Steve J. Wurtzler. Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media

In the 1920s, a series of striking innovations in sound reproductionmade the American parlor—and movie house—noisierplaces. Improvements in audio recording fostered a new demandfor the phonograph. Millions of Americans began buying theirfirst radios, even as the infant industry struggled to establishits economic base and define its cultural mission. By the late1920s, the motion picture industry was producing talking features. In Electric Sounds, Steve J. Wurtzler