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.

bal primitif...

postcard invitation to bob edwards' 1917 bal primitif (this is not an RPPC, but a printed card, you can see the dot patterns in the detail). i like the northwest native influenced ukulele...

unfortunately the prevalence of bob edwards from npr on the web denied me the ability to find any info on mr. creative here... he must've been a somebody because he had a phone in 1917, and was friends with saul harrison (this card is addressed to him and came from his estate). harrison was a an actor and director of silent films at the time...