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CHAPTER 9
Several years before the gift of tongues descended upon the silent screen and robbed it of its one golden virtue, a curious little chirruping was heard from the pictures and was hailed by super optimists as the beginning of talking films. In a sense it was. But it was a very long way from real sound films as we knew them afterwards, for Sir Ambrose Fleming had not yet invented his thermionic valve without which no amplification and therefore no satisfactory volume of sound was possible.
The chirruping emanated from an old-style gramophone with a horn, placed upon the stage beside the picture and, by one or other ingenious contrivance, keeping some kind of synchronism with the picture on the screen. I want to describe one way by which this synchronism was attempted, for all of them had the basic idea in common.
Will Barker's method, the 'Cinephone,' was one of the simplest and I believe he did very well out of it. Having selected a suitable gramophone record he played it through several times to the actor or actors who were to take part in the picture. When they were letter-perfect, could sing the song in strict accord with the record and fit appropriate action to the words, he placed the gramophone in the corner of the scene where it would be photographed as part of the picture. Then he mounted a kind of clockface upon the instrument with a hand geared to the spindle so that it would turn slowly as the record played. The scene was photographed and the index-hand with it.
When the picture was exhibited, a similar gramophone with a similar clock-face was placed on the stage beside the screen. The record was started at the same moment as the picture and all the operator in the box had to do was to keep the dial in the picture on the screen exactly in step with the dial on the stage. If he succeeded exactly the film would be in synchronism with the sound, but it wasn't easy. The trouble was that the whole of the 'kitchen
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