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

Morton, Professor David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813527473 ISBN 13: 9780813527475

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1999

Synopsis

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.
 

About this title

Review:

When, in 1877, Thomas Edison and his associates invented the phonograph, he thought that it would be used primarily as a device for making home recordings, not as a tool for listening to recordings produced by others--a development, John Philip Sousa complained in 1906, certain to spell the end of "talent and taste."

In the more than a century that has passed, new technologies have come to make it ever easier for both the mass and individual production of recorded sound. David Morton traces the development of these audio-recording technologies, from wire spools to eight-track and DAT tapes, paying special attention to those that are available to the individual consumer. He notes that many of these technologies evolved to improve the quality of "highbrow" music despite the fact that most listeners used the resulting flood of audiophile goods to listen to anything but classical. He also follows the fortunes of voice-based recording devices such as the Dictaphone, which met with curious resistance (middle managers felt that the use of the machine was beneath them, while stenographers saw it as a threat to their specialization). Morton's sweeping survey ends just shy of the new era of MP3 and home-CD recording technologies, but fans of the new formats will doubtless be interested to see parallels with standards introduced in earlier years. --Gregory McNamee

From the Back Cover:

David Morton examines the process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of communications technology, using the history of sound recording as the focus. Recording culture in America emerged, Morton writes, not through the dictates of the technology alone but in complex ways that were contingent upon the actions of users. 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 these items was a hotly contested issue in the telephone industry at the turn of the century. As a result, its commercial development was stifled for decades. Morton illustrates his broad-based approach to sound technology with five case studies: the phonograph record, recording in the radio business, the dictation machine, the telephone answering machine, and home taping. Each of these case studies dispels the popular notion that recording is all about music, and they tell a much more complete story of sound recording technology and history.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0813527473
• ISBN 13: 9780813527475
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240