As far as I can trace it, the idea of using electrical if not electronic equipment to record the voices of the dead is at least 99 years old, Thomas Edison having said in articles in The American Magazine and Scientific American in 1920 that he was trying to make a machine to do that. I'm sure the idea probably occurred to someone before then, I just can't trace it. I also can't trace the idea in theatrical productions, movies, etc. but I'm sure that the idea must have appealed to early writers of radio drama, probably before the talkies or soon after. It's hardly an idea that had to wait till they invented sci-fi movies to have exploited it. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't feature in early experiments with cylinder recording machines. The idea that it's dangerous to try to communicate with the dead goes back a lot longer than that, the essential dramatic idea in the play. Um, The Witch of Endor? Ring a bell?
What a stupid claim, but, then, stupid is so prevalent online. If only Edison had worked on a machine to shut up the stupid. Or at least to block them. I wouldn't have to do it manually stupid claim after stupid claim. You'd never speak, again.
Update: Apparently people had the idea of the dead speaking to them by telephone a lot earlier than 1920. I haven't been able to see if anyone used wax cylinders to try that but it wouldn't surprise me.
Update 2: Oh, and the first radio drama was A Comedy of Danger from 1924 written specifically for the medium of radio by Richard Hughes on commission from the BBC. I tried to listen to the reconstructed performance of it but as it takes place in a collapsed mine (the author wanted to produce a story in sound only as the silent movies did in sight only) but as claustrophobia is probably my greatest phobia, I can't even read the script. So there were years for someone to take up such a natural theme for sound before the friggin' talkies started.
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