Judge — July 29, 1893 — page 2: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Cause of It" Cartoon Analysis This cartoon depicts a comedic misunderstanding at an Edison phonograph shop. A well-dressed man operates the device while two onlookers watch—one appearing to fall or collapse dramatically. The humor hinges on the caption dialogue: the shopkeeper asks what caused the man's distress, and the customer replies he was "intending to give an order" but the phonograph's playback startled him into a near-drowning state. The satire mocks the then-novel phonograph technology's jarring, unnatural quality. Rather than praising Edison's invention as miraculous, *Judge* ridicules its crude sound reproduction as genuinely frightening—so realistic yet so poorly rendered that it nearly kills a customer. This reflects contemporary skepticism about emerging technologies.