MOVING PICTURES THAT TALK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1066, 6 July 1912, Page 4

MOVING PICTURES THAT TALK.

THE LATEST THING IN CINEMATOGRAPHY.

Science has marched forward to another victory. So it was acclaimed by a gathering of learned gentlemen in the Royal Institution, recently, when Professor William Stirling gave a lecture with demonstrations. In a little while it will be the most popular item in all the music halls of Europe. It is an absolute perfection of the cinematograph combined with the phonograph. There have been half successful attempts before. The public has seen the cinematograph and heard the phonograph trying to keep pace with it. But an absolute unison between sight and sound was not accomplished. Now with M. Leon Gaumout’s invention of the “Chronophone” the synchronisation is complete and perfect. At the lecture the learned professors with their intellectual ladies clapped their hands and laughed delightedly when on the screen a Gallic cock appeared life-like in its pride and colours, and as it ruffled its feathers, and inflated its gorge, and opened its beak there came forth the most strident and triumphant cock-crows ever heard at dawn. Again and again, one heard the call ot chanticleer and so perfectly did the sounds correspond to the actions of the bird that it was almost impossible to believe that the real bird was not there.

A recitation from Kipling’s “Ballad of the Clampherdown” was given, and as the image of actor on the screen moved lips and facial muscles so the words were spoken. Then followed an angry scene in a French railway carriage, a monologue over the telephone, the adventures of a lion-tamer with his roaring . and excited beasts, and “The- toast of the King” at an English banquet, so perfectly “synchronised” that the effect of life was produced with amazing realism. In future it will be possible for political speakers to make their orations with all the eloquence of gesture and speech to great and distant audiences without leaving their own drawing room. It will be possible to see and hear plays performed without the actors coming to the threatre with bags and baggage. They will send their moving images and the reproduction of their voices. Hundreds of years hence our descendants may see and hear their forefathers as though their living ghosts walked and spoke long after their bones have crumbled to dust. The “Chronophone” will give a kind of immortality to all of us whose records are obtained.