ABSTRACT
The exhibition of films had always been accompanied by some form of sound, and silent film technique was developed because synchronization had not yet become reliable rather than because of any supposed virtue in silence. The invention of recording, reproducing, synchronizing and amplifying means was a tangle of patents, priorities and litigation, many of them concerned with some form of gramophone device. Lescarboura, writing at the beginning of this period and referring to sound film in general as ‘cinephone’, described not only attempts to synchronize the film and the phonograph, but also some successful efforts to produce sound-on-film, as well as experiments in electrical sound amplification. In 1921 The Bioscope, reporting a demonstration near Stockholm of a ‘film-photophone’ using sound-on-film and silenium for reconversion to sound, predicted a revolution in films. 1 The possibilities continued to intrigue technicians, and every now and then during the early twenties some hopeful inventor formed a company with yet another strange compound name, most of them concerned with some sort of synchronized disc.
