Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07075_Field_TCUM T640.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 907b | 16 lines

here with the intention of reaching here in an experiment, say,
to increase the speed of the Atlantic cable; but when I’ve
arrived part way in my straight line, I meet with a phenomenon,
and it leads me off in another direction and develops into a
phonograph.” Nothing could more dramatically express the
turning point from mechanical explosion to electrical implosion.
Edison’s own career embodied that very change in our world,
and he himself was often caught in the confusion between the
two forms of procedure.

     It was just at the end of the nineteenth century that the
psychologist Lipps revealed by a kind of electric audiograph
that the single clang of a bell was an intensive manifold
containing all possible symphonies. It was somewhat on the
same lines that Edison approached his problems. Practical
experience had taught him that embryonically all problems