Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 19, 2017

Good morning guys!

Poor girl. It’s too much for her.

Now get out your checkbook, Honey……..

Bea heard what she wanted to hear.

I think she’s ripe for an autographed “Make America One Again” baseball cap, signed by Lincoln

Ohh, it’s on lady and being laid on thicker ’n heavier as we go !

Good morning, sound engineer, ‘mono track’ Bill !

To bad those guys don’t have the great and glorious equipment we here at BMBG are afforded on daily basis.

Everyone should check out today’s “Gasoline Alley,” for reasons which will become immediately apparent.

There’s a little joke with that “Is this thing on” bit. There’s no way Lincoln would have said those words the first time someone recorded him.

Good Morning all!! Did Lincoln rehearse the address before he gave it??

For those who like to keep track of such things…I think Luann yesterday has blown the doors off the number of comments for a day: 655!

Going to be pretty hard to match that.

How would she know what he sounds like?

And the phonograph (Gramaphone) was invented by accident! Edison was looking for a way to record telegraph (digital) signals so an operator could receive a message, save it, and play it back later. (Expensive to have all operators at their desks at all time) Then found it would also record and playback sounds (analog!) I’ve also heard it was the only patent to have NO prior claims!

“All lies and jest; still, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest…” A woman, too, apparently.

Like others, my first reaction upon reading today’s strip is that a phrase like “Is this on?” would never have been said by someone in the 19th century (what else back then could possibly have been turned on & off?). & you do wonder … what “miraculous device” will the Public Domains & Silvers of the 21st century use to bring the luminaries of our age back to life for gullible marks such as Be a Thorndyke.

When this scam was first revealed to us readers, someone linked to a recording that scientists have actually been able to create from Scot’s phonautograph, which looks a great deal like an EKG print out, using digital technology. The sounds were barely discernible as being a human voice, let alone any clear words or phrases. Bea is quite gullible, but if she knows her subject, she must know that! How can she possibly think that clear speech like this is really sourced from a few lines of lampblack on a piece of parchment?

Auntie Bea is not the sharpest knife in the rack, is she? There was that ridiculously bad editing that left in the initial “Is this on? Ahem!” (which just about every previous commenter has noted); any alert and moderately bright person would have caught that, but not Auntie Bea. And then she immediately concludes that it was indeed Lincoln’s voice, based on evidence whatsoever; rather, based only on her will that it be so. She is a mind-clouded fan who can come to no other conclusion. She is a perfect sucker for a scam targeted so precisely at her vulnerability. Few questions in this regard remain open: how much will she fork over for the phonautogram? How quickly; and also how quickly will Silver (and Sprocket) vanish? What about Public Domain? He’s let himself be connected directly and openly to the scam; can he afford to leave witnesses around?

And, most of all, how and when will Tracy get wind of the Great Lincoln Con?

“Is this on?”

BWAH-HAH-HAH!