TALKING FILMS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16987, 10 March 1923, Page 7 (Supplement)

TALKING FILMS.

PICTURE AND VOICE OX ONE STRIP. Talking and singing pictures art much nearer realisation than generally imagined, and by a process of synchronisation altogether unsuspected- m fact, pictures and voice on one strip of film. 'I hat was the prospect foreshadowed by Professor A. O. Rankine at the Scientific Novelties Exhibition in London. The voice has already been photographed, and not merely in the pictorial sense: the photograph, which looks like a series of black and white lines (almost like a piano keyboard in appearance), is also a record which can l>e made to reproduce the voice at will. Ordinary kinema film strip is used

for this, so that the “filming” of the voice on the same strip that has filmed the picture is in view. The difficulty at present would appear to oe that while for pictures t-he film moves by jerks, for the voice it must move regularly. Professor Rftnkine explained the recording of the voice by photograph as a part of the system of telephoning In means of light. The sending of speech along a beam of light liars been done for 40 years, but the process is not generally known. It has advantages of secrecy over wireless telephony. but can only be sent along a straight beam. Experiments have been successful up to a distance of two miles; and the best achievement of all is the photographing of a message (as above described) so that it becomes a record to be reproduced at will.