Information about Movietone Sound System
The Movietone sound system is a sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures which guarantees synchronisation between the sound and the picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film used to record the pictures. Although sound films today use variable-area tracks, any modern motion picture theater can play a Movietone film without modification to the projector. Movietone was one of four motion picture sound systems under development in the U. S. during the 1920s, the others being DeForest Phonofilm, Warner Brothers' Vitaphone, and RCA Photophone, though Phonofilm was primarily an early version of Movietone.
Movietone was perfected by Theodore Case and Earl I. Sponable in 1925 at the Case Research Labs in Auburn, New York, with their creation of what would become the Movietone camera, built for the lab by the Wall machine shop in Syracuse, New York from a Bell & Howell camera.
It entered commercial use when William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation bought the entire system including the patents in July 1926. Although Fox owned the Case patents, the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, and the American rights to the German Tri-Ergon patents, the Movietone sound film system uses only the inventions of the Case Lab. Following the commercial production of sound films by the newly formed Fox-Case Movietone company, Wall dedicated his interests to manufacturing cameras, building them from scratch.
It is improperly recorded in many histories of sound film that the Phonofilm system of sound-on-film used technology invented by Lee De Forest. DeForest had made an effort to create a system of sound-on-film but was unsuccessful. He turned to the Case Research Labs for help in 1921 and after Theodore Case visited DeForest's studios in New York City, Case agreed to work on some developments. De Forest then used the Case Labs' Thallofide (thallium oxysulfide) cell for reading recorded sound.
However, noticing that DeForest's system had little to no quality sound worth reproducing, Case developed the AEO Light, which proved practical for exposing amplified sound to film. With the AEO Light, DeForest was finally able to produce films with audible sound. Following that, Case Labs decided to build their own camera because DeForest continued pursuing unworkable solutions toward perfecting sound film. With their new camera, Case and Sponable filmed President Calvin Coolidge on 11 August 1924, allowing DeForest to have the film developed in New York City. When DeForest showed the film -- as well as an earlier presentation of 18 short sound films at the Rivoli Theater in New York City on 15 April 1923 -- he claimed full credit for Case's invention that made it possible.
Shortly later, Case tired of DeForest's continuing false claims about the Case Lab. inventions and ended his relationship with DeForest, and dedicated his lab to perfecting the system they had provided DeForest, whose own attempts at recording sound were all failures. Documents supporting this, including a signed letter by De Forest that states that Phonofilms are only possible because of the inventions of the Case Research Labs, are located at the Case Research Laboratory Museum in Auburn, New York.[1]
William Fox hired Earl I. Sponable (1895-1977) from the Case Research Labs in 1926, when he purchased the sound-on-film patents from Case. Although Fox had also purchased other sound patents, such as the German Tri-Ergon patents, the Movietone system was solely based on the Case Lab.´s inventions. The first feature film released using the Fox Movietone system was Sunrise (1927) directed by F. W. Murnau. It was the first professionally produced feature film with an actual sound track. Sound in the film included only music, sound effects, and a very few unsynchronized words.
Less than two years after purchasing the system from Case, Fox bought out all of Case's interests in the Fox-Case company. All of Fox's sound feature films were made using the Movietone system until 1931, while Fox Movietone News used the system until 1939, because of the ease of transporting this single-system's sound film equipment.
The Case Research sound system set many industry standards still used to this day, such as location of the sound 21 frames before the image it accompanies, originally done partly to ensure that no Phonofilms could again be played in theaters, its system being out-of synch to the Case Labs specifications, and to ease the modification of projectors already widely in use.
Sponable worked at the Fox Film Corporation studios (later 20th Century Fox) on 54th Street and 10th Avenue in New York City until he retired in the 1960s, eventually winning an Academy Award for his technical work on the development of CinemaScope. Sponable had many contributions to film technology during his career, including the invention of the perforated motion-picture screen that allowed placing the speakers behind it to enhance the illusion of the sound emanating directly from the film action. During his years at Fox, Sponable also served for a time as an officer of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In the 1940s he published a concise history of sound film in the SMPTE Journal (then the SMPE Journal).
The history of the Case Research Labs has long been unheralded for numerous reasons. Theodore Case died in 1944, after donating his home and lab to be preserved as a museum to the inventions of the Case Research Labs. The museum's first director, who oversaw the museum for 50 years, put the labs contents into storage and converted the building into an art studio. The Case Labs sound studio was located in the second floor of the estate's carriage house and that was rented to the local train club until the early 1990s.
