Aural Speed-Reading: Some Historical Bookmarks

Together they are writing a book entitled “Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed.” The authors would like to thank the Epistemes of Modern Acoustics group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Jason Camlot, Iben Have, Burç Kostem, and Shafeka Hashash. We write the history of aural speed-reading and time-stretching technology in two tracks, taking a cue from Annemarie Mol's The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice , with its “upper text” and “subtext” that invite readers “to invent a way of reading that works for them from scratch” (ix). In the spirit of the story that opens track 1, on the left, we decided to jimmy the format of the PMLA page. To differing degrees, each track provides context, describes events, raises questions, and applies analytic frames. Track 1 is our narration of a series of events recalled by Harvey Lauer to Mara Mills; the insights derive from his professional expertise and personal reading experiences. Track 2, on the right, does not benefit from the kind of omniscient sight known as hindsight; it reads alongside. Think of these tracks as an animated and mostly asynchronous conversation among people who care about instruments of sound and reading in distinct but similarly fanatical ways. For a cluster of historical recordings associated with this essay, tune in to the Sound and Science: Digital Histories database: acoustics.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sets/clusters/aural-speed-reading.