In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Dr Seward’s journals are famously ‘Kept in Phonograph’. Join me for a nerdy deep dive in which I, brandishing back-of-an-envelope math, calculate the cost of Seward's phonograph habit, & encounter a creature more uncanny than Dracula himself! 1/13
Seward keeps his notes on a phonograph. Edison invented the tech in 1877, but getting to market for home use took 20 years & various legal cases & bankruptcies. The spring phonograph appeared in 1895 (2 yrs before Dracula) and prices dropped from $150 in 1891 to $20 by 1899. 2/13
Edison phonographs recorded sound onto wax cylinders, each with a recording time of around 2 mins. Cylinders could be replayed & transcribed in the workplace by a typist (just as Mina does for Dr Seward). 3/13
Later designs could be ‘shaved’, and the recordings wiped for re-use. The wonderful short film ‘The Stenographer’s Friend’ from 1910 shows the sale, features and benefits of the phonograph for the workplace: loc.gov/item/00694308/ 4/13
Now, remembering that he can only record 2-mins per cylinder, then that’s a whopping 179 wax cylinders Seward has used to tell you about his vampire-hunting! And poor Mina has had to change them all out to listen and transcribe. 5/13
So how expensive was this habit? Edison cylinders retailed in the 1890s for 50c each or a little over 8 shillings per dozen in UK. Historical currency conversion is notoriously tricky, but 8s. is roughly equivalent to 1 day’s wages for a skilled Victorian tradesman in UK. 7/13
So Seward’s narration in Dracula –at 179 cylinders– would have cost him £492.30. Could he afford it? Lucy says that Seward is ‘twenty-nine, well off, of good birth, & has an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care.’ Seward is therefore likely a Resident Superintendent. 7/13
And Dracula is certainly a novel where technology helps save the day from the ancient horror of the vampire. As well as the phonograph, the typewriter & races across Europe by train, the novel also features cutting edge blood transfusions... 9/13
(So cutting edge in fact that although the procedure was in use in 1897, blood typing wouldn’t be discovered until 1900! Poor Lucy!) 10/13
But back to Edison…As well as phonographs for offices the tech was used for other products. The Concert Phonograph was launched in 1899 to play music, but it sold disappointingly. Maybe because it was cursed by its predecessor – a creature far more horrifying than Dracula…11/13
BEHOLD, weary scroller, the abject uncanny horror of ‘Edison’s Talking Doll’. Created in 1890, the doll had a tiny phonograph in her chest and, with a dead-eyed stare, recited nursery rhymes to freeze your marrow! 12/13
And so to end by dispelling the horror of the cursed doll, please enjoy my favourite ever Edison recording. It's 1889 & poet Robert Browning is at a party in London. He has had a tipple, & someone has just whipped out a phonograph…hip hip hooray! 13/13
Clarification: £6 in 1890s (15 dozen cylinders @ 8 shillings per dozen). £492.30 (approx) in 21stC money.
Missed a tweet: let's call it 4a: Seward's narration in Dracula runs to c.49,997 words (including a section in Ch.XXIV where we're told Van Helsing is narrating, but using the phonograph). Assuming a rate of 140 words per minute, that's 179 cylinders! 4a/13
