Historical Comments About Sound
Various

Francis Bacon 1627, New Atlantis
We have also sound houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were, tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sound in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances. (Bacon, 1627)

Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac 1649, Histoire Comique en Voyage dans la Lune
As I opened the Box, I found within somewhat of Metal almost like to our Clocks, full of I know not what little Springs and imperceptible Engines. It was a Book indeed, but a strange and wonderful Book, that had neither Leaves nor Letters. In fine, it was a Book made wholly for the Ears and not the Eyes. So that when any body has a mind to read in it, he winds up the Machine with a great many little Springs: and he turns the hand to the Chapter he desires to hear, and straight, as from the Mouth of Man, or a Musical Instrument, proceed all the distinct and different Sounds, which the Lunar Grandees make use of for expressing their Thoughts, instead of Language.

When I since reflected on the Miraculous Invention, I no longer wondered that the Young-Men of that Country were more knowing at Sixteen or Eighteen years Old, than the Gray-Beards of our Climate; for knowing how to Read as soon as speak, they are never without Lectures, in their Chambers, their Walks, the Town, or Travelling; they may have in their Pockets, or at their Girdles, Thirty of these Books, where they need but wind up a Spring to hear a whole chapter, and so, more, if they have a mind to hear the Book quite through; living and dead who entertain you with Living Voices. This Present employed me about an hour, and then hanging them to my Ears, like a pair of Pendants, I went to walking. (Read, 1976)

Edward Bellamy,Looking Backward: 2000-1887
There is nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you seem to imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest and exceedingly clever human hands. We have simply carried the idea of labor saving by cooperation into our musical service as into everything thing else. There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief part, each day's program lasts through the twenty-four hours. There are on that card for today, as you will see if you observe closely, distinct programs of four of these concerts, each of a different order of music from the others, being now simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which will connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered. (Clayburn, 1997)