The Cinema: past, present & future....

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Motion Picture Sound 1910-1929


1910 - Eugene A. Lauste was born in Paris in 1857, worked at Edison's Orange N.J. lab 1887-1892 under W.K.L. Dickson, joined Major Woodville Latham 1894 to develop the Eidoloscope, a wide film projector that used the Latham loop, first exhibited publicly in May 1894 in New York. While working for Edison, Lauste read a Scientific American 1881 article about Bell's Photophone and sought to use this method to record sound on 35mm motion picture film. He applied for a patent in England on Aug. 11, 1906, and granted in 1910, for a "new and improved method of and means for simultaneously recording and reproducing movements and sounds." (Fielding p. 173). His first device used a mechanical grate, then mirrors, and by 1910 developed a light gate of a vibrating silicon wire between two magnets. Lauste made many sound films 1910-1914, but was halted by the war.


Edison Kinetophone, 1913
from Edison NHS

1913 - Edison developed the Kinetophone that connected a special cylinder machine with oversize long-playing cylinders to a film projector by means of an overhead belt with 3-inch pulleys. The speed was governed by the phonograph behind the screen and the projector at the other end of the theater in the projection booth had a braking device to slow the film speed to keep synchronization.

1915 - Harold Arnold began program at Bell Labs to improve sound recording using the vacuum tube amplifier, condenser microphone, balanced armature loudspeaker, and light valve. This would lead to the electrical recording technology used by the two basic motion picture sound systems: sound-on-disc and sound-on-film. Edward B. Craft was asst. chief engineer at Western Electric 1918-1922, then VP of Bell Labs 1925. He led the motion picture sound project. He arranged demonstrations at Yale Oct. 27, 1922, and in Feb. 1924 for the sound-on-disc method that produced better sound than the sound-on-film method. A recording studio was set up in 1923 to make experimental films. The Western Electric sound-on-disc system made test films in room 1109 at 463 West St. by H. M. Stoller, under project chief J. P. Maxfield. T. L. Downey designed the recording turntable; H. C. Harrison designed the electrical recording head with cutting sylus; E. C. Wente designed condenser microphone (Patent No. 1,333,744 filed December 20, 1916) and an improved light valve for sound-on-film (Patent No. 1,638,555 filed May 1, 1923).

1917 - Theodore W. Case developed the Thalofide photocell that used thallium oxysulfide. By 1922 he developed the Aeo-light as a source of modulated light. E. I. Sponable worked with Case after 1916 and from 1922 to 1925 he shared equipment with de Forest. Case and Sponable in 1924 developed a sound recording mechanism for a modified Bell and Howell camera using the Aeo-light tube. After breaking off from de Forest in 1925, Case began to develop a projector sound head, offset 20 frames at a speed of 90 ft. per min., using a narrow slit with a helical filament. General Electric and Western Electric were developing their own sound systems, so did not wish to buy into the Case-Sponable system. William Fox licensed the system July 23, 1926, and organized the Fox-Case Corp. with Courtland Smith as president to develop what became known as the Movietone News service. Sponable left the Case lab to join Fox in designing the recording studios in New York and Hollywood, and he designed in 1927 a screen that allowed sound to pass through the screen. The Fox-Case Corp. licensed amplifiers and speakers from Western Electric in 1926 and from ERPI organized in January 1927.

1918 - J.T. Tykociner developed a sound-on-film system at the University of Illinois that used mercury arc light and a Kunz photocell (a cathode of potassium on silver).

1921 - Charles A. Hoxie developed a sound film recorder called the "Pallophotophone" (meant "shaking light sound") at GE, a company that had a well-established photographic and motion picture laboratory under C. E. Bathcholtze for company use and publicity. He recorded speeches by President Coolidge and his Secretary of War and others that were broadcast on WGY in Schenectady in 1922. He developed that Pallotrope that was a photoelectric microphone to be used as the sound pickup. His film soundtracks were variable-area type. GE gave demos in 1926 and 1927 of the Hoxie system with loudpseakers and amplifiers from Bell Labs. The GE system was called the Kinegraphone and used to exhibit a "road show" version of the Paramount film Wings in 1927, using multiple-unit cone-and-baffle type loudspeakers in a bank on each side of the screen. The soundhead was placed on top of the projector because sound projectors had not yet been installed in theaters. Film speed was 90 ft. per min (24 fps) and the optical soundtrack was recorded on the edge of the film, image size haveing been reduced from 1 inch down to 7/8 inch to make room for the variable area soundtrack. In 1927 the film project was transferred from the Engineering Laboratory to the Radio Dept. for commercial manufacturing. GE would work closely with Westinghouse and RCA in the manufacturing of sound film equipment.

1922 - Western Electric presented an experimental animated sound-on-disc film "The Audion" at Yale on Oct. 27, 1922. Cecil B. DeMille began using the Western Electric public address system to instruct extras on his movie sets at Paramount.

1923 - The Rivoli Theater in New York exhibited on April 15, 1923, one of the first programs of de Forest short Phonofilms. It featured vaudeville stars Weber & Fields, Sissle & Blake, Phil Baker, Eddie Cantor, Eva Puck & Sammy White, Conchita Piquir. The next year de Forest made a 2-reel sound comedy, Love's Old Sweet Song, with actress Una Merkel. But studios resisted spending millions to equip theaters with sound equipment.

(for more go here) http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/motionpicture1.html