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RECORDING SOUND ON DISC
Col. Nugent H. Slaughter*
The development of commercial talking pictures first assumed a practical form from the experiments which started at the Brooklyn Vitaphone Studios in 1925. At that time, the only method of recording suitable for this work was the disc method, long employed in phonograph recording. The availability of this thoroughly developed method of recording contributed largely to the rapid progress made in the new art. Naturally, in the application of disc recording to talking pictures, many new problems have been encountered; but all such problems have been solved as they have arisen.
The important features of any method of recording are quality of reproduction, uniform and reliable performance, and adaptability to a rapidly changing art. In all these respects disc recording compares well with other methods.
The recording of sound on disc involves processes entirely common to other systems of recording, except for the actual conversion of electrical energy into some form of permanent record and the steps immediately following up to the point where the record is employed to re-establish electrical energy. Since those processes common to other systems of recording have already been described in some detail, this discussion will be confined to the processes peculiar to wax recording and their analogy to certain processes in film recording.
The material used in the actual making of a disc record may be called the wax negative stock corresponding to the negative film employed in the film recording process. The wax negative consists of a soft wax blank in the form of a very thick disc which has a consistency and appearance much like beeswax. Its surface must first be prepared, not by sensitizing, as in the case of film, but by a smoothing process known as wax shaving, which makes the wax negative receptive to mechanical, rather than light, impressions. The shaving of wax is accomplished on
*Chief Engineer in Charge of Recording for Warner Bros. Vitaphone Productions
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