Via But Does it Float.

To modern audiences, the laugh track -- that cheesy pre-recorded laughter you hear in old sitcoms -- is a real head-shaker. But stranger than the existence of the laugh track is the fact that during its apex in the 60's, one man was responsible for it. Not only that, he built a special machine specifically for the dispensing of canned guffaws: the laff box.

The biggest reason the laugh track caught on was simply because historically, live audiences could not be relied upon to laugh at the correct moment. Other times, the audiences could laugh too long or too loud, sounding unnatural and forced or throwing off the performers' rhythms.

CBS sound engineer Charley Douglass noticed these, as he put it, "God-awful" responses, and took it upon himself to remedy the situation. If a joke did not get the desired chuckle, Douglass inserted additional laughter.

Douglass eventually spent countless hours extracting laughter, applause, and other reactions (right down to people moving around in their seats) from live soundtracks he had recorded (mainly from the dialogue-less The Red Skelton Show) and then placed the recorded sounds into a huge tape machine, dubbed the "laff box"...

The one-of-a-kind device was tightly secured with padlocks, stood more than two feet tall, and operated like an organ. Douglass used a keyboard to select the style, gender and age of the laugh as well as a foot pedal to time the length of the reaction. Inside the padlocked concoction was an array of recorded chuckles, yocks, and belly laughs; exactly 320 laughs on 32 tape loops, 10 to a loop. Each loop contained 10 individual audience laughs spliced end-to-end, whirling around simultaneously waiting to be cued up.

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Charley Douglass had a monopoly on the expensive and painstaking "laff" business. By 1960, nearly every prime time show in America was "sweetened" by Douglass’ laff box.

In celebration of LOST's final season and as a project of fan appreciation, 16 top designers and artists, who are also fans of the show, were commissioned to create artwork celebrating one of the series' most memorable, and unforgettable, "water cooler" moments. This ultimate "fan art" was then turned into labor intensive, hand-pulled screen prints, limited to an edition of just 300, with less than 200 available to the public through our websites. Each beautiful poster tells its own different story, allowing the fan to relive memorable and influential moments in an artistic manner, as the show's storied run comes to a close. Once this limited edition print has sold out, they will never be printed again.

There are quite a lot of good ones. Here are some of my favorites.

I found this absolutely mind-blowing.

Optical illusions aren't just tricks. They're tricks that people's brains like, so they tend to make an impression on viewers.

((They're also hard to make, so I appreciate seeing a decent one.))

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