Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
5
When inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang a nursery rhyme into his phonoautogram in 1860, he had no plans to ever play back this recording. A precursor to the wax cylinder, the phonoautogram took inputs for the study of sound waves, but could not be turned into an output device. How amazing then, that 150 […]
a month ago

Improve your reading experience

Logged in users get linked directly to articles resulting in a better reading experience. Please login for free, it takes less than 1 minute.

More from Open Culture

The Dylatov Pass Incident: Has One of the Biggest Soviet Mysteries Been Solved?

Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to as “Dead Mountain.” That didn’t stop the Dyatlov Hiking Group, who set out on a sixteen-day skiing expedition across the northern Urals in late January of 1959. Experienced and intrepid, those ten young […]

18 hours ago 2 votes
Hear What Shakespeare Sounded Like in the Original Pronunciation

What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at London’s Globe Theatre, the 1994 reconstruction of Shakespeare’s […]

19 hours ago 2 votes
An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth

Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller again. Shooting to the top of the American charts, the novel that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s latest opus, the poetry of Rupi Kaur, the eleventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid […]

4 days ago 2 votes
Talking Heads Release the First Official Video for “Psycho Killer”: Watch It Online

On social media, the Talking Heads teased a major announcement on June 5th, leading fans to wonder if a reunion—41 years after their last tour—might finally be in the offing. As one fan put it, “If this is a tour announcement, I am going to freak out!” Alas, we didn’t quite get that. (Maybe next […]

4 days ago 2 votes
When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

It’s been said that the United States won the Cold War without firing a shot — a statement, as P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, that doubtless surprised veterans of Korea and Vietnam. But it wouldn’t be entirely incorrect to call the long stare-down between the U.S. and the Soviet Union a battle of ideas. Dwight […]

5 days ago 3 votes

More in creative

The Dylatov Pass Incident: Has One of the Biggest Soviet Mysteries Been Solved?

Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to as “Dead Mountain.” That didn’t stop the Dyatlov Hiking Group, who set out on a sixteen-day skiing expedition across the northern Urals in late January of 1959. Experienced and intrepid, those ten young […]

18 hours ago 2 votes
Ready to be…

Disappointed Delighted Amazed Offended Ripped off Grateful Loved Sometimes we get what we expect.

19 hours ago 2 votes
Hear What Shakespeare Sounded Like in the Original Pronunciation

What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at London’s Globe Theatre, the 1994 reconstruction of Shakespeare’s […]

19 hours ago 2 votes
Squeaky wheels

One strategy is to spend time finding the one wheel and address it. The better approach is to realize that if there’s one wheel that’s squeaking, it’s likely that all the wheels need lubrication.

2 days ago 2 votes
An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth

Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller again. Shooting to the top of the American charts, the novel that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s latest opus, the poetry of Rupi Kaur, the eleventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid […]

4 days ago 2 votes