Скачать или смотреть Sound on film 1929 TRI ERGON - Der verliebte Bimbambulla

Der verliebte Bimbambulla (Bimbambulla)
Foxtrot (M.May/Charles Amberg)

Tanz-Orchester Géza Komor
mit Refraingesang

Tri Ergon 5628-A/ 02750
Berlin, c. August 1929

THE TRI-ERGON LABEL

Tri-Ergon is out of old greek and means "Work of (the) three"
The recording process for this Label used early sound on film technic;
That means that first the sound was cut on an film, than after possible editing
transferred to the phonograph/grammophon record.
The inventors hoped to make a better sounding record.
Before I came back to the Label, a lttle look back on early sound on film Talking Movie technic.

In 1918 three german innovators had the Idea of recording sound directly on the film with light via a photo cell. The Tri-Ergon sound-on-film system was patented in 1919 by the inventors Josef Engl (1893-1942), Hans Vogt (1890-1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889-1957).

On 17. September 1922 the three introduced in the Alhambra Theater/Berlin the first (short) talking movie with a sound track on the film. Almost half a year before Lee De Forest presented his Phonofilm in the USA! (De Forest improved the patents by Tri-Ergon and Eric Tigerstedt in Finland)

In the lack of money, TriErgon sold their patents to the Tri-Ergon AG in Zürich/Swiss.
The german cinema company UFA verifyed the chance of the new soundfilm. In Summer 1925 they sponsored a sound movie "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern" (The Girl with the match). The film premiered in December 1925. But technical problems made it a disaster - the early loudspeaker system drop out, only loud row and noise came out of it.... the audience booed out the presentation. The UFA chanceled immediately all contracts, and passed the chance of Talking Movies!

Again without money, Tri Ergon sold the patents to america. In 1926, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation purchased the U. S. rights to the Tri-Ergon patents from Tri-Ergon Aktiengesellschaft (Tri-Ergon AG), Zürich, Switzerland. Fox used these inventions to create the new sound-on-film system: Fox Movietone. One of the first feature films to be released in Fox Movietone was "Sunrise" (1927) directed by F. W. Murnau. Fox also used the system for the long-running newsreel series Fox Movietone News. To make it more complex, Fox also used patents and technic of the RCA photophone - and contrawise used RCA technics by Fox (actually Tri-Ergon)...

To make some money at least the "Tri-Ergon Photo-Electro-Records" Label was established in 1927. The Tri-Ergon system used a special form of microphone without mechanical moving parts (Katodophone) for sound pickup and a special electric discharge tube for variable density film recording.

I found in an old Broadcast magazine ("Bastelfunk", issue November 1929) an article with two photos about this record Label and system.
With "Photo A" the sound on film equipment is shown. In the middle on the right you can see the film, aside this in the black tube is the photo cell transferring the electric impulse from the microphone into light .
The article tells that the speed of the film is faster than normal, to improve sound quality - c. 70 shots per second instead the usual c. 25 shots.
The whole "recording" equipment is the same as used by Engl, Vogt and Massolle for real sound films, but without the camera optic atop.
In the last picture you can see the 1922 apparatus WITH the camera.

In "Photo B" is the transmission to record equipment. On the left is the filmreel, the little white tube beyond is the photo cell and over that the projector.
In the middle is the wax record. Notice that the record is upstanding!
Right of the record matrix is the cutter. Behind all this is the
Sound amplifier.

To improve sound quality, the re-recording procedure was slow downed in speed c. a 100 times. So the re-recording of a 4 min. record takes over 6 hours!!!

By the whole process the engineers had to master some new problems that aren´t with the standard technic.
For example the wax matrix is heated during recording process for good resultes. - No Problem if the process takes only c. 5 minutes, but what if this procedure needs 6 HOURS ?!?!.... and so on.
There are also some other problems about the physic of frequency and electric, but this would really go very deep sciences....