ABSTRACT
A New York firm, established 20 Apr 1926 as a joint venture of Warner Bros. and Western Electric. The purpose was to make disc records that would provide sound for motion pictures. This was one of the two active approaches to the making of talking pictures, the other being the optical soundtrack. While the optical soundtrack became the norm eventually, in the late 1920s both systems were competing for attention in the film industry, which was of course dealing only with silents at the time. For a year the Vitaphone work was carried on in the Manhattan Opera House, then from 1927 in Hollywood.
