Year book of motion pictures (1936)

•f Ae Hglit iMwIiif throng the Talve exactir COT" responding to the sound vibrations to be recorded. In recording sound, a moving sensitized pliotographic film is exposed to a beam of light passed through the vibratin;; light valve which is activated by the electric currents varying according to the sound vibrations. The exposed film is then developed, and the "sound record" thus produced is printed from it upon a positive film, where it appears as a series of short parallel lines of varying light density, corresponding to the sound vibrations, which have controlled in turn the variation in the electric current passing to the light valve and the corresponding variations of light passing through it to the sensitized film. "In reproducing the recorded sound the procedure is reversed. The positive sound film is passed before a light slit, from which the light passes through ' the sound record film to n photo-electric cell, which is devised to produce a variable electric current corresponding to the light variations caused by the moving record film. The electric current thus produced is amplified and passed to a loudspeaker, where it is translated into sound vibrations. "Successful operation of the talking motion picture involves synchronization of the sound and picture records. The difficulties of synchronization are obvious where the recorded picture and sounds are separately reproduced by independent mechanisms. Success has been achieved, and convenience in use of the two records secured, by uniting them upon a single positive film and passing it at the requisite uniform speed through a singii apparatus designed to reproduce both the sound and the picture. A familiar method of securing the two records on a single film is by photographing simultaneously the picture record and the sound record side by side upon the same strip of film and then printing from the developed negative a single positive film . . . Another method is by mechanically uniting the two positive records, as by cementing them together, after they have been separately printed from negatives separately exposed and developed. . . . A third method, which is that claimed by the patent in suit, is by printing the two records on a single positive film from separately exposed and developed negatives. ". . . The claimed method or process is for combining sound and picture records on a single film and comprises three steps: First, the simultaneous photographing of a picture record and a record of the accompanying sound, each on a separate negative; second, the separate development of the two negatives in a manner appropriate to each; and, third, the printing either simultaneously or successively, from the two negatives of the sound record and the picture record side by side on a single positive film. . . . "An examination of the prior art can leave no doubt that the method, as thus described and clearly restricted by the patent, lacks novelty and invention. The only step in respondent's method for which any advance could be claimed over earlier methods, is the process of uniting two records on a single positive film by printing them from separate negatives. . . . "The practice of printing separate photographs from separately developed negatives upon a single positive film has long been known to photographers. ... "The simultaneous photographing of sound and picture records was not novel, separate development of the negatives was well known, the advantage of uniting the two records, sound and picture, on a single film, was well known, and the methoti of uniting two photographic picture records by printing them from the separate negatives was well known. This use of an old method to produce an old result was not invention ... all that was novel in the claimed method was its application in the production of a combined sound and picture record, instead of a combination of two picture records. To claim the merit of invention, the patented process mu.st itself possess novelty. The application of an old process to a new and closely analogous subject-matter, plainly indicated by the prior art as jin appropriate subject of the process, is not inven tion. . . . However wide the differences between the procedures and results of sound reproduction from film on the one hand and picture reproduction on the other, the method of producing photographic sound and picture records and uniting them on the positive film are identical, for both sound and picture records, from the time of exposure of the negatives until the single film is completed. With knowledge of the well-understood advantages of the union of the two records on a single film, it rei|uired no more than the expected skill of the art of photography to use an old method of printing photographically the two negatives upon a single positive. . . . "The bare fact, that several inventors, in the early stages of sound reproduction . . . failed to resort to a method, well known to that art, for printing a combination film for which there was then no generally recognized need, does not give rise to the inference of invention." Patentee and Exhibitor — Infringement — Sound Equipment in Theater In Altooiia Fublix Theaters Corp. v. Ameriean Tri-Ergon Corp.,^ a patentee sued an exhibitor for patent infringement. The patent claimed''" was for improvement in a mechanism for recording and reproducing sound by use of a device to secure imiformity of speed in machines used for recording and reproducing talking motion pictures. The United States Supreme Court lield this patent invalid for lack of invention.^' Disclaimers, adding a flywheel for arcuate flexing of the talking motion picture film record and for projection of light through the film to a photo-electric cell in sound reproduction, were also held to be \oid. COMMENT The infringement charged was the use by the exhibitor of RCA photophone machines."* This case was tried together with a similar case against Wilmer and Vincent Corporation, another exhibitor. It is of the most extreme practical importance.^ The Court said: "There is no serious contention » ♦ » that the combination apparatus, for moving the linear record past the translation point at which the sound is recorded or reproduced involves invention without the flywheel. Mechanisms for moving linear strips or ribbons, by passing the strip over a revolving drum or cylinder, ♦ ♦ ♦ have long been used in the motion picture industry when it was desired to employ the linear strips at an intermediate point for sound and picture reproduction, and the like. "The gist of respondent's contention, as is shown by the claims and the parts of the specifications already quoted, is that, by the addition of the flywheel to this familiar mechanism, the patentees have succeeded in producing a new type of machine for recording and reproducing sound by the photographic film method. It is insisted that the new device, because of its greater accuracy and precision of film movement, is so useful and constitutes such an advance in the sound motion picture art, as to entitle it to the rank of a patentable invention. * • * "An improvement to an apparatus or method, to be patentable, must be the result of invention, and not the mere exercise of the skill of the calling or an advance plainly indicated by the prior art. * * * Patents for devices for use both in the motion picture art and in the art of sound reproduction, * * * plainly foreshadowed the use made of the flywheel in the present patent, if they did not anticipate it. The patentees brought together old elements, in a mechanism involving no tiew pria