Time Magazine profiles Thomas Edison

[Lenoirstreetguy]

George Blacker was dubbing kinetophone cylinders in the Yale Archinve.. The ones he did in 1981 were:

Number 45 Sextette from Lucia with Agnes Kimball, Mary Jordan, Charles Harrison ,Royal Fish, Frederick Wheeler and Donald Chalmers.( Edison Phonograph stalwarts all! )
Jack's Joke
Scene from Julius Caesar
Charge of the Light Brigage
Revenge of the Indian Girl
Wainright Quartette No.2 ( Yale had no cylinder for this, just the box)
Lecture Record (E)
And more interestingly " There was a film in which Edison himself spoke and concluded by breaking a dish to demonstrate synchonization"
Now THAT would be a find. I wonder if any part of it has turned up.


None of these seem to be included in the the kinetophone sound tracks on the Edison National historic site.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edisoni ... icture.htm
If you play one of those uploads, you will note a knock at the very beginning. This was for the purpose of synchronization. The operator running the phonograph ( it took " two to tango" in the world of the Kinetophone) at the front of the theatre put the cylinder on the machine with the stylus aligned with a cut out in the celluloid. Then he turned the cylinder by hand until he heard the knock. He stopped just past this point and pressed a button which operated a buzzer that let the projectionist know that all was ready at the sound end. He turned his attention to the screen and waited for the projectionist to start. Immediately after the title appeared there was a foot of blank frames . As soon as that appeared on the screen it was the signal for the phono operator to get ready and the moment the first image flashed on the screen he threw the lever engaging the clutch which started the cylinder and if luck was with them the synchronization was then perfect. The projectionist could monitor the sound via a telephone set up between the phonograph and the booth. This isn't all . The projectionist had control of the synchronizer This was a device with a dial which was attached to the projector and to the phonograph via a cord running the length of the theatre If the dial remained in the centre all was well, but if it drifted then the synch was off and the operator then yanked on the cord to either speed up or retard the cylinder. Blacker's description isn't quite clear about this device and I have read other descriptions which would imply there were two cords:one to speed up the phonograph and one to slow it down.
Can you imagine the stress? This in a nutshell one of the biggest bugs of the system: the fact that the phono was not run as a slave device attached to the projector a la Vitaphone. With that system once one got the needle in the right place at the commencement of the disc you could forget it and as long as the film breaks were repaired with an equal number of frames the synchronization would be not a problem. The Edison projectionists on the other hand had the double whammy: a non-slave phonograph with a mind of its own AND the troubles of making sure film was repaired correctly. I have read rather humourous reviews of the early screenings where things went horribly wrong as the projectionist sped up the cylinder ..with a great Minnie Mouse effect..in order to catch up with the film/
Jim Tennyson