Vitaphone

“ THE BAD MAN. 1930, 9 reels. Based on the play by Porter Emerson Browne. Credits: Director, Clarence Badger. © First National Pictures, Inc.; 1Sep30; LP1576. THE BAD MAN. Trailer, First National, 1930. 1 reel. © The Vitaphone Corp.; 13Aug30; MP 1797. BAD MAN BOBBS. 1915. 1 reel, Credits: Producer, Tom Mix; story, Edwin Ray Coffin. © Selig Polyscope Co, (Edwin Ray Coffin, author) ; 13Nov15; LP6961. THE BAD MAN OF BRIMSTONE, 1937. 9 reels, sd., sepia. Credits: Producer, Harry Rapf; director, J. Walter Ruben; original story, J. Walter Ruben, Maurice Rapf, screenplay, Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum ”

“ THE LAST BANDIT. Republic Productions, Inc., c1949. 80 min., sd., color, 35mm.
Summary: A Western about a reformed bandit who thwarts a train robbery which is engineered by his brother.
Credits: Associate producer and director, Joseph Kane; screenplay, Thames Williamson; story, Luci Ward, Jack Natteford; music, Dale Butts; film editor, 209Arthur Roberts.
Cast: William Elliott, Adrian Booth, Forrest Tucker, Andy Devine, Jack Holt.
© Republic Pictures Corp.; 9May49; LP2361.
THE LAST BOMB. Vitaphone Corp., in cooperation with U. S. Army Air Forces, c1947. Presented by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. ”

“ The minutest vibrations conveyed to the stand are perceived at the receiver as loud noises. The tread of a fly walking over the board, S, is heard like the tramp of a horse, and the ticks of a watch are audible in the receiver when the ear is several inches away from it. The slight touch of a feather on the stand is distinctly audible, and a current of air impinging upon it is reproduced as the noise of a stream of water. The microphone is, in fact, the most sensitive detector of vibrations that is known, and its employment as a transmitter has brought the telephone to its present perfection. ”

“ When I was chief wireless operator on the Andalusian I met operators from all over the world. Once when I was in London I scraped up an acquaintance with a young Swede and he had about half-a-dozen pairs of head-phones that he had picked up in different countries. Telephone receivers for wireless work are like violins in that no two of them are alike and you can’t tell by their appearance what they are really worth; like violins, too, telephone receivers improve with age provided the magnets are made of the right kind of steel and properly tempered. ”

“ Truly the science of radio-telegraphy has made rapid strides since the days of the “coherer,” until now, after the war, it is the most advanced in our human civilisation, and at the same time full of romance. Not a month passes but something new is discovered in that high-built, well-knit laboratory, where daily the keenest brains of wireless experimenters are at work devising, testing, and too often scrapping new instruments, new circuits, and new devices in order to improve and render less complicated both the ordinary wireless by Morse, and that modern marvel, the wireless telephone. ”

“ The apparatus used as developed by the engineers of the Bell system was in a measure an outgrowth of their work with the long-distance telephone. Wireless telephony, despite the wonders it has already accomplished, is still in its infancy. With more perfect apparatus and the knowledge that comes with experience we may expect that speech will girdle the earth.
It is natural that one should wonder whether the wireless telephone is destined to displace our present apparatus. ”

“ A small speaker whines into the phone transmitter; a little microphone picks up the sound from the handset’s receiver. Acoustic couplers don’t need phones with modular plugs, obviously—a boon to traveling executives—but they might not work if the handset is oddly shaped, as it is with some of the new-style phones. Also, loud noises in the room can confuse them.
A direct-connect modem, for that reason and others, would probably be better for your regular office. Also, consider a full-duplex modem in most cases. ”

“ Just the same, only in radio telephony we are confronted by a problem not met with in wireless telegraphy. We have not only to transmit sound, such as isolated dots and dashes, but to send through the air every rise and fall and inflection of the human voice just as it is recorded in the minute lines of a phonographic record. ”

“ Wireless telephony, like wireless telegraphy, but to an even greater extent, is peculiarly suited for the conveyance of marine intelligence. Wireless telephony occupies a unique position in this regard-no operator is required. The additional expense of an operator is an objection to the wireless telegraph in many cases, and forbids its installation. Anybody can operate the wireless telephone. It is also much quicker-words can be spoken more rapidly than they can be put into Morse signals and translated. ”

“ At the other end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the consciousness of another brain.
And so, notwithstanding all that has been done since Bell opened up the way, the telephone remains the acme of electrical marvels. No other thing does so much with so little energy. No other thing is more enswathed in the unknown. Not even the gray-haired pioneers who have lived with the telephone since its birth, can understand their protege. ”

“ The whole principle of the wireless telephone is based on the fact that sound can be transformed into electricity and then can be transformed back into sound again. I know," he said, with a smile, "that that sounds very much like saying that you can make eggs into an omelet and then get the omelet back into separate eggs again"—here there was an audible snicker from the boys—"but that is very much like what is done by the wireless, although it doesn't exactly fit the case. ”

“ These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. ”

