Focuses on the innovations in the electronic production and transmission of sound in the 1920s and '30s and their explosive impact on the American mass media, especially the radio, the phonograph, and the cinema.
Front Cover.
Half Title Page.
Title Page.
Copyright Page.
Other Frontmatter.
Contents.
Acknowledgments.
Electric Sounds.
Introduction.
1: Technological Innovation and the Consolidation of Corporate Power.
2: "A Roaring Empire of Commerce".
3: Industrial Research, Patents, and Economic Closure Mechanisms.
4: Posing the Question: What Is Broadcasting?.
5: Grafting New Technology Onto Old Media: Phonograph and Cinema.
6: Putting Broadcasting on a Commercial Basis.
7: Multiple-Media Conglomerates and Cross-Media Links.
Conclusion.
8: Announcing Technological Change.
9: Public Performances of Technology.
10: Becoming "Sound-Wise": Consumer Pedagogy.
11: History Is Progress: Corporate Embodiment and the End of "Cut and Try".
12: Utopian Visions.
13: "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms".
14: From Performing the Recorded to Dissimulating the Machine.
15: Constructing the Phonograph's Domestic Identity.
16: Radio Enters the Home.
17: Movie Projectionists as Performers.
Conclusion.
18: Making Sound Media Meaningful: Commerce, Culture, Politics.
19: Commerce.
20: Culture.
21: Politics.
Conclusion.
22: Transcription Versus Signification: Competing Paradigms for Representing with Sound.
23: Sound Recording Practice Before the Electrical Era.
24: Acoustic Representation by Electrical Means.
25: Transcription Versus Signification in the Initial Vitaphone and Movietone Releases.
26: The Big Broadcast: Conflicting Models for the Relationship Between Technology and Representation.
27: Hollywood's Sound Practice Debates.
28: Signifying Fidelity: Hollywood's Changing Sound Practice and a Third Conceptual Paradigm.
