A hundred years ago this month, the cover of the December 1921 issue of Science and Invention magazine covered a topic that seemed reasonable to me as a youth. Rather than spend waking hours with the burdensome task of learning, it would be easier to just play the material while sleeping, and let the subconscious mind soak it in. This gentleman is doing exactly that, and the whole system is explained in an article by Hugo Gernsback, who also included the technology in his novel Ralph 123C 41+, first published in serial form in 1911.

It never worked for me as a kid, mostly because I never figured out how to keep something playing all night. The record player could keep playing the same record over and over, but I didn’t have any records containing material I needed to learn. I had a tape recorder, but I never figured out how to make an endless loop long enough to contain useful information. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the machine shown here available.

According to Wikipedia, it doesn’t work anyway. But if you want to give it a try, you can find the materials at Amazon.

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