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...And then there was sound.
Since the invention
of 'moving pictures' people tried to match sound with the
pictures. In 1889 a first attemp was made: the Kinetophonograph.
It consisted of a Gramophone hooked on to Edison's
Kinetograph, probably with some sort of synchronization
system. It was a so called sound-on-disk system.
The Kinetophonograph was never
commercially successful.
In 1904 Lauste developed an other system: an optical sound-on-film system but
this too failed to break through, mainly because of the
lack of adequate amplification. Dr. Lee de Forest
developed in 1907 the audion tube, which allowed a very
small electric signal to be amplified.
Three German
inventors announced in 1922 their optical sound-on-film system Tri-Ergon,
which used a variable density soundtrack. In
1927 the Fox Film Corporation acquired the rights on this
system. Lee de Forest developped in 1923 his own sound-on-film system, Phonofilm.
By the mid-20's it was incorporated into the
Fox Movietone system. Movietone
is best known for the Movietone News newsreels. D.W.
Griffith's film "Dream Street" (1921) used this system also (only
for an introduction by the director on the importance of
film).
The 1926 film "Don Juan" was the first major release to
have synchronized sound although it was only used for
score and an occasional sound effect. It used the Vitaphone
system, a sound-on-disk system that used
multiple 33 1/3rpm discs; the system was developped by
Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric.
"The
Jazz Singer",
from 1927, is considered by many the real beginning of
the sound & film marriage. Also in the Vitaphone
system, it featured musical numbers and some spoken lines
of Al Jolson.
But optical sound-on-film had many advantages. The
soundtrack was photograhically printed at the same time
as the picture, making it easier and cheaper to produce.
Also, an optical soundtrack lasts a long as the film
itself. By 1930 the sound-on-disk system was replaced by
a variety of sound-on-film systems.
By
the mid-1930's all movies released had sound and
therefore all theaters had to be fitted with sound
systems in a relatively short time. At the same time the
technology evolved so rapidly that there wasn't time to
fit the theaters with the improved equipment. Although
soundtracks could be produced to take advantage of the
better units and thus provide provide superior sound, all
movies released were tailored so they would sound good on
the older equipment installed in the majority of the
theaters. The result was that by the late 1930's a
standardization set in: movies were only released to be
played on the inferior equipment installed in most
theaters and exhibitors didn't install new units because
soundtracks didn't take advantage of them. And in 1938
this standard, called the 'Academic Curve', was
adopted by all Hollywood studios.
Still, movie sound had a bright future.
There were the experiments with multichannel sound of
among others of Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1941 Walt
Disney's "Fantasia" was the first film to be publicly
shown with multichannel sound. The system, called Fantasound,
used 4 optical tracks that were located on a seperate
35mm film. Three of them contained the sound for 3 screen
channels, the 4th one acted as a control track.
next chapter: the Magnetic Age
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