#phonographs

[petermorwood]

TL;DR - the 1897 novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker wasn't just vampire horror, it was also a techno-thriller.

*****

Excuse me, did I just see diaries dismissed as too up-to-date and modern for the atmosphere of "Dracula"?

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) kept a famous diary from 1660-69 and would like to have a word with someone about that.

*****

"Dracula" was first published in 1897, and Bram Stoker had been researching it since about 1890 (he had Other Things To Do) so for my own amusement I went looking for the sort of Excessive Modern Technology that "The Spectator" criticised.

*****

Mina Harker (née Murray) can write in shorthand, which at that time was usually done in pencil. Stenography fountain pens were also popular (Jonathan Harker uses one) but faded away, while steno pencils are still sold to this day.

I have been working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I have been practising shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practising very hard. He and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad.

She uses two typewriters in the course of the book. The one in England mentioned above and in subsequent chapters is probably a desktop model, perhaps an Underwood or Remington suitable for a solicitor's office...

However, as played by Winona Ryder in the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula", she uses a smaller Oliver...

...whose design, deliberately or by accident, seems to echo Gary Oldman's Dracula hair.

Mina specifically describes the other machine like this:

"I feel so grateful to the man who invented the “Traveller’s” typewriter, and to Mr. Morris for getting this one for me."

This suggests it's a much smaller and lighter portable, probably with a carrying-case; maybe a Blickensderfer like one of these...

...whose ads emphasised its travel utility.

*****

Jonathan Harker keeps his journal in shorthand, and says so:

"Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last."

And he's using a pen not a pencil, because he also says so:

"When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy."

He can't have done that with a regular dip pen and inkwell, so he's carrying something with an internal ink supply and a cap against leaks - in other words, a fountain pen, only finalised in its modern form in 1884.

Whether Harker's had a proper steno nib for shorthand (or whether such nibs had even been invented yet) I don't know, but the pen itself would have been something like this Swan by Mabie Todd, which he'd have filled from a bottle using an eyedropper (modern Opus 88 pens use this filling system even now):

...or maybe a Wirt fountain pen (filled the same way) as praised by Mark Twain:

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Finally, Dr Seward's phonograph recorder was probably an Edison like this one...

...powered by a large lead-acid battery of the kind now found in cars. The one pictured has a small close-to-the-mouth "confidential" speaking horn and pneumatic (air-transmission) earphones, appropriate to a doctor using it for confidential patient information.

It made recordings on wax-covered cylinders which could be erased for re-use by shaving off the engraved wax.

"He (Dr Seward) stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax... I (Mina) took the cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward: “Let me write this all out now...” He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder..."

So "Dracula" is a novel whose plot development depends in several places on state-of-the-art contemporary tech.

That sounds like a "techno-thriller" to me... :->

The Spectator [19th century British magazine] thought that while Stoker made admirable use of “vampirology,” the story might have been better had it been set in an earlier period. “The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph, diaries, typewriters, and so on—hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes.”

On the subject that contemporaries thought that Dracula was too up-to-date for a vampire story.

[explore-blog]

When the American government set out to erase indigenous culture, one woman set out to save tribal music, traveling far and wide with her cylinder phonograph, trousers, and bow tie. This is her story.

[evydraws]

I couldn't stop making more and more of these small ink vignette illustrations for the art zine

[yarrowdraws]

gay mazovian theory

[the-runout-groove]

 via  Gridllr.com  —  making Likes beautiful again!

Une femme est assise par terre avec trois types différents de disques et de phonographes : 78 tours, 45 tours et 33 tours.

Photo de  Dick Wolters.

[jumy-m]

Jumy-M Old coffee shop in a small town / 店主の蘊蓄

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

of course we'd never get to read / hear it, but i love imagining Jack Seward, with the patience of a saint, teaching Van Helsing how to use his phonograph the same way a child teaches their impatient parent how to use a computer

[ohmystarrynight]

Each night at Tidmouth Sheds can be a chore to get everyone to agree on a record to be played before bed but tonight they settled on Roger Williams.

Thank god for that phonograph.

Drew this based off of a little blurb I wrote on my lunch break one day.. if you wanna read it I’ll link it here!

[see-arcane]

Harker has gone back, and is again collating his material. He says that by dinner-time they will be able to show a whole connected narrative. He thinks that in the meantime I should see Renfield, as hitherto he has been a sort of index to the coming and going of the Count. I hardly see this yet, but when I get at the dates I suppose I shall. What a good thing that Mrs. Harker put my cylinders into type! We never could have found the dates otherwise....

The Harkers came into Dr Seward's house, had him sit down, and proceeded to deep clean everything after Mina made him tea.

Jonathan: "Thank you for sharing your material, doctor, by evening we'll have completed the book. Meanwhile, go talk to Mr Renfield, he's connected to the case." Mina: "I have also sorted out all your lovely cylinders by time and date, since they were all unlabelled <3" Jack: "Can one marry a married couple"

Quincey and Art, knowing he knew Lucy barely a week before face-planting into his crush, recognizing the Signs: "...Jack. Is there something you want to talk about?"

Jack, doodling 'Dr. John Harker' in the margins of his paperwork: "No ❤️"

[retropopcult]

A factory line worker lifts a copy of Leon Rusk's "Air Mail Special on the Fly" from a stamper at the King Record Company pressing plant in Cincinnati, 1946.

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

[panspanther]

My dad was born in the 1930s. When he was very little, he became fascinated by someones phonograph, much like the one in this photo. His cousin then told him they make the records by flattening peoples heads & he was horrified.

When he told me this story I thought it was hilarious ! 

His darkly comical cousin....

Ed van der Elsken - Prinsenhofsteeg, Amsterdam, 1949.

[oeuvrinarydurian]

Good afternoon, delightful Tumblr people. It’s a gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous weekend in upstate New York in the Catskills. I’ve had Morse on the brain all weekend. Between writing that little vignette, and trying to explain to my mother why the show is so amazing, and our season seven project, I’ve been talking a lot and thinking a lot about his various life stages and iterations. It made me think of the very very very beginning. This scene never fails to move me. There’s so much emotion in it, and yet he isn’t even shot from the front. We barely see an entire profile. And of course, his eye roll…it says so much. it’s hard to believe this was supposed to be a one off, and he’d never played the character before. It’s just remarkable. The music is everything here too.

[edwinisms]

it’s kinda funny to me that charles seems like this classic brit punk rocker and looking at him makes you think of like. the clash. sex pistols. etc. but really according to his pins and the time period he died in he was probably most frequently listening to fucking. ska

[its-your-mind]

HEY. HEY.

HEY @re-dracula WHAT GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO HAVE JONATHAN ACTUALLY READING THAT PASSAGE OUT LOUD BEHIND SEWARD DESCRIBING THE SCENE, HUH? WITH THE TEARS IN HIS VOICE AND THE PAUSING AND THE SHORT LITTLE INHALES AND THE VOICE CRACKS? WAS IT TRULY NECESSARY??? I WAS ALREADY CRYING. I DIDN'T NEED THIS TOO. WHAT THE FUCK.

[detroitlib]

From our stacks: "People who have the time to listen often pick out records to play on the library's phonographs. Earphones make it possible for everyone to enjoy his favorite sounds without disturbing his neighbors." From What Happens at the Library by Arthur Shay. Chicago: Reilly & Lee Books, 1971.