Fox lost his company in 1930 after his loans were called in, and he lost his suit in the Supreme Court against the film industry for violating the Tri-Ergon patents he owned, pushing him into obscurity. Sponable did little to establish the record of the Case Labs inventions, other than his article in the SMPE journal.
For its first 50 years, 20th-Century Fox chose to leave its history behind to distance itself from William Fox. Lee DeForest, maybe a failed inventor but definitely a master promoter, spent his life convincing people he´d invented sound film, reaching his greatest glory with an Academy Award for his lifetime achievement and contributions to the creation of sound film.
Recently, the Case Research Labs, the adjoining carriage house, and Case's home have been restored and research is ongoing with the collections of the lab that include all receipts, notebooks, correspondence, and much of the laboratory's original equipment, including the first recording device created to test the AEO light. In the collections are also letters from Thomas Edison, an original copy of the Tri-Ergon patents, and an internal document from Fox Films written in the 1930s. This latter document says that once it became public knowledge that Sponable perfected the variable-area system of sound-on-film at the Fox Studios, the system that would become the standard and replace the inventions of Case Labs.
A number of films owned by the Case Research Labs and Museum and restored by George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, are in the collections of both of those institutions. The Case Research Labs and Museum has additional sound-film footage of Theodore Case, and recently discovered copies of the same films at the Eastman House, but in a much higher state of preservation. Movietone News films are in the collections of 20th-Century Fox and the University of South Carolina at Columbia, including the only known footage of Earl I. Sponable talking. Sponable can also be seen in footage of the premiere of the film The Robe. Phonofilms that were produced using the Case Labs inventions are in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute, though their dates of origin are incorrectly recorded, making it appear as though the films were made a half dozen years before they actually were. This has been established in films such as Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924) by the performers who appear in the films and what music can be heard.
Movietone was perfected by Theodore Case and Earl I. Sponable in 1925 at the Case Research Labs in Auburn, New York, with their creation of what would become the Movietone camera, built for the lab by the Wall machine shop in Syracuse, New York from a Bell & Howell camera.
It entered commercial use when William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation bought the entire system including the patents in July 1926. Although Fox owned the Case patents, the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, and the American rights to the German Tri-Ergon patents, the Movietone sound film system uses only the inventions of the Case Lab. Following the commercial production of sound films by the newly formed Fox-Case Movietone company, Wall dedicated his interests to manufacturing cameras, building them from scratch.
It is improperly recorded in many histories of sound film that the Phonofilm system of sound-on-film used technology invented by Lee De Forest. DeForest had made an effort to create a system of sound-on-film but was unsuccessful. He turned to the Case Research Labs for help in 1921 and after Theodore Case visited DeForest's studios in New York City, Case agreed to work on some developments. De Forest then used the Case Labs' Thallofide (thallium oxysulfide) cell for reading recorded sound.
However, noticing that DeForest's system had little to no quality sound worth reproducing, Case developed the AEO Light, which proved practical for exposing amplified sound to film. With the AEO Light, DeForest was finally able to produce films with audible sound. Following that, Case Labs decided to build their own camera because DeForest continued pursuing unworkable solutions toward perfecting sound film. With their new camera, Case and Sponable filmed President Calvin Coolidge on 11 August 1924, allowing DeForest to have the film developed in New York City. When DeForest showed the film -- as well as an earlier presentation of 18 short sound films at the Rivoli Theater in New York City on 15 April 1923 -- he claimed full credit for Case's invention that made it possible.
Shortly later, Case tired of DeForest's continuing false claims about the Case Lab. inventions and ended his relationship with DeForest, and dedicated his lab to perfecting the system they had provided DeForest, whose own attempts at recording sound were all failures. Documents supporting this, including a signed letter by De Forest that states that Phonofilms are only possible because of the inventions of the Case Research Labs, are located at the Case Research Laboratory Museum in Auburn, New York.[1]
William Fox hired Earl I. Sponable (1895-1977) from the Case Research Labs in 1926, when he purchased the sound-on-film patents from Case. Although Fox had also purchased other sound patents, such as the German Tri-Ergon patents, the Movietone system was solely based on the Case Lab.´s inventions. The first feature film released using the Fox Movietone system was Sunrise (1927) directed by F. W. Murnau. It was the first professionally produced feature film with an actual sound track. Sound in the film included only music, sound effects, and a very few unsynchronized words.
Less than two years after purchasing the system from Case, Fox bought out all of Case's interests in the Fox-Case company. All of Fox's sound feature films were made using the Movietone system until 1931, while Fox Movietone News used the system until 1939, because of the ease of transporting this single-system's sound film equipment.
