The devices that we now think of as “bugs” emerged much later. But manufacturers also envisioned more pedestrian uses for the technology: verifying the loyalty of business associates, corroborating statements made under oath, even monitoring patients in hospitals and insane asylums. Such devices were typically marketed as investigative tools for private detectives and law enforcement agencies. According to a promotional pamphlet published in 1917, the Detectifone was “a super-sensitive device for collecting sound in any given place and transmitting it by a wire thru any given distance to the receiving end, at which point the person or persons listening are able to hear all that is said at the other end … It hears everything, the slightest sound or whisper … The result is the same as though you were present in the room where the conversation was being carried on.” When installed in fixed locations-under floorboards and rugs, on walls and windows, inside desks and bookcases-devices like the Detectifone, a technological cousin to the more common Dictaphone, proved predictably effective. The earliest electronic eavesdropping technologies functioned much like architectural listening systems. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Archaeologists have discovered acoustical arrangements like these dating back to 3000 BC. Paul’s Cathedral in London and the US Capitol building are inadvertent “whispering galleries” that enable people to hear conversations held on the other side of the room. Architectural listening systems weren’t always a product of intentional design. Catherine de' Medici is said to have installed similar structures in the Louvre to keep tabs on individuals who might have plotted against her. The Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher devised cone-shaped ventilation ducts for palaces and courts that allowed the curious to overhear conversations. Perhaps nodding to the origins of the practice (listening under the eaves of someone else’s home, where rain drops from the roof to the ground), early modern architects designed buildings with structural features that amplified private speech. Prior to the invention of recorded sound, the vast majority of listening devices were extensions of the built environment. This story is adapted from The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States, by Brian Hochman.Įavesdropping technologies of various sorts have been around for centuries.
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