NEW RECORDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 May 1940, Page 2

NEW RECORDS

VOICE OF MECHANICAL MAN. Thousands of people who visited the Empirb Exhibition as Glasgow in 1938 were interested by the voice of the Mechanical Man. Shown by the Ministry of Health, this wonderful fellow was able to talk, his voice being provided by records which were played more than 6500 limes. The records used are a .wonderful invention. Though they cannot be broken, they can be scraped with a knife withous affecting reproduction. Instead of a disc, they consist of long strips of celluloid material, like a cinema film. Sound is photographed on to the film, which is only an eighth of an inch wide, and to avoid any risk of scratching, the sound track is bleached right through the film, so that there is no surface emulsion to rub oil, scratch, or wear.

One film, or record, will last as long as an hour, and another important feature of these records is that they will play complete musical works without interruption. Already a trial installation on board a passenger ship has been made with much success. The films are found to be a great improvement on the old type of record which was badly scratched or even broken during rough weather.

Talking clocks that tell the time by robot voices will be fitted with these films, and similar films will be used in lighthouses and fog beacons, for then can be operated for months on end entirely automatically. The invention on which the films are based is French, but the development of the invention is British.