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

6 SOUND MOTION PICTURES commercial success of synchronized sound pictures. The film in this device was synchronized with a phonograph disk record similar to the disk system now in use, and the effects obtained were harmonious but, unfortunately, without amplification. Though the device was used for several years its novelty eventurally wore off. After all, it was but a phonograph, and of no higher standard than the type of talking machine which people had in their homes. About the same time Jaumant's Cronophone was shown in certain parts of Europe. This mechanism also used disk records, but with a motor operated by a spring, and was synchronized to the projector. A similar device was shown in this country in 1905, but it never attained any commercial success. It is apparent, from the foregoing, that the development of sound pictures is based on the earlier efforts of Mr. Edison. Thus the screen has advanced, from the birth of moving pictures to the present development of talking pictures, in the fertile brain of the Wizard of Menlo Park. Other experiments in sound photography were conducted more than half a century ago. Czmark of Vienna in 1882 photographed the vocal cords in action. In 1888 Professor Blake of Brown University photographed the vibrations of a microphone diaphragm through a beam of light on a photographic plate, which was kept in motion by a clockwork mechanism. Several years later Professor Herman, at the International Congress of Psychology, at Liege, Belgium, used a microphone in connection with a phonograph, the sound being recorded photographically on sensitive paper. To his microphone Professor Herman adjusted a small mirror which vibrated or oscillated in accordance with the sound produced by the phonograph records, the beam of light from the mirror varying accordingly. His device is of interest because an oscillating mirror is to-day one of the important steps in recording sound on sensitized