Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07086_Field_TCUM T651.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 965b | 16 lines

and the sigh of melancholia . . . the ring of whooping cough and
the hack of the consumptive. It will be an expert in insanity,
distinguishing between the laugh of the maniac and drivel of
the idiot. . . . It will accomplish this feat in the anteroom, while
the physician is busying himself with his last patient.” In
practice, however, the phonograph stayed with the voices of
the Signori Foghornis, the basso-tenores, robusto-profundos.

     Recording facilities did not presume to touch anything so
subtle as an orchestra until after the First War. Long before
this, one enthusiast looked to the record to rival the
photograph album and to hasten the happy day when “future
generations will be able to condense within the space of twenty
minutes a tone-picture of a single lifetime: five minutes of a
child’s prattle, five of the boy’s exultations, five of the man’s
reflections, and five from the feeble utterances of the