GRAMOPHONE CHANGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

GRAMOPHONE CHANGES.

NEW' RECORDING SYSTEM. OPERA ON'' SLIP iOF PAPER. Are the days of the needle, gramophone numbered? Is the existing gramophone in-dustry-with its vast;recourses of capital, under a serious threat from a competing talking machine, .woyking on a totally different principle ? Thesife are the, questions that many people aro anxiously .asking themselvos in Europe since the appearance of the Solenophone,' an -Austrian invention, which will play a wfiole opera, a whole symphpnyi-or a whole stage play off one.record. ' v * ___ The basic principle ; embodied in the Selenophona' is nothing new or "startling: it is already over-familiar in the talking film. In tha better .of the twb " talkie " techniques—the other one uses an ordinary disc gramophone record—the sound record .runs, parallel .to the pictures, and consists of a -serious ,of serrated spots of light and dark arranged in one line. To the eye "they are meaningless, but to the ear .they intelligible through the interpretation of f!he' wonderful selenium cell.'' * . % . 4 1. ; .

Obviously,, the sound record' could bo made without the pictures, ajid the space thus left vacant could .be used to print several .parallel • sotnid lines. . There, in all its simplicity, you* have the principle of the.Sfcleriophone. But. jvliere tho special' ingenuity of its inventors .comes in is in the iclea of printing.t{ie sound lines, by the offset process, : on ordinary paper instead of on the expensive and inflammable photographic film..' The playing instrument can, I believe, bo produced at a reasonable price, and tho records are :Vound on spools about nine inches in diameter and are said to cost no moro than .the average disc record. The Selenophone people are at present experimenting with a process of reproducing pictures on, their paper ribbon along with the sound line. ; . Ciil : '

The moment that is done satisfactorily and cheaply, the era ofjiome talkies " will be ushered because the " moving pictures " could be thrown on to a screen by means o£ reflectors', a technique already perfected' in the episcopes of reflecting magic lanterns, which oieed no transparent slides, but can screen ordinary pictures and opaque objects. It is impossible even o estimate the changes which all this vill bring about: in. two great industries

the v claims of the Austrians are sound.

It is curious to reflect that this new instrument, tho talking film' and television, are possible-only because \of a single accommodating property in a single, chemical element, a'property so accommodating and so " unlikely," that it almost\niakes one believe in the existence of a.speciaj providence—and a property, moreover, that was discovered by accident, and caused only when it was first observed.. " Talkies," Selenophones, and television are i possible.; •."only because .selenium has • a varying" resistance to electricity, varying, that is, with the degree of illumination. , ; '; ' , . .X : In the . chemists' table of affinities it' Tigures-as a neaivrelatibn t°*.sulphur,-but it counts as a metal.- For some time after 1 its discovery in 1817 it,.'remained, as many elements do •to this very day," inore "or less a scientific curiqsitv. In the_ routine examination of properties' that; always follows as a matter of- course whenever '< a new element is isolated, this particular one was credited with,' among other things, a- high resistance to electricity: That is to say. it fi gur ed ' prominently among the good 'insula tors, and men of science docketed it in their mind'as such for possible future use. : - - - . Among those wHo had dope so was the electrical , engineer Willoughby Smith', who was- engaged in research work jn connection --with a . new submarine, cable in 1873. Needing an* especially good insulator his choice fell.' on seleniuim results were most .'disappointing. '-- The element insisted on .behaving in the most silly and unaccountable way; its resistance varied fro'm hour to 'hour. It seemed uhablei to'make "up its mind. _lt s pretensions as aninsulator were exploded. ' Then suddenly May, .an, assistant' of Smith's discovered that \ its attitude to electricity was ■by no means but that this depended directly .and mathematically on the amount of illumination it received- —the more light the less resistance. * Needless to say, this discovery fired the imagination of investigators and inventors throughout the world., From being pushed aside like a spoilt child itpassed Rapidly to being admiringly buzzed round, like an in/ant prodigy. _ The possibilities were indeed exciting, and it clid not take long for the germs of the ideas to come into the world which, have since led," on' the one hand> to the " talkie'," and on the other 'to television. From ' the moment that selenium had proved itself so obliging,, the talkie was inevitable. Every schoolboy already kne>v how to change electrical pulsations into air pulsations,'that ..is, into sound. Here was selenium ' providing' the ..means _for changing light pulsations into electrical pulsations; the bridge from lfght to sound was laid. •