Audio
(ENG) Kinetophone (314)
Transcript
[SOUND—PIANO PLAYING RAGTIME.][1]
JERRY FABRIS—This elaborate system that you see here dates from 1913. And it was Edison’s second attempt to match up the phonograph with motion pictures.
NARRATOR—Edison called his latest system the kinetophone. You’re listening to a 1914 kinetophone cylinder, from an Edison movie called The Old Violin.
ACTOR—Ach, stop, please! Don’t play ragtime!
ACTRESS—But they play all those things at the movies.
ACTOR—The movies? Is it for this that I teach you to play the piano?…
[SOUND—PIANO AND VIOLIN, PLAYING CLASSICAL.]
JERRY FABRIS—So the phonograph would be up by the stage, by the screen, supplying the sound. The projector would be in the back of the theater, projecting the image. And the difficulty was getting those two machines, the projector and the phonograph, to run together in synchronization. … It worked well when one of Edison’s trained, specialized engineers was there, running the equipment. … But then when it came time to turn the equipment over the local theater owners, then it just didn’t work. And so it was kind of a flash-in-the-pan thing; it quickly fell by the wayside because it was just too complicated.
[1] Here and below: The old violin. Performers unknown. Directed by: Higham. Recording date: January 1914. Location: Edison motion picture film studio, Bronx, NY. Record format: Edison Kinetophone cylinder. Record number: 83 B (.1). Film production log number: 5105. NPS object catalog number: EDIS 4627
Description
English audio guide for Kinetophone, #314
Date Created
01/01/2007
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