Download or read book The Edison Retail Sales Laboratory written by William Maxwell and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Wizard of Menlo Park written by Randall E. Stross and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-03-25 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Edison’s greatest invention? His own fame. At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels. But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most globally famous of all Americans, Thomas Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions that have popularly been attributed to him—and how many of them resulted from both the inspiration and the perspiration of his rivals and even his own assistants? This bold reassessment of Edison’s life and career answers this and many other important questions while telling the story of how he came upon his most famous inventions as a young man and spent the remainder of his long life trying to conjure similar success. We also meet his partners and competitors, presidents and entertainers, his close friend Henry Ford, the wives who competed with his work for his attention, and the children who tried to thrive in his shadow—all providing a fuller view of Edison’s life and times than has ever been offered before. The Wizard of Menlo Park reveals not only how Edison worked, but how he managed his own fame, becoming the first great celebrity of the modern age.

Download or read book The Soundscape of Modernity written by Emily Thompson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America. In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era. Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.

Download or read book User Unfriendly written by Joseph J. Corn and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We've all been there. Seduced by the sleek designs and smart capabilities of the newest gadgets, we end up stumped by their complicated set-up instructions and exasperating error messages. In this fascinating history, Joseph J. Corn maps two centuries of consumer frustration and struggle with personal technologies. Aggravation with the new machines people adopt and live with is as old as the industrial revolution. Clocks, sewing machines, cameras, lawn mowers, bicycles, electric lights, cars, and computers: all can empower and exhilarate, but they can also exact a form of servitude. Adopters puzzle over which type and model to buy and then how to operate the device, diagnose its troubles, and meet its insatiable appetite for accessories, replacement parts, or upgrades. It intrigues Corn that we put up with the frustrations our technology thrusts upon us, battling with the unfamiliar and climbing the steep learning curves. It is this ongoing struggle, more than the uses to which we ultimately put our machines, that animates this quizzical study. Having extensively researched owner's manuals, computer user-group newsletters, and how-to literature, Corn brings a fresh, consumer-oriented approach to the history of technology. User Unfriendly will be valuable to historians of technology, students of American culture, and anyone interested in our modern dependency on machines and gadgets.

Download or read book Perfecting Sound Forever written by Greg Milner and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented. Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their "compact disc" is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating "loudness war" to get its fix. From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.

Download or read book Catalogue of Copyright Entries written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 1536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catalogue of Copyright Entries written by and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Thomas Edison Chemist written by Byron Michael Vanderbilt and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles Entered in the Office of the Register of Copyrights Library of Congress at Washington D C written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 1548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Musical Quarterly written by Oscar George Sonneck and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Advertising and Selling written by and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 1644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 1612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Antique Phonograph News written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Electrical Installation Record written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 1054 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Advertising Selling written by and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 1590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Music Trades written by and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 1382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Editor Publisher written by and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 1190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Directory of interactive products and services included as section 2 of a regular issue annually, 1995-