Sound and color in early film

From the beginning of film history, there were attempts to incorporate sound and color into film. The early attempts are very primitive by today's standards, but very interesting.

Edison's first attempt at incorporating sound and film involved the use of the kinetophone, in which film was watched a film through the peepholes of a kinetoscope. The cabinet of the kinetoscope contained a phonograph, and the viewer/listener heard the sound through a pair of ear tubes.

Information about kinetoscopes and kinetophones can be found here.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison_kinetoscope.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/kstartinventions/a/Kinetoscope.htm

Here is the earliest Edison sound film, from 1894.





I don't know anything about this film, but it's very cool.




Sound films really came of age through the development of "sound on film" where the sound was optically recorded on the side of a film strip. The helped solve the problem of synchronization, which was poor in earlier sound films. Several researchers developed a "sound on film' process but it was the one developed by Lee De Forest that became commercially successful.

Although the first full length film to use De Forest's process was "The Jazz Singer" from 1927, it was used in several shorts, starting in 1923.

Here's a great one, featuring Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.



Here's a preview of a future post on color in early hand painted film, from 1895.




The Wikipedia article on the history of sound in film is really good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film

Acoustic recording and Edison's 125 foot recording horn

From the dawn of the recording era in 1877 until the development of electrical recording by Western Electric in 1925, recordings were made through the use of a horn, which connected to a diaphragm. The vibrations caused a stylus to etch a pattern in wax. Recordings were made on both cylinders and flat disks. The singers and musicians gathered close to the horn. Sound reproduction was entirely mechanical; no electricity was used in the recording or playback process. Sound quality did improve over time, but it never reached the quality of electrical recording.

Here's a photo of an orchestra session conducted by the composer Edward Elgar in 1914.



http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/history/p20_4_1.html

Some of the greatest records of all time were made during this period, including performances by singers such as Caruso, whose voice recorded particularly well using the acoustical recording process, Other great recordings were made in spite of the limitations. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band featured a young Louis Armstrong on cornet. Armstrong's playing was so powerful that he had to stand at the back of the group, farthest away from the recording horn, in order not to drown out the playing of the other musicians

Here is "Dippermouth Blues" from 1923.





In 1919, Edison decided to try to improve the process of acoustical recording so that a full orchestra could be accurately recorded. He thought that the way to do this was by constructing very long recording horns in order to "untangle" the mix of sounds from the recording process. The first attempts, using a 40 foot horn, didn't work out, so Edison tried again, this time building a 125 foot horn in 1923. The piano recorded well ,but not orchestras as a whole, so the project was abandoned in 1925 because it was too expensive, and not very successful. The need for a device like the horn was also superseded by the invention of electrical recording that year. The horn ended up being donated in 1942 to a World War II scrap metal drive by the Governor of New Jersey.





In 2005, Jerry Fabris, host of WFMU's show "Thomas Edison's Attic", devoted a show to Edison's experiments with long horns, It includes some of the experimental recordings and parts of talks given in 1973 and 1975 by one of the engineers who had worked on the the project and by Edison's son Theodore.

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/15231

Some more experimental recordings made with the 125 foot horn.

http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/experimental-recordings.htm