Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

Talking Pictures that tomorrow the solution to the problems of television may be found? When it comes, it will bring great changes in its wake. Not many think today that it will affect the ingrown desire to go out of the house "to see a show." It is clear, however, that television is likely to change materially the manner in which newspapers, the radio, and the newsreel now distribute the news of the day. There is no doubt but that a New York television theatre, the first in the world, built to broadcast the World Series baseball games of the fall of 1937, indicates in a small way what we may expect from television in the future. When television does come, there is a possibility of some rearrangement of workers now in older forms of communication activity, and naturally those who have had the forethought to prepare themselves for this certain change will be in most advantageous positions. For those willing to wear special glasses stereoscopic photography has been solved. But except for novelty use, of which the very popular short subject, Audioscopiks, is an example, it seems quite certain that the method is not practical for general day-by-day entertainment use. People would forget their special glasses or, after a time, grow annoyed by the necessity of having to use them. And it is also certain that such a system would never be popular unless the theatre-owner furnished the glasses. For sanitary reasons, he would have to pass out new ones to each customer, and the expense of this might be prohibitive. But the little film Audioscopiks does intrigue one with the possibilities it offers to that inventor who first dis [286]