Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 31 May 91 23:48:47 CDT From: "William M. Hawkins" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Did Western Electric Also Make Sound Recordings? Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 416, Message 8 of 8 Lines: 23 I just returned from a visit to the Pavek Wireless Museum in a suburb of Minneapolis. It's a three year old museum with a major collection of wireless stuff. It also contains a Vitaphone Lathe, dated 1926, with a model number of WE D85249 (yes, it looks like a serial number, but that was on another plate). A single motor drives the turntable from one end and the lathe screw from the other. The placard says that Selsyns were used to couple the camera and the recording lathe. Selsyns are back to back three phase synchronous motors. Well, the transmitter is a generator and the receiver is a motor. So, that's how they synchronized sound and picture. Still, I didn't think a director could make a film a reel at a time, without cutting and splicing. Something had to be used for sound editing, to go with the film editing. The placard also said the lathe cut a 17.5 inch disk, which was used to press 16 inch copies. The disk on the turntable looked like metal, and the head looked like it could dig a serious groove in the metal. The 'card also said 33 RPM. Maybe they dropped the third of an RPM. Bill Hawkins, alias bill@bert.rosemount.com 612-895-6840 at work.