In the five intervening decades, however, the laugh track has gone from ubiquitous to a laughingstock in itself. That’s partly because our attitude toward TV comedy – and artifice – has changed. Where we once valued guffaw-inducing hijinks, we now value the so-horrifying-they’re-funny plotlines of Orange Is the New Black. Where we once valued joining the masses, now we enjoy bragging about our singular love of Bojack Horseman’s black comedy. Among the seven new half-hour comedies screening on US broadcast networks this autumn, only three – The Great Indoors, Kevin Can Wait, and Man With a Plan, all on CBS – employ laugh tracks. (CBS has built its brand on throwback, middle-of-the-road hits like The Big Bang Theory.) Perhaps even more tellingly, none of the seven Emmy nominees for outstanding comedy series use laugh tracks. What was once an essential element of the sitcom is now seen as the marker of an unsophisticated show for the masses, not something the cool kids would watch.

The world laughs with you

When Douglass first ‘invented’ the laugh track in 1950, it was intended to help the audience watch, understand and feel comfortable with a relatively new medium. TV comedies adopted canned laughter to ease their viewers into a new kind of entertainment, even for shows that were filmed without live audiences. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz changed things when they revolutionised the sitcom in the 1950s withI Love Lucy. With this production, the couple invented the ‘multi-camera’ filming technique: they used several cameras to capture several angles at once on a soundstage, complete with a live audience full of real laughter – not one of Douglass’ derided tracks.