SIGNBOARD TALKIES

Evening Star, Issue 20252, 13 August 1929, Page 1

SIGNBOARD TALKIES

HEW INVENTIONS A talking signboard is now operating in the streets of San Diego, California, and is used to advertise the gramophone records and music for sale of that city. The .signboard takes the form of a largo poster mounted, on a wooden frame displaying a girl lying in a. deck, chair listening to a radio gramophone. The girl talks, introducing the records which the passing crowds can hoar coming out of the signboard. The equipment consists of a radio receiver power amplifier automatic phonograph, associated switching equipment, and time clocks, all of which arc housed behind the signboard. T 1 ie set is also actually tuned into one of the local broadcasting stations, while the announcements of the girl are made by phonograph records synchronised by the time clocks to lit in between the station broadcasts. Talkies in colour and on three dimensional screen can also be seen now in shot machines' in the United States. A ‘‘nickel” —a com of,the value of two-penoe-halfpenny—dropped in tin; slot in any of these new machines entitles one to" a' fivo-niinuto talkie, with a largo range of subjects to choose from. Oilier inventions ol to-day include a new paper carton milk container, which scientists claim may supersede the glass bottle entirely. They argue that the old bottle—used for forty yeais in milk dispensing—is large and heavy, that after use it has to be returned to the company for sterilisation and refill, that it is often broken on route, and that its cost—about twopence—is almost twenty times that of the paper container.