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

THE GROWTH OF SOUND 19 league boots, and its strides into the virgin territory have been beyond prophecy. In fewer than fifty months a mammoth industry has undergone a convulsion of changes too numerous to record. Studios are no longer the same. The very theatres are different. What was up-to-date equipment the year before last is now pathetically antiquated. Even the kings and queens of the screen are threatened by newcomers, many of them still to be tested in the fires of public choice. Nor is the period of transition in any way approaching an end. The upheaval goes on; all eyes are still ahead; all energies still tense for quick decisions, for breathless conjecture. There is, of course, nothing surprising in all this. We know that you can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs. The surprising fact is that, amid the shouting and confusion, there has been maintained a steadily growing volume of production, balanced by an equal development in exhibition, and carried throughout the length and breadth of the land. The production schedules of sound pictures are beginning to keep pace, if not to vie, with those of the silent product. First and second-run houses are rapidly installing apparatus. There is no major territory not enjoying the refreshment of the novelty. The voice of demand is heard in every state. What has the industry done — what is the industry doing — to provide and to increase the supply? Let the record answer. II. Vitaphone In 1925 Warner Brothers, as I have said, became interested in the possibilities of the disk recording and reproducing device which had been developed by the Western Electric Company through the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Although this mechanism had already been