Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07057_Field_TCUM T622.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

simple visual form, the Bells, father and son, were much
concerned to improve the state of the deaf. Visible speech
seemed to promise immediate means of release for the deaf
from their prison. Their struggle to perfect visible speech for the
deaf led the Bells to a study of the new electrical devices that
yielded the telephone. In much the same way, the Braille system
of dots-for-letters had begun as a means of reading military
messages in darkness, then was transferred to music, and
finally to reading for the blind. Letters had been codified as
dots for the fingers long before the Morse Code was developed
for telegraph use. And it is relevant to note how electric
technology, in like manner, had converged on the world of
speech and language, from the beginning of electricity. That
which had been the first great extension of our central nervous
system—the mass media of the spoken word—was soon
wedded to the second great extension of the central nervous