Overview

This is a study of machines for writing and reading at the end of the nineteenth century in America. Its aim is to explore writing and reading as culturally contingent experiences, and at the same time to broaden our view of the relationship between technology and textuality. At the book s heart is the proposition that technologies of inscription are materialized theories of language. Whether they failed (like Thomas Edison s electric pen) or succeeded (like typewriters), inscriptive technologies of the late nineteenth century were local, often competitive embodiments of the way people experienced writing and reading. Such a perspective cuts through the determinism of recent accounts while arguing for an interdisciplinary method for considering texts and textual production.

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9780804732703

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The range of Gitelman's evidence is impressive: deep research in the Edison archives, labels, patent documents, and literary sources. Historians will gain the most from the early chapters about the prehistory of phonography and the ways Americans perceived Edison's phonograph. -- The Historian

Author Information

Lisa Gitelman is Assistant Professor of English and Media Studies at the Catholic University of America.

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