We're Watching

 Several people were involved in the invention of the microphone. Initially it was developed by Alexander Graham Bell to make his telephone more useful. That was back in 1876. A year or so later, Emile Berliner sold his patent to a more refined version of the device to Bell. Another year passed and David Edward Hughes continued to improve on these initial designs, and coined the term "microphone." Thomas Edison, who didn't allow science to move too far without putting his stamp on a carbon button transmitter that became the standard for telephony. That was back in 1886. One hundred forty-years ago. 

Video cameras began their existence as movie cameras beginning shortly after those microphone inventions. A funny science joke might be made here about how this was a case of sound traveling faster than light, but I won't bother you with that now. Instead I will let you know that those first moving picture cameras were created to capture events as they happened in "real time." The Lumiere brothers produced the first black and white document of this kind in 1895, and clocked in at forty-six seconds. It showed workers leaving the brothers' factory. It was about the length of your standard TikTok video. 

In 1895, a seventeen second film of a man playing a violin was released with sound. The first music video, brought to you by William K.L. Dickson. Practical video tape recorders were still some decades off, with the creation of the Quadruplex, created by Ampex back in 1956. 

Seventy years ago. Sound and vision.

These days, we don't need tape or film anymore. We carry around more computing power in our pockets than was used to land astronauts on the moon. Things are being recorded all the time by everyone. And left on the vast storehouse of Al Gore's Internet. 

I just thought Donald Trump should know this, since he seems to believe that nobody can remember all his lies. That's what all those lights and cameras and microphones are for, you microcephalic jerk.