The Case Research sound system set many industry standards still used to this day, such as location of the sound 21 frames before the image it accompanies, originally done partly to ensure that no Phonofilms could again be played in theaters, its system being out-of synch to the Case Labs specifications, and to ease the modification of projectors already widely in use.
Sponable worked at the Fox Film Corporation studios (later 20th Century Fox) on 54th Street and 10th Avenue in New York City until he retired in the 1960s, eventually winning an Academy Award for his technical work on the development of CinemaScope. Sponable had many contributions to film technology during his career, including the invention of the perforated motion-picture screen that allowed placing the speakers behind it to enhance the illusion of the sound emanating directly from the film action. During his years at Fox, Sponable also served for a time as an officer of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In the 1940s he published a concise history of sound film in the SMPTE Journal (then the SMPE Journal).
The history of the Case Research Labs has long been unheralded for numerous reasons. Theodore Case died in 1944, after donating his home and lab to be preserved as a museum to the inventions of the Case Research Labs. The museum's first director, who oversaw the museum for 50 years, put the labs contents into storage and converted the building into an art studio. The Case Labs sound studio was located in the second floor of the estate's carriage house and that was rented to the local train club until the early 1990s.
Fox lost his company in 1930 after his loans were called in, and he lost his suit in the Supreme Court against the film industry for violating the Tri-Ergon patents he owned, pushing him into obscurity. Sponable did little to establish the record of the Case Labs inventions, other than his article in the SMPE journal.
For its first 50 years, 20th-Century Fox chose to leave its history behind to distance itself from William Fox. Lee DeForest, maybe a failed inventor but definitely a master promoter, spent his life convincing people he´d invented sound film, reaching his greatest glory with an Academy Award for his lifetime achievement and contributions to the creation of sound film.
Recently, the Case Research Labs, the adjoining carriage house, and Case's home have been restored and research is ongoing with the collections of the lab that include all receipts, notebooks, correspondence, and much of the laboratory's original equipment, including the first recording device created to test the AEO light. In the collections are also letters from Thomas Edison, an original copy of the Tri-Ergon patents, and an internal document from Fox Films written in the 1930s. This latter document says that once it became public knowledge that Sponable perfected the variable-area system of sound-on-film at the Fox Studios, the system that would become the standard and replace the inventions of Case Labs.
A number of films owned by the Case Research Labs and Museum and restored by George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, are in the collections of both of those institutions. The Case Research Labs and Museum has additional sound-film footage of Theodore Case, and recently discovered copies of the same films at the Eastman House, but in a much higher state of preservation. Movietone News films are in the collections of 20th-Century Fox and the University of South Carolina at Columbia, including the only known footage of Earl I. Sponable talking. Sponable can also be seen in footage of the premiere of the film The Robe. Phonofilms that were produced using the Case Labs inventions are in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute, though their dates of origin are incorrectly recorded, making it appear as though the films were made a half dozen years before they actually were. This has been established in films such as Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924) by the performers who appear in the films and what music can be heard.
See also
- Phonofilm
- Vitaphone
- RCA Photophone
- Photokinema
- Movietone News
- Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner
- Eric Tigerstedt
- Sound film
- sound-on-disc
- List of film formats
Sound-on-film refers to a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture.
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DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back into sound waves when the movie was projected.
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Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., or Warner Bros. (pronounced Warner Brothers), is one of the world's largest producers of film and television entertainment.
It is currently a subsidiary of the Time Warner conglomerate, with its headquarters in Burbank, California.
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It is currently a subsidiary of the Time Warner conglomerate, with its headquarters in Burbank, California.
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Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Brothers and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes.
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RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electronically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was a variable-area film exposure system.
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Theodore Willard Case (1888 Auburn, New York – 1944) known for the invention of the Movietone sound-on-filmsystem, was born into a prominent family in Auburn, New York.
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Auburn, New York
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Motto:
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Country United States
State New York
County Cayuga
Area
- City 8.4 sq mi (21.
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Seal
Motto:
Coordinates:
Country United States
State New York
County Cayuga
Area
- City 8.4 sq mi (21.
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City of Syracuse
A view of the Downtown Syracuse skyline
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Nickname: The Salt City
Location of Syracuse within the state of New York
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A view of the Downtown Syracuse skyline
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Nickname: The Salt City
Location of Syracuse within the state of New York
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Böwe Bell & Howell is a US-based former manufacturer of motion picture cameras and projectors.
According to its charter, Bell + Howell Company was incorporated February 17, 1907. It was duly recorded in the Cook County Record Book eight days later.
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According to its charter, Bell + Howell Company was incorporated February 17, 1907. It was duly recorded in the Cook County Record Book eight days later.
