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ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL SCENE 37
a moving-picture talk. Comparatively little was then known about moving pictures, let alone ones that talked. But Lauste's system for recording sound on film synchronously with the photographing of a moving scene was amazingly advanced for its time, and we may look back to it now, giving credit due to Lauste, which, of course, he has never had. The photocinematophone had no valves, it was theoretically sound (in fact, it had most of the fundamental principles of the present-day systems already in it), but its practice could certainly not have extended further than the laboratory. The valve, however, is as much the key to the practical existence of the sound-film we know to-day as it is to broadcasting. The problems involved in the electrical amplification of speech currents in sound-film recording and reproduction, in the transmission and reception of broadcasting, are insoluble without it. So when Al Jolson introduced, with a gigantic lachrymal sob, the new c all-talking, all-singing' film, it was the valve more than anything which enabled the brothers Warner to make what was then called their mad-hat experiment of risking the very large sum necessary to let Mr. Jolson make the introduction. In retrospect, it seems strange there should have been so many sceptics inside the film industry. The sound-film really aroused the interest of the public the moment it appeared. For this was a public that had just recently undergone an intense training in the use of its ears. And the use of the ear, without visual