To laugh is human, in a full room, divine
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Not all laughter is created equal.
Consider the canned variety. For decades it was the rule that TV and radio comedy came with a pre-recorded laugh track, and Charley Douglass was their maestro. The sound engineer at CBS studios cobbled together a machine out of household odds-and-ends on which he could store up to 320 different laughs, from the gentle murmuring titter to the full-throated guffaw. He’d play them like a mad organist, pumping pedals and twisting dials, allowing his faked studio audience to gather in volume and intensity as the on-screen performers built towards their biggest gags.
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