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William Fox (born "Wilhelm Fuchs" in January 1, 1879–May 8, 1952) founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain. Although Fox sold his interest in these companies in a 1936 bankruptcy settlement, his name lives on as the namesake of the FOX
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Freeman Harrison Owens (July 20, 1890 - December 9, 1979), born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the only child of Charles H. Owens and Christabel Harrison. He attended Pine Bluff High School in Pine Bluff, but quit in his senior year to work at a local movie theatre as a projectionist.
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The Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system was patented from 1919 on by German inventors Josef Engl, Hans Vogt, and Joseph Massolle. The name Tri-Ergon was derived from Greek and means "the work of three.
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Lee De Forest, (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor with over 300 patents to his credit. De Forest invented the Audion, a vacuum tube that takes relatively weak electrical signals and amplifies them.
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John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4 1872 – January 5 1933), more commonly known as Calvin Coolidge, was the thirtieth President of the United States (1923–1929). He is often referred to as "Silent Cal".
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August 11 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.
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20th century - 21st century
1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
1921 1922 1923 - 1924 - 1925 1926 1927
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1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
1921 1922 1923 - 1924 - 1925 1926 1927
Year 1924 (MCMXXIV
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April 15 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
1920 1921 1922 - 1923 - 1924 1925 1926
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1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
1920 1921 1922 - 1923 - 1924 1925 1926
Year 1923 (MCMXXIII
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William Fox (born "Wilhelm Fuchs" in January 1, 1879–May 8, 1952) founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain. Although Fox sold his interest in these companies in a 1936 bankruptcy settlement, his name lives on as the namesake of the FOX
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The Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system was patented from 1919 on by German inventors Josef Engl, Hans Vogt, and Joseph Massolle. The name Tri-Ergon was derived from Greek and means "the work of three.
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Story:
Hermann Sudermann
Starring Janet Gaynor
George O'Brien
Margaret Livingston
Cinematography Charles Rosher
Karl Struss
Editing by Harold D. Schuster
Distributed by Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s) Sept.
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Hermann Sudermann
Starring Janet Gaynor
George O'Brien
Margaret Livingston
Cinematography Charles Rosher
Karl Struss
Editing by Harold D. Schuster
Distributed by Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s) Sept.
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F.W. Murnau
Birth name Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe
Born December 28, 1888
Bielefeld, Germany
Died March 11, 1931 (aged 42)
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Years active 1919 - 1931
Awards
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Birth name Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe
Born December 28, 1888
Bielefeld, Germany
Died March 11, 1931 (aged 42)
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Years active 1919 - 1931
Awards
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Movietone News known in the U.S. as Fox Movietone News, produced cinema, sound newsreels from 1928-1963. One of the earliest in the series featured George Bernard Shaw Talks to Movietone News released on 25 June 1928.
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Subsidiary of News Corporation
Founded 1935, Fox Films founded in 1915
Headquarters Century City, California, USA
Industry Motion picture
Parent Fox Filmed Entertainment (News Corporation)
Website foxmovies.
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Subsidiary of News Corporation
Founded 1935, Fox Films founded in 1915
Headquarters Century City, California, USA
Industry Motion picture
Parent Fox Filmed Entertainment (News Corporation)
Website foxmovies.
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Academy Award
Awarded for Excellence in cinematic achievements
Presented by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country United States
First awarded May 16, 1929 to honor achievements of 1927/1928
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Awarded for Excellence in cinematic achievements
Presented by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country United States
First awarded May 16, 1929 to honor achievements of 1927/1928
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CinemaScope was a widescreen movie format used from 1953 to 1967. Anamorphic lenses allowed the process to project film up to a 2.66:1 aspect ratio, twice as wide as the conventional format of 1.33:1.
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The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers or SMPTE, (IPA pronunciation: [sɪmpti] and sometimes [sʌmpti]
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Thomas Alva Edison (February 11 1847 – October 18 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb.
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Location: Rochester, New York
Built/Founded: 1905
Architect: J. Foster Warner
Architectural style(s): Georgian
Added to NRHP: November 13, 1966 [1]
NRHP Reference#: 66000529
Governing body:
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Built/Founded: 1905
Architect: J. Foster Warner
Architectural style(s): Georgian
Added to NRHP: November 13, 1966 [1]
NRHP Reference#: 66000529
Governing body:
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Rochester, New York
A portion of Rochester's skyline, looking north-northeast along the Genesee River from the Ford Street Bridge.
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A portion of Rochester's skyline, looking north-northeast along the Genesee River from the Ford Street Bridge.
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