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Vacuum Tube Orchestra to Supplant Human Players

ALEXANDER’S vacuum tube band is coming to town tomorrow, and perhaps the day after tomorrow Sousa’s vacuum tube band will be playing on the Million Dollar Pier at Atlantic City while Mr. Sousa and his musicians are in the recording studios of a New York musical agency.

For a new magic in music is about to be born that will make today’s electronic reproduction sound like the rankest kind of cacophony by comparison. The new electronic band will breathe the breath of life; it will take on new color, new brilliance and a faithfulness that will permit it to escape once and for all the stinging criticism now levelled at it by our impresarios. Read the rest of this entry »

The Andy Gard Home Voice Recorder

IT’S NEW! IT’S REVOLUTIONARY! IT’S ELECTRONIC!

A NEW FASCINATING RECORDING HOBBY
Only $14.95

NOW! FOR THE FIRST TIME!

You can cut your own records in the privacy of your own home! If you now have a phonograph, send for this extra recording equipment for some of the most enjoyable moments of your life. Put your voice on records, or Dad’s or Mom’s, or your friend’s. Make a recording of baby sister or brother and save it for posterity. Have fun at parties, or in the classroom. Read the rest of this entry »

Plastic Phonograph Records Are Decorated in Color

Appropriate color pictures adorn both sides of new plastic phonograph records, made-by Vogue Recording Co., Inc., of Detroit, that not only outlast ordinary shellac records but may be put up in the game room or children’s room as decorations. A noiseless, super-high-fidelity plastic surface on an aluminum core prevents them from breaking or warping and gives true tone without needle scratch. .

Phonograph Plays Paper Strips

ONE strip of paper will carry an evening’s entertainment under the new system developed by an Austrian company, under the title of the “Selenophon Piccolo,” by which the “sound tracks,” such as the standard moving-picture sound film carries, are printed in black and white on an inexpensive strip of paper. A thousand feet of this runs twenty minutes; the output of the photo-cell which scans it being amplified in the same manner as the output of the magnetic pickup used with an audio amplifier in phono-radio combinations. A single strip may carry as many as eight sound tracks, on each side. Read the rest of this entry »

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HOW TO MAKE A PHONOGRAPH

By WALTER LEE

IN case any person of a mechanical turn of mind wishes to try his hand at building a talking machine, I will explain what I used and how I used it. But before I do so, it may be well to explain, in a general way, the principle of phonography, so that the experimenter will know just what he is doing and why he is doing it that way.
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Phonograph-Movie Machine Plays Tunes for Pictures

A COMBINATION phonograph, and motion-picture projector that plays appropriate music as the film is being shown has been invented by A. L. Edminson, of Los Angeles, Calif. After eight years of experiment he has combined the two machines into a cabinet slightly larger than that of the standard phonograph. The upper part contains the phonograph; the lower a motion-picture projector.

The films are exhibited on a silk screen, measuring 18 by 22 inches, which is placed behind the doors of the sounding-box. It is claimed that the pictures are projected clearly enough to be seen by an audience 40 feet away.
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Movie Fans Collect Stars’ Voices
A LIBRARY of phonograph records constitutes the unusual “autograph album” of two Hollywood enthusiasts, whose hobby is collecting the voices of movie actors and actresses. Not satisfied with mere signatures scrawled in a book, they have developed a technique of their own to obtain a more interesting souvenir. Read the rest of this entry »

PHOTO AND MESSAGE ON PHONOGRAPH POST CARD

Here is a new way to send a greeting to a friend. Phonograph records on post cards have been made before, but now a German inventor has combined the record with a real photograph. The sender has his picture taken, records his voice on top of it, and the result is a personal record ready for the mail. A long message is recorded on several post cards, each one numbered.

Phonograph Disk Directs Automatic Machine

Automobile bodies shaped automatically at the direction of a master phonograph record, furniture turned on lathes guided by a wax disk, unmanned machine guns spitting fire at the will of a record far back of the lines—these are some of the promises of an invention by Ivan Eremeeff, sound engineer. Read the rest of this entry »

Phonograph Disks Run Crewless War Tank

Machines can execute complicated maneuvers and return after their mission has been performed WITH the discovery by a French scientist that phonograph disks can be used to record mechanical movement as well as sound, the dream of airplanes and tanks that operate by remote control is brought nearer to realization. The practicability of completely automatic control was demonstrated recently at Paris where an electric truck started, changed its course, backed up, reversed its direction, and finally stopped without the guidance of a human hand. Phonograph records, used in the experiment, could guide a torpedo into a fortified harbor to destroy an enemy battleship; or drive a tank against enemy machine gun nests, rake them with fire and return the tank to its own trenches. The movements of the torpedo or tank would be carefully calculated in advance. A master control arm on a recording device would then be manipulated to create electric impulses corresponding in timing to the desired evolutions of a complicated maneuver. An electric pick-up would convert these impulses into mechanical energy and the needle of the pick-up would impress them on the disk. Read the rest of this entry »

USE PHONOGRAPH AS AN ALARM CLOCK
A novel attachment for the phonograph by which a heavy sleeper may be aroused at any hour he wishes by soft music, was recently shown in London, England. The alarm-clock device is set at the desired hour, and wound. A brake on the turntable of the phonograph is released at the set hour by a slight pull from the alarm key of the clock.

TALKIE, PHONOGRAPH, RADIO, ALL IN ONE

A new “home talkie” device houses in one cabinet a projector for standard sixteen-millimeter film, a phonograph for the sound accompaniment or for ordinary records, and a radio receiver. Words or music accompanying the pictures are played by sixteen-inch disks, synchronized with the film. The hinged top of the cabinet contains the projecting screen.