Sound motion pictures : from the laboratory to their presentation (1929)

4 SOUND MOTION PICTURES lines. When the time comes — and it will! — that ushers in the next great element of the art, the captains will again be prepared to startle and please millions of patrons with an added improvement. Another advantage of that vigil of many years is that, instead of being taken off guard by a novelty, we were in large degree acquainted with its findings as well as with its flounderings. Hence the possibility of a text like the present, so early in the game. Our knowledge of sound, tentative and liable to change though it be, is already considerable. The experiments and conclusions of engineers, producers, distributors, and managers form a body of fact awaiting only the expression. Indeed, it is a question whether our age is the more remarkable for the speedy distribution of new machinery or the equally swift distribution of information thereon. We are a race quick alike to create and to teach; and the fact that "we" includes our own field, as well as any other, may rightly be a source of pride and pleasure. Therefore, before we enter into the special exposition of sound pictures, to share the knowledge and the experience of this new phenomenon, let us first peep behind the scenes for a glimpse of that story which the leaders have been following for half a century. In 1894 Edison invented the cinematograph. Eighteen years before, in 1876, he had perfected the phonograph. It is interesting to note, further, that in 1887 Edison stated that he was attempting to devise "an instrument which would do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that by the combination of the two all motion and sound could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously.,, At length, in March, 1913, Thomas A. Edison presented the Kinetophone, which was the realization of the principle. The pictures were synchronized with phonograph records, but the listener used ear tubes. The device