RCA Photophone

This article is for the sound-on-film technology. For the telecommunication device invented by Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter, see Photophone.

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 electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was a sound-on-film, "variable-area" film exposure system, in which the modulated area (width) corresponded to the waveform of the audio signal. The three other major technologies were the Warner Brothers Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, as well as two "variable-density" sound-on-film systems, Lee De Forest's Phonofilm, and Fox-Case's Movietone.

When Joseph P. Kennedy and other investors merged Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Radio Corporation of America, the resulting movie studio RKO Radio Pictures used RCA Photophone as their primary sound system. In May 1929, RKO released Syncopation, the first film made in RCA Photophone.

History

Historically, the name Photophone had been first used for the telephony by light-beam invention patented by Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory in 1880.

A new, completely separate patent for sound-on-film technology 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 GE patent as part of a corporate competition with AT&T and their affiliate Western Electric, the primary sponsors of both the Vitaphone and Movietone systems.

For nearly half a century, motion picture sound systems were licensed, with two major licensors in North America, RCA and Western Electric, which licensed their principal sound element (original track negative) recording systems on a non-exclusive basis. In general, motion picture producers elected to license one or the other. In a few cases, where mergers had occurred, a producer might be licensed by both. For many years was customary to "brand" a film with its sound system, variously as "RCA Sound Recording" or "Western Electric Recording" or similar brands, often including the corporate logo of the licensor ("Meatball" for RCA; "The Voice of Action" for Western Electric; "Li" Westrex Recording System for the post-1956 divestiture of Western Electric under Litton Industries' ownership). This branding ceased in the 1970s.

A great many years later, the Photophone trademark would be reused by the Western Electric/Westrex stereo variable-area system, after both the Western Electric and Westrex trademarks became unavailable due to corporate asset sales, but the Western Electric/Westrex stereo variable-area system continued to be marketed by a successor, and it is still marketed to this day.

List of licensees

Primary RCA (Photophone) licensees include:

• Walt Disney Productions
• RKO Radio Pictures (liquidated)
• Republic Pictures (liquidated)
• Warner Bros.-First National

Secondary RCA licensees include:

• Revue Productions (later integrated into Universal Studios)
• Screen Gems (later integrated into Columbia Pictures)
• TCF-TV (later integrated into Twentieth Century Fox)

Primary Western Electric (Westrex) licensees include:

• Columbia Pictures
• Samuel Goldwyn (liquidated)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Paramount Pictures
• Rank Organisation (liquidated)
• Selznick International (liquidated)
• Twentieth Century-Fox
• Universal Pictures

Secondary Western Electric licensees include:

• Glen Glenn Sound (later integrated into Todd-AO)
• Robert L. Lippert (liquidated)
• Monogram Pictures (liquidated)
• (Fox) Movietone News (liquidated)
• Ryder Sound Services (liquidated)
• Technicolor
• Todd-AO
• Warner Bros. Vitaphone (uncredited)

Comparison of (mono) variable-area and variable-density

Although variable-area sound system recording is usually associated with RCA and variable-density sound system recording is usually associated with Western Electric, these relationships are not cast into stone.

Both variable-area systems and variable-density systems were marketed by both RCA and Western Electric, with roughly equal measured and perceived quality from both systems and from both manufacturers.

Neither recording system nor manufacturer was clearly superior to the other, except where specific customer end-to-end processes made one system/manufacturer more consistently superior to the other system/manufacturer.

Variable-density was preferred for Technicolor sound prints as this process utilized a silver gray-scale "key" record, thereby creating a CMYK color image, and the sound track was also a silver gray-scale record, which greatly facilitated variable-density (and made variable-area rather difficult). The "key" record was deleted from most Technicolor prints after 1944, thereby creating a CMY color image, but Technicolor's strong preference for variable-density continued long thereafter.

Variable-density was finally abandoned as customer preferences for "dual-bilateral variable-area" sound tracks emerged in the late-1950s. This required changes to some laboratory processing and quality controls, but the real reason for variable-density's demise was yet to come.

