The Picture Machine.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 8 May 1914, Page 2

The Picture Machine.

The Edison kinetophone was ex-, hibited for the first time in public on the stages of four prominent vaudeville theatres in New York city. In the first film a man made a speech explaining .the perfecting of

the talking picture by Edi.-ion in t'.ie obtaining of absolute synchronism between the picture and the souiv.'.s.

Then a pianist played, a lr'»;ler sounded the reveille, a yo":v;- \u<iy sang, and some dogs appeared and barked. The c!o;;s gave the most striking and m.Ujral demonstration of the new apparatus. A second

picture showed a minstrel show in which the various members of i\u>

troupe performed n-s naturally as in real life, though there was i,,, mistaking the fact that the talk am! music were produced by a phonograph. The intensification of the sound necessary in a Ih.-atre apparently gives to it more of that metallic quality of which it has Leon successfully deprived in th > smaller drawing-room machines. Nevertheless it is no more .lisagri.vnbl" than the voices of many of the actors who appear on the vaudeville .stage. The present talking pictures lr.st about five minutes each, though we understand a French machine has been perfected in which each film runs three times as long.