening it enabled: its noise-free character facilitates fidelity and deceit, immersion and distance, authenticity and disembodiment. By eliminating any audible mediation between a playback mechanism and its source medium, Smith’s inscriptionless process would enhance the clarity of communications and induce alienating effects.