RCA Photophone
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RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electronically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was a variable-area film exposure system. The modulated area (width) corresponded to the amplitude of the audio signal. The three other major technologies were the Warner Brothers Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and two variable-density sound-on-film systems, Lee De Forest's Phonofilm, and Fox-Case's Movietone.
The patent was awarded to General Electric (GE) in 1925, which dubbed the process Photophone, a name that had been used in previous decades for other sound film processes. RCA, a GE subsidiary, took over the the patent as part of a corporate competition with AT&T/Western Electric, a primary sponsor of both Vitaphone and Movietone.
The Photophone system was initially inferior to the proprietary variable-density sound-on-film process developed by Western Electric, but with the work of RCA engineers it eventually superseded that system. In 1928, the new Hollywood studio RKO Radio Pictures, controlled by RCA, used RCA Photophone for all of its movies, along with Paramount Pictures which also adopted Photophone. By 1950, all the major Hollywood studios were recording with variable-area systems.
[edit] References
- Coe, Brian, The History of Movie Photography, Westfield, NJ, Eastview Editions (1981), ISBN 0-89860-067-7.
- Enticknap, Leo, Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital, London, Wallflower Press (2005), ISBN 1-904764-06-1.
- Gomery, Douglas, The Coming of Sound, London & New York, Routledge (2005), ISBN 0-415-96901-8.
