37 Misc Laff: Learning in Your Sleep
Just for fun, because I’ve been thinking about Andrew Ferguson’s work the last few days.
In his account of “Seven Story Dream,” Ferguson calls Lafferty “maddeningly imprecise” about George Handle’s audio equipment. He considers cassette systems, but I think the story gives us the necessary clue: Captain Keil threads the tape into the machine. An open-reel recorder is the likeliest reading.
Gadberry describes the setup:
George has caught the sickness of self-improvement. He learns at night. He has one of those sets with an earphone for under the pillow. He's put quite a bit of money into the recordings, money much better given to me. He has his own recorder, reads into it things he wishes to learn, then has them played back while he sleeps.
Handle buys recordings and makes his own. Sometimes Gadberry records lessons for him in exchange for loans. Near the end, the police recover the recording used to condition Handle’s confession:
Gadberry had located the tape for them, and Captain Keil was threading it into the machine.
An ordinary tape recorder could be adapted for this purpose. In “All About Sleep-Learning,” published in March 1960, Norman Eisenberg described combining a recorder, repeating tape, an automatic timer, and an under-pillow speaker. A length of magnetic tape could be spliced into a continuous loop and threaded past the playback head. The recorded lesson would repeat without rewinding; the timer controlled when the machine played.
The same article pictured the Electronic Educator, sold by the Sleep-Learning Research Association. This was a cartridge machine. The user recorded a lesson through a microphone onto an endless tape, then set the timer and listened through the pillow speaker. A January 1959 advertisement offered cartridges holding from one minute to two hours. Keil’s threading of the tape favors an open-reel machine.
The list “the tapes, the wires, the records” also makes sense as three recording media. The “wires” probably mean magnetic recording wire: Webster-Chicago made both wire and reel-to-reel recorders. The records would be phonograph discs. Lafferty wrote the story in 1961, though it did not appear until 1973. Philips introduced its compact cassette in August 1963.
Lafferty’s verdict on Handle’s self-improvement:
Whatever he learns while asleep, he is still a fool when awake.
For the story’s murder plot and its revision, see “Seven Story Dream”. Photographs: Norman Eisenberg, “All About Sleep-Learning,” Electronics Illustrated, March 1960, pp. 43–44; discussion continues on p. 111.