Re-introduction of stereo variable-area

In the mid-1970s, Westrex Corp. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Litton Industries since 1956, and the successor to Western Electric's cinema sound business unit) re-introduced the ca. 1938 "four ribbon" light valve, and the ca. 1947 RA-1231 sound recorder.

As the RA-1231 was actually a stereo variable-area recorder—although when it was originally introduced in 1947 it was a mono 35mm variable-density or variable-area recorder, or a mono 16mm variable-density or variable-area recorder, at the customer's option—variable-density's fate was sealed as stereo optical sound prints (as contrasted with stereo magnetic sound prints or mono optical sound prints) became a marketing imperative.

When encoded utilizing Dolby Laboratories's technology (itself being in part licensed from Sansui), the discrete L and R channels of Westrex's stereo variable-area system were renamed "Left Total" and "Right Total", and when decoded utilizing Dolby's Cinema Processor these produced the L, C, R and S sound image first popularized by Fox's CinemaScope system in 1953.

Stereo optical sound prints are compatible with all aspect ratios (and with KS-type film perforations) whereas stereo magnetic sound prints are compatible only with CinemaScope or CinemaScope-type wide screen processes (and with CS-type film perforations). Stereo variable-area, therefore, provided for the first time a stereo sound system which was compatible with the industry standard spherical (i.e., non-squeezed; 1.85:1 aspect ratio) format and the industry standard anamorphic (i.e., 2X squeezed; 2.35:1 aspect ratio) format.

Nearly all original track negatives (OTNs) are now produced as stereo variable-area, and the former Western Electric (Westrex) system has been renamed Photophone and has become the de-facto standard, world-wide.

The degenerate case of stereo variable-area (i.e., no 4-2-4 encoding/decoding, and left total/left equal to right total/right) produces a conventional "dual-bilateral" mono track. The partially degenerate case of stereo variable-area (i.e., no 4-2-4 encoding/decoding, but discrete left total/left and right total/right) produces a stereo 2.0 track.

RCA Photohone system abandoned – Westrex (stereo) variable-area system renamed Photophone

The RCA system was abandoned as it was incapable of producing time-aligned stereo OTNs, whereas time-aligned stereo OTNs were inherently a part of the Western Electric (Westrex) system since 1938.

A prototype 16mm two-channel, dual-language (English and Spanish) variable-area system, initially promoted by RCA and Eastman Kodak and later modified by Dolby Labs for 35mm stereo, was initially employed for Dolby Stereo but this system was technically flawed and was almost immediately replaced by the Westrex stereo variable-area system.

The Westrex system was renamed Photophone after the Western Electric and Westrex registered trademarks were sold by AT&T and Litton, respectively, to others, for uses other than cinema sound systems.

Renaming the Westrex system to Photophone was facilitated by the demise of RCA's cinema sound business unit, by the hand of GE, RCA's acquirer, and by its failure to protect the Photophone trademark.

The Westrex system, renamed Photophone, is still in new production, with more than 100 systems currently in active service, world-wide. Some users, including Disney and Warners, have multiple systems. The RCA system is essentially defunct.

The (Westrex) Photophone system also has the capability of producing a DTS time-code track along with its native stereo variable-area tracks, or DTS time-code alone for use with 70mm and "special venue" prints.

See also

• Vitaphone
• Movietone
• Phonofilm
• Photokinema
• Pallophotophone
• Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner
• Sound film
• Sound-on-disc
• List of film formats

Bibliography

• Brian Coe, The History of Movie Photography (Westfield, NJ: Eastview Editions, 1981) ISBN 0-89860-067-7
• Leo Enticknap, Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital (London: Wallflower Press 2005) ISBN 1-904764-06-1
• Richard Barrios, A Song in the Dark (London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0195088115
• Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997) ISBN 978-0684811628
• Douglas Gomery, The Coming of Sound (London & New York: Routledge, 2005) ISBN 0-415-96901-8

External links

• List of Early Sound Films 1894–1929 at Silent Era website
• Alfred Hitchcock and Anny Ondra in Sound Test for Blackmail (1929) filmed in RCA Photophone