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Off the Record: The Technology & Culture of Sound Recording in America
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Off the Record: The Technology & Culture of Sound Recording in America Paperback - 1999

by David Morton


From the publisher

David L. Morton examines the process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of communications technology, using the history of sound recording as the focus. Off the Record demonstrates how the history of both the hardware and the ways people used it is essential for understanding why any particular technology became a fixture in everyday life or faded into obscurity. Morton's approach to the topic differs from most previous works, which have examined the technology's social impact, but not the reasons for its existence. Recording culture in America emerged, Morton writes, not through the dictates of the technology itself but in complex ways that were contingent upon the actions of users.

Each of the case studies in the book emphasizes one of five aspects of the culture of recording and its relationship to new technology, at the same time telling the story of sound recording history. One of the misconceptions that Morton hopes to dispel is that the only important category of sound recording involves music. Unique in his broad-based approach to sound technology, the five case studies that Morton investigates are:
  • The phonograph record
  • Recording in the radio business
  • The dictation machine
  • The telephone answering machine, and
  • Home taping
Readers will learn, for example, that the equipment to create the telephone answering machine has been around for a century, but that the ownership and use of answering machines was a hotly contested issue in the telephone industry at the turn of the century, hence stifling its commercial development for decades. Morton also offers fascinating insight into early radio: that, while The Amos and Andy Show initially was pre-recorded and not broadcast live, the commercial stations saw this easily distributed program as an economic threat: many non-network stations could buy the disks for easy, relatively inexpensive replaying. As a result, Amos and Andy was sold to Mutual and went live shortly afterward.

First line

John Philip Sousa, in his 1906 essay on the "menace of mechanical music," predicted a dire outcome for American culture, a deterioration of talent and taste caused by the diffusion of music on records.

Details

  • Title Off the Record: The Technology & Culture of Sound Recording in America
  • Author David Morton
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 240
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Rutgers University Press, New Jersey
  • Date 1999-12-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Illustrated
  • ISBN 9780813527475 / 0813527473
  • Weight 0.86 lbs (0.39 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.05 x 6.07 x 0.7 in (22.99 x 15.42 x 1.78 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Sound recording industry - United States -, Sound - Recording and reproducing - United
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 99027914
  • Dewey Decimal Code 621.389

Media reviews

Citations

  • Scitech Book News, 06/01/2000, Page 140

About the author

DAVID MORTON is research historian for the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University.
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Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America

Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America

by Morton, David

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