when silents began to sing...

one of my favorite recent finds: a 1910 western electric telephone small brochure for a portable sound film system. the tiny promotional object includes an actual piece of sound film featuring george bernard shaw. you can see the horizontal lines that make up the soundtrack, in the detail of the film strip. the fact that these "dashes" generate the soundtrack of the film still seems a bit mysterious and alchemical to me...

note the images are a bit bigger than the object's actual size.