----- Original Message ----- From: "James R. Chiles" <[log in to unmask]> > Greetings: > By way of background, I�m finishing up a book for Random House that will be a social history of helicopters (the book is due out in October, and entitled "The God Machine"). It's my second book. I've been a writer in the fields of history and technology since 1979, mostly for Smithsonian, and Air&Space. <snip> > - Could typical machines be heard in a hall with 100 people? Might this indicate the use of a Higham reproducer, such as on the Graphophone model BM? > Although I have no idea if the technology was used (or usable) for the playback of cylinders, mechanical amplification of recordings DID exist in that early era. See under "auxetophone" (I assume data exists on the web...?!) for details. Also, remember that folks in that early era didn't enter adulthood having already been partially-deafened by high-powered audio devices...so the contemporary definition of "loud" was probably considerably below ours...?! Steven C. Barr (Remember that singers, like John McCormack, used to perform unamplified in quite large venues...)