An investigation ...

An investigation into the impact technological advances have had on film sound over the years




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Helen Warder
U0554687



Contents
Contents 2
Research 3
Procedure and Methods 3
Early Sound Recording technology 4
The Phonautograph 4
The tinfoil Phonograph 5
The graphophone 5
Edison’s perfected phonograph 6
The entertainment phonograph 6
The merging of sound and motion picture 7
The Kinetoscope 7
The Kinetophone 8
Further motion picture sound developments 8
The Vitaphone 9
The history of film 9
The silent era 9
The first feature film 10
References 11
Bibliography 11
Research
Procedure and Methods



Early Sound Recording technology
Study of sound began around the sixth century B.C.E. Greek Philosopher Pythagoras studied music and musical instruments.

The Phonautograph
The first true means of recording sound was using a machine called the phonautograph, invented by Frenchman Leon Scott, in 1856.

‘This device used a cone-shaped horn to capture and “focus” it on a flexible membrane stretched across the small end. Sounds captured by the horn made the membrane vibrate rapidly. Linked to the membrane through a delicate mechanism was a pointed stylus, to which the vibrations were transmitted; it too vibrated rapidly. Scott mounted a smooth glass cylinder on the mechanism so that the stylus would lightly touch the surface of the cylinder. Before use the cylinder would be held over a flame to give it a dark coat of soot. When all was ready, someone would shout or play a musical instrument near the horn; sound vibrations would be transmitted to the stylus , which would begin to vibrate. If the cylinder was turned rapidly during this, the stylus would scribe a thin line in the soot, rendering a visible record of the sound.’


It provided a means of recording sound but there was yet to be a method of reproducing the recorded sound. However its theory and construction provided an invaluable basis for later sound recording devices.
The tinfoil Phonograph

Invented in 1876 and patented in 1877, Thomas Edisons’s Phonograph ‘is fondly remembered as one of the technological milestones of the late nineteenth century.’ It was Alexander Graham Bells invention of the telephone, in 1876, that first drew Edison’s attention to the field of telegraphy. His desire to improve the telephone, by means of ’some kind of recording device to capture the output of a telephone and possibly retransmit it later,’ was what actually led him to invent the phonograph. However, after several months of experimenting, Edison moved away from the idea of recording ...