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

Record Details:

Title:
Sound motion pictures : from the laboratory to their presentation
Date:
1929
Publisher:
Garden City : Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Volume:
Sound motion pictures : from the laboratory to their presentation
Leaf #:
00034
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Motion pictures--Technology
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
March 28, 2024
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CHAPTER II THE GROWTH OF SOUND I. The Attitude of the Industry Although a generation was required to develop devices for sound, it has taken only three short years for nationwide acceptance and application. True, conservatism waited for the "other fellow" to try the invention and take the risk. When one considers the stake involved the reluctance was humanly understandable. Here was a step without precedent, to be made at a moment of acute crisis within the industry. The cost of trial would be considerable; failure would involve not merely the immediate loss but the imperilling of considerable investment in silent pictures. The great companies were compelled to consider several questions, each as unanswerable as the riddle of the Sphinx, and all together constituting a veritable chaos of conjecture. Was sound, first of all, a fad or a practical venture ? Was the time ripe ? Was the new device to supersede the old, to grow side by side with it, to be linked or merged with it? Finally, which one of the many systems was the likeliest to prevail? Surely a complex of bewilderment! How the Gordian knot was cut, and by what agencies, I shall come to presently. What concerns us at the moment is that, once the answer was even partially apparent, the industry turned its face and mind and hands to the task of the future. The motion picture has been called one of the giants of our age. To suit the epithet it donned seven 18