Launch a playlist of songs from your favorite music genre, and you'll eventually hear voices of the dead. But do you do the reasonable thing and sprint away, shrieking in a high falsetto about having just heard a g-g-g-ghost? Nope. Instead, you (like everyone else alive today) think that listening to the Departed is just some normal, boring thing you can do whenever you want. Before 1877, though, hearing the voices of the dead would have been a strictly supernatural, otherworldly, and supremely spine-tingling happening. The invention of the phonograph fundamentally changed the human condition and altered how human-generated sounds could travel through both space and time.

Thanks for listening! To learn more about this history project, check out findyourselfinhistory.com.