The display was part of the "Magic in the Dark" exhibit at the Arizona Historical Society in Tempe.
One of the last projectors able to show "silent" movies at variable speeds, the "U" Base projector produced by Western Electric was designed to show sound on disc or "Vitaphone" type films as well as optical sound on film format. The curved gauge on the wood board in front of this machine is an original film speed indicator. In addition to gauges for each machine in the projection booth, duplicates were often mounted on the conductor's podium and manager's office, in order to coordinate running times and film speeds in larger theaters in the twenties.
These illustrations are from a 1929 Electrical Research Products Inc. catalog that was sent to theater owners. Besides telling the technical features of the Western Electric system and offering elaborate publicity support, it made a convincing sales pitch for "sound" versus "silent" houses based on statistics and ridiculed the theaters of the Nickelodeon era.
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The term "talkies" can be traced back to Edison's 1913 Kinetophone system, but movies were just movies and there was no differentiation between "silent" and "sound" movies until the tremendous publicity for theaters with the latest expensive synchronized sound equipment.
Copyright 1999 George C Hall