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

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THE COMING OF SOUND 9 The sound-on-film method received its greatest development through the effort of William Fox, who formed an alliance with Theodore W. Case and brought to perfection the device then known as "Movietone." Recently another inventor, F. V. Madelar, developed another method of sound-on-film recording, whereby the picture is recorded not on the emulsion side of the film in the usual manner, but upon the unsensitized or plain side of the film strip. By use of a diamond stylus the sound is photographed on the film in the form of a waveline record similar to the recording of sound upon a disk. Then an electrical circuit is employed to pick up the sound on the film, which is reproduced through cone speaker. The method is similar to that perfected by James H. White, of the Edison Company, in the early part of 1900. In December, 1926, the DeForest Phono-»Film Company produced a one-act melodrama called Retribution. It was two reels in length and ran about thirty minutes. To my knowledge it was the first entirely talking picture ever made. Another "talkie "'was one made for the American Bell Telephone Company, depicting Professor Bell, first testing his first telephone in his laboratory, and later showing it to Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, at the Centennial in Philadelphia in 1876. This picture was given to the public almost immediately after the DeForest production. It was made, however, by the disk process instead of by the film. It was part of the company's exhibit at the Sesquicentennial in Philadelphia. It is the invention of the microphone, brought about in the development of the condenser transmitter used in telephone work, that has made modern recording possible. This microphone was developed by Dr. Edward C. Wente of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. In recent years sound synchronized with motion pictures has received its greatest impetus through the efforts of