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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson

Visi-Sonor  
  An entertainment device which appeared to create both sound and light by acting directly on brain cells. It also stimulated emotions directly.  

Okay, so it would never get FCC approval. But the basic idea is that of stimulating the brain directly, rather than being forced to go through the (primitive!) step of needing to create sounds that would be heard by the ears and then interpreted by the brain.

His long fingers caressed softly and slowly, pressing lightly on contacts with a rippling motion, resting themselves momentarily on one key then another - and in the air before them there was a soft glowing rosiness, just inside the range of vision.
Technovelgy from Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Doubleday in 1952
Additional resources -

Lots of unanswered questions; does this work regardless of how the brain was socialized?

Compare to the peeper from Shadow World (1957) by Clifford Simak, the empathy box from The Little Black Box (1964) by Philip K. Dick and the krang from The Tar-Aiym Krang (2007) by Alan Dean Foster.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Foundation and Empire
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to Foundation and Empire
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

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