Re: [ARSCLIST] Recording Innovations

[George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad


Hello,


Jack Theakston wrote:


> The turntable was mechanically driven by the projector, and the record
> played from the inside out.  

----- I think we need to tell that there was a differential built-in (like in 
old rear-wheel drive cars) that permitted acceleration of the record to catch 
up with the film strip if one or several frames had been lost - this was a 
must to maintain synchronism

Several safeguards were installed in case the
> needle jumped or there was any electrical interference.  Never-the-less, by
> 1930, sound-on-disc was considered old hat and theaters installing sound
> almost entirely went to sound-on-film.
> 
> The difference was amplification-- the key to motion picture sound.  Before
> De Forest's Audion tube (and later triode) were in common use, acoustic
> recordings were not loud enough to fill 2,000+ seat auditoriums.

----- not entirely acccurate: Edison used Higham's friction amplifier (also 
known from Columbia Graphophones) for his Kinetophone system, and Parson's 
invention in England that was licensed to the Gramophone Company used 
compressed air to amplify acoustic reproduction, called the Auxetophone. They 
were plenty loud. Pathé who was even more in the film business than Edison 
used very heavily modulated 20 inch records to drive large diaphragms and 
horns. The amplification (as in all acoustic reproduction) was supplied by 
the drive train for the turntable.

Amplification was the prerequisite for sound-on-film, not sound film (rather 
film with dialogue instead of intertitles)

Kind regards,


George