The dream of recording the human voice entered the adjacent possible only after two key developments: one from physics, the other from anatomy. From about 1500 on, scientists began to work under the assumption that sound traveled through the air in invisible waves. (Shortly thereafter they discovered that these waves traveled four times faster through water, a curious fact that wouldn’t turn out to be useful for another four centuries.) By the time of the Enlightenment, detailed books of anatomy had mapped the basic structure of the human ear, documenting the way sound waves were funneled
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