[78-L] The Talking Machine

[David Lewis]

Just saw, on Discovery, a short film produced by the Dept. of the Interior about the history of recording from the perspective of 1977, the centennial of recording playback.
 
About 98.8 percent of it was wrong - millions of people were listening to phonographs before 1880, in 1892, the flat disc record was introduced to replace cylinders, jukeboxes in the 1940s are recognized as a major technological development, as is high fidelity which was coined because they were able to make records "sound so good."
 
I'm glad Dr. B wasn't sitting next to me when I watched it; I doubt I could have heard it over his screaming, and believe me, the screaming would have been justified. However, it did make me marvel how long we've come since 1977 - the whole RIAA sponsored "centenary of recording" seems now like a disinformation campaign, and I really believe we are taking strides, not steps, in making things right. Uncle Dave Lewis uncledavelewis at hotmail.com
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