Abstract
“SOME Photographic Aspects of Sound Recording” was the subject of the Sir Henry Trueman Wood Memorial Lecture, which was given by Dr. C, E. Kenneth Mees, of the Eastman Kodak Company, at the Royal Society of Arts on May 16. Dr. Mees stated that the introduction of sound recording has influenced every section of the motion picture industry, from the nature of the original material selected for the presentation to the architectural design of the motion picture theatre itself. Two methods of sound recording are in general use, leading in one case to records in which the density of the photographic deposit varies, and, in the other, to records in which the area occupied by the photographic deposit varies. Reproduction depends on three qualities, loudness, frequency of pitch and wave form quality or timbre. The intensity range is limited primarily by the ground noise, which is chiefly due to physical defects in the films, such as scratches and dirt, although even in a perfectly clean film there is a very small amount of ground noise due to the granular structure of the silver deposit. By the use of special apparatus it is now possible to reduce ground noise considerably. The reproduction of high frequencies is dependent upon the resolving power of the photographic film. Special experimental apparatus has been designed to analyse the wave form and quality of the reproduction. “Improvements in the reproduction of sound by photographic means,” Dr. Mees concluded, “will depend, in the future as in the past, on intensive scientific research in relation to sound, electricity, and photography.”
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Photography of Sound. Nature 133, 754 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133754c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133754c0