THE REGENT

Southland Times, Issue 20831, 20 July 1929, Page 5

THE REGENT

TALKIE INSTALLATION. WESTERN ELECTRIC HEAD’S COMMENTS. “The installation of talking motion picture apparatus at the Regent Theatre, Invercargill, is the latest and most up-to-date type—the kind used in over two thousand theatres throughout the world.” This statement was made by Mr. J. H. Barker, Jnr., Managing Director of Western Electric Company (N.Z.) Limited, whose company is responsible for the coming of talkies to this city. Western Electric engineers have been at work for several weeks to complete the installation which opened to the public last Saturday night. Mr. J. W. Mcßurney, the chief installation engineer-for the company, stated that the acoustic properties of the Regent Theatre were excellent and well adapted for the showing of sound pictures.

Comenting on the future of talking pictures in New Zealand, Mr. Barker said that he had already equipped ten theatres in the larger centres of the Dominion, with many small towns under contract for early installations. He said that the talking picture was really a series of inventions which began several years ago in the development of the telephone. “The telephone deals with the transmission of sound,” said Mr. Barker, “and although talking pictures are concerned with the recording of sound and the faithful reproduction of the recorded tone in the theatre, there are many points in common between the two industries.” He stated that his company had been building telephone equipment for the past fifty years and that the knowledge gained in this field and the necessary experimental work enabled his company to be the first in the field of talking pictures. His company has supplied practically all the film producers, including the British and Dominion Films Limited, of London, with apparatus for making the sound picture records and the surprisingly good reproduction heard in Western Electric-equipped theatres is due to the match between the recorded equipment and the theatre apparatus. Mr. Barker stated that the Western Electric system included both Movietone and Vitaphone, the former system the sound record being on the film itself in the shape of a narrow sound track with black and grey lines while in the Vitaphone method the sound record is on a large disc resembling a gramophone record. The equipment at the Regent includes 'both these methods and is the latest released by his company.