Although iirc correctly it starts with being able to see other locations in space but at the same time, and the historical viewing is a second development.
Fantastic book, even if it's not the same one you were thinking of.
It came up in an acoustics class once. I said that sound never really dies. It just bounces around until it becomes thermal energy, thus warming the room a little as a prelude to joking about professors talking hot air.
A student asked whether, one could recover sound from reverberations that had fallen below RT60? Could you listen back in time to conversations that had happened hours ago?
Obviously entropy can't be put back in the box with the technology we have now, but it makes you wonder.
Two things have since made me revise the question. One is recovery of sound from video images. The other was an archaeological recovery of sounds from a ceramic vase spun on potters wheel many centuries ago. Sorry but the references for both escape me atm.
EDIT: found this thread
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.archaeology.moderated/c/5Jec...
Damnit, seemed so plausible.