RCA Photophone - History and Licensing

History and Licensing

In the early years following World-War 1, Charles A. Hoxie working at General Electric (GE) developed a photographic film recorder, initially to record transoceanic wireless telegraphy signals. However this recorder was later adapted for recording speech and was used in 1921 to record speeches by President Coolidge and others which were broadcast over Station WGY (Schenectady). This recorder was called the Pallophotophone.

In 1925 GE started a program to develop commercial sound-on-film equipment based on Hoxie's work. Unlike the Phonofilm and Movietone systems in which the audio modulated the intensity of a recording lamp which exposed the soundtrack, thus creating a variable-density track, the GE system employed a fast-acting mirror galvanometer to create a variable-area soundtrack. A number of demonstrations of this system, now known as Photophone, were given in 1926 and 1927. The first public screenings with this system were of a sound version (music plus sound effects only) of the silent film Wings which was exhibited as a road-show in around a dozen specially equipped theatres during 1927.

In 1928 RCA Photophone Inc was created as a subsidiary of RCA (itself a GE subsidiary) to commercially exploit the Photophone system. 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, it was customary to "brand" a film with its sound system, variously as "RCA Sound Recording", "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 for the post-1956 divestiture of Western Electric under Litton Industries' ownership). This branding ceased in the 1970s, particularly after nearly all optical sound recording (for release prints) had been converted to Westrex's stereo variable-area system from RCA's and Westrex's mono systems.

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 serviced and supported to this day, although it is no longer branded as Photophone.