History’s First Marriage Of Recorded Sight And Sound…Circa 1894
History’s First Marriage Of Recorded Sight And Sound…Circa 1894
From the inception of motion pictures, various inventors attempted to unite sight and sound through “talking” motion pictures. The Edison Company is known to have experimented with this as early as the fall of 1894 under the supervision of W. K. L. Dickson with a film known today as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film. The film shows a man, who may possibly be Dickson, playing violin before a phonograph horn as two men dance.
By the spring of 1895, Edison was offering Kinetophones (see photo in Comment Section), which were film projector boxes with phonographs inside their cabinets. The viewer would look into the peep-holes of the Kinetoscope to watch the motion picture while listening to the accompanying phonograph through two rubber ear tubes connected to the machine.
While the pictures and sound appeared together, they were not what we would consider synchronous. Although the initial novelty of the machine drew attention, the decline of the Kinetoscope business and Dickson’s departure from Edison ended any further work on the Kinetophone for 18 years. This was most likely shot at the Edison Studios in Bronx, New York.
In this clip, you will see text that explains the discovery of the lost pieces of this puzzle and how it was restored. Enjoy and share!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s
This short film was a test for Edison’s “Kinetophone” project, the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization. This was an …
Hal, I think the system you’re talking about was call Vox Magna. I read about it a long time ago, but haven’t seen the samples. I seem to remember something about long rubber belts being used to keep the projector in back in sync with the victrola in the front of the theater. That might have been another system though.
I believe I saw many years ago that there was also a group of films in a later attempt by Edison at sound synchronization, perhaps in the late 1900s or early 1910s. I’ve only seen those films once, and that had to be at least 20 years ago.
Vitaphone Studios (Warner Bros.) in Brooklyn, later to become NBC Brooklyn Studios was one of the 1st companies to marry film and audio commercially. “The Vitaphone Project” ( thevitaphoneproject.com ) has been instrumental in restoring many of the short films made at the facility. Many old time stars like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, The Three Stooges etc. made their debut at Vitaphone doing 2 reelers.
Thanks to The Library of Congress , George Lucas, Francis Coppola via American Zoetrope and other people who cares about audio visual preservation and restoration.
It’s very important to preserve those records to the next generations
This is the Kinetophone viewing machine in use. Notice the rubber hose to the ears was the way viewers heard the recorded cylinder sound playback.