Evolution Of Sound In Film In The 1920's

In the 1920's before sound was introduced into film we had silent films. Stories were told through expression and even music. Pianists, complete orchestras, organists, and even some actors and narrators were invited by theaters to accompany the films being shown (Silent Films). On the Info Please website, the author of Movies and Films writes "by the 1920s, silent film writing, acting, photography, and music had reached an aesthetic pinnacle: very subtle emotional and plot nuances could be conveyed without the use of any accompanying dialogue. In fact, as the era of sound film drew to a close, filmmakers were able to convey their stories with a bare minimum of intertitles" (Movies and Film). The technology behind incorporating sound in films was difficult when it first began and has evolved tremendously.
Experiments were being carried out using sound as well as picture from the very beginning. Edison wrote in one of his papers " In the year 1887, the idea occurred to me that it would be possible to devise an instrument which
But it didn't stop there. The author of Movies and Films mentions that American corporations led the way to a solution, "RCA, Western Electric, AT&T, and Warner Brothers. Two of those corporations formed a third, Vitaphone, which produced the first commercially viable sound system, essentially a very large phonograph platter hooked up to a film projector with large leather belts, like straps or harnesses. Soon this clumsy apparatus was replaced by the now-standard strip of celluloid prepped for sound that runs down the side of the film strip, so that the two modes remain in sync." However, this didn't completely solve the problem with having clear sound in films. The new filming technology was big and created unwanted background noise. This is the reason why most of early films that include sound have a static sound to them. (Movies and