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