“ Anything novel in the way of science attracted their bright, active minds as an electromagnet attracts steel. The idea of a wireless telephone, of the possibility of transmitting actual speech through space, just as the dots and dashes of the wireless telegraph are sped through the ether, quickened their inventive faculties to the highest pitch. Both felt a glow of pride that they had been selected, even before their father's scientific friends, to make the first test of this wonderful new invention. ”

“ We ask in vain for an answer to the question which is upon the lips of every one-What next? The microphone has proved itself highly useful in strengthening the sounds given out by the telephone, and it is probable that we shall soon see those three inventions working unitedly; for the microphone might make the telephone sounds so powerful as to enable them to be printed by phonograph as they are received, and thus a durable record of telephonic messages would be obtained. We can now transmit sound by wire, but it may yet be possible to transmit light, and see by telegraph. ”

“ It seemed to me that in this way a number of distinct telegraph messages might be sent simultaneously from the tuning-fork piano to the other end of the circuit, by operators each manipulating a different key of the instrument. These messages would be read by operators stationed at the distant piano, each receiving operator listening for signals of a certain definite pitch, and ignoring all others. In this way could be accomplished the simultaneous transmission of a number of telegraphic messages along a single wire, the number being limited only by the delicacy of the listener’s ear. ”

“ The merciful Lord has arranged that when there are less than twenty-four vibrations a second, or more than forty thousand they escape us. But a wireless instrument, on the contrary is spared nothing, having attached to it a detector that catches every sound and an amplifier that magnifies it and makes it discernible to our ears. When you listen in on a wireless telephone you will be uncontestably conscious of this. Also you must take into consideration that the waves sent out by a radio transmitter are not choppy, irregular ones such as you get when a stone is tossed into the water ”

“ FIG. 153.—The aerial system of a transatlantic station.
The wireless telephone enables a passenger on board ship to communicate direct with his home by relaying the message over the line wires. By the same means the captain of a ship can call his home office and communicate with the owner of the vessel.
Telegraphs and telephones are the nerves of the world, carrying swift messages from its brain centers to its hands, annihilating distance in thought. All differences between men as individuals and people as nations can be traced to the lack of close contact. ”

“ Many of those who had followed wireless telegraphy from its beginnings and knew somewhat of the theory of how it worked, set up a hue and a cry that the signals he had received were sent by ships at sea, or else they were due to static, as we call it now, that is, little charges of atmospheric electricity which accumulates on the aerial wire and finally discharges through the detector into the ground and this makes a click in the head-phones that sounds like a dot. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy is part of the established order of things. The wireless telephone is practical for limited distance, but is not a commercial rival of the telegraph. Great distances are claimed, but they are matters for proof and speculation.
There is no immediate possibility that wireless telephony will take the place of local exchanges. If the time ever does come that it in any way tends to supplant the line telephone for some uses, it is more than probable that each subscriber must have his own generating station and call up direct. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy is possible because mankind has discovered instruments which act as electric ears or eyes, catching and recording vibrations that had hitherto remained undetected.
The earliest known form of wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages by light. A man on a hill lights a lamp or a fire. This represents his instrument for agitating the ether into waves, which proceed straight ahead with incredible velocity until they reach the receiver, the eye of a man watching at a point from which the light is visible. ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that a large part of the important inventions in connection with wireless telegraphy have been the work of amateurs and private research and not the outcome of official brains or the handiwork of military or naval organisations. In fact we may say that wireless telegraphy itself in its inception was an amateur product. Numerous important inventions such as the crystal detector, the oscillating valve, the triode valve—have been due to private or amateur work. ”

“ To give the most efficient service, there will always need to be an expert to stand between it and the public.
As the final result of all these varying changes in switchboards and signals and batteries, there grew up the modern Telephone Exchange. This is the solar plexus of the telephone body. It is the vital spot. It is the home of the switchboard. It is not any one's invention, as the telephone was. It is a growing mechanism that is not yet finished, and may never be; but it has already evolved far enough to be one of the wonders of the electrical world. ”

“ Data-Phone makes use of all the telephone switching devices and repeating apparatus so that any type of communicating system using frequencies within the voice range may be used. For such systems the telephone company will install equipment to separate the different types of electrical transmission to prevent interference. Because Data-Phone enables not only the sound of the human voice to be sent over a telephone circuit, but information from a teletypewriter or business machine as well, this new use for the telephone system has expanded its service to many types of business communications. ”

“ In the case of the wireless telegraph the number of messages which may be sent simultaneously is much restricted. In the case of the wireless telephone, owing to the thousands of separate wave-lengths required for the transmission of speech, the number of telephone conversations which may be carried on at the same time is still further restricted and is so small that all who can employ wires will find it necessary to do so, leaving the ether available for those who have no other means of communication. ”

“ The aerial wire is precisely the same for either wireless telegraphy or wireless telephony. The transmitter of a wireless telegraph set generally uses a spark gap for setting up the electric oscillations, while usually for wireless telephony a vacuum tube is employed for this purpose. The receptor for wireless telegraphy and telephony is the same and may include either a crystal detector or a vacuum tube detector, as will be explained presently. ”

“ The wire chiefs must detect trouble under a thousand disguises. Perhaps a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into a cable. Perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone from one room to another. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. Or perhaps a submarine cable has been sat upon by the Lusitania and flattened to death. But no matter what the trouble, a telephone system cannot be stopped for repairs. ”