Chronophone
Early sound-on-disc cinema sound system
The Chronophone is an apparatus patented by Léon Gaumont in 1902 to synchronise the Cinématographe (Chrono-Bioscope) with a disc Phonograph (Cyclophone) using a "Conductor" or "Switchboard". This sound-on-disc display was used as an experiment from 1902 to 1910. In January 1911, the industrial exploitation started at the Olympia. Chronophone would show Phonoscènes (an early forerunner of music videos) and films parlants ("Talking Films") almost every week from 1911 until 1917 at the Gaumont Palace, "the Greatest Cinema Theatre in the World", previously known as the Paris Hippodrome.
A later version of the Chonophone was known as a Chronomegaphone.
A Chronophone is preserved in the collection of the Musée des Arts et Métiers, another is in the collection of the George Eastman Museum, and a Chromomegaphone is owned by Gaumont.
In the United States, the early rival of the Chronophone was the Cameraphone, which included a Graphophone with a type of mechanical sound amplifier known as a Higham-A-Phone reproducer.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chronophone”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Projecteur Gaumont 35 mm CNAM-IMG 0559.jpg by Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr
- Musée des Arts et Métiers - Chronophone de Léon Gaumont (37545907542).jpg by Frédéric BISSON from Rouen, France, CC BY 2.0
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