contained all answers when one could discover a means of 
rendering them explicit. In his own case, his determination to 
give the phonograph, like the telephone, a direct practical use 
in business procedures led to his neglect of the instrument as a 
means of entertainment. Failure to foresee the phonograph as 
a means of entertainment was really a failure to grasp the 
meaning of the electric revolution in general. In our time we are 
reconciled to the phonograph as a toy and a solace; but press, 
radio, and TV have also acquired the same dimension of 
entertainment. Meantime, entertainment pushed to an extreme 
becomes the main form of business and politics. Electric media, 
because of their total “field” character, tend to eliminate the 
fragmented specialties of form and function that we have long 
accepted as the heritage of alphabet, printing, and 
mechanization. The brief and compressed history of the 
phonograph includes all phases of the written, the printed, and