Pallophotophone: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 14:18, 4 June 2010
The pallophotophone (also known as the RCA Photophone) was an audio recording device developed by General Electric researcher Charles Hoxie ca. 1922. Hoxie took the name of the device from the Greek words for "shaking light sound".
The pallophotophone was a sound-on-film system which could record and replay multiple audio tracks on unsprocketed 35mm Kodak monochrome film using a photoelectric process that captured audio wave forms generated by a vibrating mirror. It is thought to be the world's first effective multitrack recording system, predating magnetic tape multitrack recording by at least 20 years.
The pallophotophone was developed as part of GE's ongoing research into creating a workable sound system for motion pictures, and GE experimented with the system by recording many early radio broadcasts from its Schenectady, New York radio station WGY in the 1920s and early 1930s. However the system was time-consuming and expensive to use and it was eventually superseded by the more efficient and economical optical film soundtrack systems developed by Western Electric and other companies.
It is believed that none of the original pallophotophone machines built by GE have survived to the present day, although a few reels of pallophotophone recordings of radio broadcasts still exist. A batch of surviving pallophotophone reels were rediscovered in the collection of Schenectady Museuem by curator Chris Hunter. Hunter then contacted GE engineer Russ De Muth, who studied Hoxie's original sketches for the device and built a new pallophotophone player from scratch using modern components and was able to recover the audio from the reels.
Among the material on the surviving reels is the earliest known recording of the NBC chimes, a broadcast of a high school basketball match (believed to be the world's second-oldest recording of a sports broadcast) and an historic 1929 recording of the 82-year-old Thomas Edison, with Henry Ford and President Herbert Hoover, speaking on a broadcast commemorating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the incandescent light bulb[1].