The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

If you think about it, it would send the sound behind the machine so I wonder if it was used at an early cinema to play along with silent films ? This would mean the operator would stand in front of the screen with the machine facing him and the sound would go back into the hall. Just an idea ?? There were some left hand wind horn gramophones designed for the same purpose after all. What does anyone think, were phonographs used with silent films ?? Or I suppose to just give a demonstration to an audience, not necessarily with a film ?

I'll offer a conjecture about this horn. Horns of great length, such as five feet or more, were impractical for most homes [been there, done that] and were more likely to be used for public exhibition; we know that was common in the early days. Transporting such a long horn would not have been convenient, either; imagine putting one into a horse-drawn wagon! Perhaps this was one attempt to make a large horn more portable.

mrphonograph wrote:this brass horn realy looks like the ones used by the edison co to copy edison discs to cylinder they used a horn 2 horn system like this for the production of blue amberols after the fire of 1914 after the first world war they used straight horns that would interlock

EDISON_studio-dubbing.jpg

so this could be a very rare find if what i think is true

greetings
tino

While I know they used DD to cylinder dubbing for Blue Amberols, what you are seeing in this photo is not that. It appears to be 2 Diamond Disc turntables going into a single Disc Lathe. This would have been for dubbing standard-length selections to the Edison LP discs.