Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And while I was preparing for c
Speaker 1: e S, which I am getting ready to travel to,
Speaker 1: as I'm recording this, I'm recording this the Friday before
Speaker 1: I jump on a plane and head out to Las Vegas, Nevada. Well,
Speaker 1: I read a lot of emails from a lot of
Speaker 1: different companies, and they're all attempting to entice me to
Speaker 1: go to a particular part of ce S to see
Speaker 1: their booth or their presentation, or maybe even to a
Speaker 1: hotel suite off the exhibition floor, because you know, some
Speaker 1: companies will rent out a suite of rooms rather than
Speaker 1: secure exhibition space for lots of reasons. That's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there anyway. One of these companies, the ones that
Speaker 1: sent me these emails, was our ci A. And the
Speaker 1: thing that really caught my eye is that in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: our CIA is celebrating it's one anniversary. Our c A
Speaker 1: has been a really important company in technology for lots
Speaker 1: of different reasons, not just consumer tech, and our c
Speaker 1: A is responsible directly for two of the big broadcast
Speaker 1: networks in the United States, and indirectly it's responsible for
Speaker 1: the third. I thought I would explore the history of
Speaker 1: this company and what it's been through during the century
Speaker 1: of its existence. So this is the first episode where
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the formation of our CIA.
Speaker 1: But of course this also means that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be doing a lot of backtracking because while our c A,
Speaker 1: which was an initialism originally for Radio Corporation of America,
Speaker 1: it would become an established company in nineteen nineteen, the
Speaker 1: history actually dates further back. So we've got to talk
Speaker 1: about some other companies and some politics and some other
Speaker 1: big issues that would lead to the formation the founding
Speaker 1: of our c A. So let's go back to the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. In the late nineteenth century, invention and innovation
Speaker 1: were rapidly changing the world. You had the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: and it had altered the way we do work. It
Speaker 1: had impacted the price of goods. Things became cheaper because
Speaker 1: it was easier to make a heck a lot more
Speaker 1: of just about everything. People had more time on their hands,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, you had engineers and inventors
Speaker 1: who were experimenting with stuff like electricity and magnetism and
Speaker 1: radio waves. Entrepreneurs from around the world, some of them inventors,
Speaker 1: other just business not just but others of the business
Speaker 1: minded people who saw opportunity through the invention of others,
Speaker 1: began to form corporations that could exploit these discoveries for profit,
Speaker 1: and they included companies like the American Telephone and Telegraph
Speaker 1: Company also known as A T and T. Also General
Speaker 1: Electric which grew out of several companies, one of which
Speaker 1: was founded by Thomas Edison himself, and many more. The
Speaker 1: discovery of radio waves and the technology that would allow
Speaker 1: humans to produce, transmit, and receive radio waves in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way is beyond the scope of these episodes. Besides,
Speaker 1: I've talked about that a lot in earlier episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. You can search the archives. There tons of
Speaker 1: episodes where I talk about radio waves and the history
Speaker 1: of radio. But by the early nineteen hundreds, there were
Speaker 1: a dozen or so radio operating stations in the United States.
Speaker 1: Several of these stations were owned by foreign companies, and
Speaker 1: almost all of them were dedicated to transmitting signals using
Speaker 1: Morse code. So this wasn't about radio stations playing the
Speaker 1: top forty or anything like that. At this stage, these
Speaker 1: were communication and stations. They were meant to transmit signals
Speaker 1: from one place to another, to send communications across the nation.
Speaker 1: It was sort of analogous to the telephone infrastructure, so
Speaker 1: not meant as a entertainment or news source. The telephone
Speaker 1: companies had not yet entered into this business at this point.
Speaker 1: These were all individual enterprises, some of which were getting
Speaker 1: pretty large, and the biggest of all of them was
Speaker 1: the American Marconi Company, named after Marconi, the guy who
Speaker 1: gets the credit for inventing radio, that is, the transmission
Speaker 1: technology of radio, though that is of course a matter
Speaker 1: of great dispute in certain academic circles. Nicola Tesla would
Speaker 1: be the other name that gets thrown around in that
Speaker 1: and for good reason. Tesla was awarded a patent early on,
Speaker 1: and that patent would eventually get overturned in favor of
Speaker 1: Marconi's under somewhat shady circumstan answers. Anyway, in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen fourteen, war broke out in Europe. Somewhat optimistically,
Speaker 1: people were calling it the War to end all wars,
Speaker 1: but now we call it World War One. Thus optimism
Speaker 1: did not win out. Now, while the United States initially
Speaker 1: maintained a neutral status during the war, the US government
Speaker 1: was already making preparations in the event that the nation
Speaker 1: would be pulled into the conflict, and part of that
Speaker 1: was an executive order that was signed by Woodrow Wilson
Speaker 1: on August five, nineteen fourteen. That executive order authorized the
Speaker 1: United States Navy Department to censor international telegraph messages that
Speaker 1: were sent by radio firms, the largest of which was
Speaker 1: the Marconi Company. Now, Marconi Company challenged the legality of
Speaker 1: this executive order, saying this censorship, you can't do it.
Speaker 1: Legal battles would follow, and the Navy would have ultimately
Speaker 1: shut down on Mark Cony radio transmission station for three
Speaker 1: months until the company agreed to follow regulations in January
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen. Eventually, even this was thought to be too risky,
Speaker 1: and the United States government effectively took over the American
Speaker 1: Marconi Company. And the American Marconi Company was technically it
Speaker 1: was a subsidiary. It was a subsidiary of a company
Speaker 1: that had its headquarters in England. So the U. S
Speaker 1: Government says, we want to maintain neutrality. We cannot have
Speaker 1: stations that are located in the United States sending messages
Speaker 1: on behalf of one or another of the parties that
Speaker 1: are at war in Europe, because that would seem to
Speaker 1: suggest that we are on a particular side and we
Speaker 1: want to stay out of this. So the US says,
Speaker 1: in order to do this, we're going to take over
Speaker 1: your assets. They're not yours anymore. There ares Boo who
Speaker 1: Now at the end of the war, the United States
Speaker 1: still had those assets of the American Marconi Company, and
Speaker 1: the government needed a way to offload them. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to keep them. They also wanted to ensure that
Speaker 1: those assets would remain under American control. They didn't want
Speaker 1: foreign nations to have access to critical communications technologies with
Speaker 1: you on US soil. So the government approached a group
Speaker 1: of companies that included General Electric, which would become the
Speaker 1: dominant partner in this group, Westinghouse, A T and T,
Speaker 1: Western Electric, and the United Fruit Company. And if you're
Speaker 1: like me, your reaction to that last partner was probably
Speaker 1: hang on, did he say United Fruit Company? And indeed
Speaker 1: I did. That company has a complex and controversial history.
Speaker 1: It was involved in various levels of government in many
Speaker 1: regions across the world, and particularly in Central and South
Speaker 1: America and the Caribbean, and and it was operating as
Speaker 1: an effective monopoly in a lot of places. Has a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, a lot of tie INDs with colonization,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of negative things that kind
Speaker 1: of tie into this company's history. But in nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: the United Fruit Company had established the Tropical Radio and
Speaker 1: Telegraph Company, which is kind of what brought it up
Speaker 1: as a potential partner for this enterprise. So anyway, these
Speaker 1: partners all got together and they formed the Radio Corporation
Speaker 1: of America or r c A in nineteen nine. It
Speaker 1: was essentially a government sanctioned monopoly in the radio industry
Speaker 1: in the United States. The companies all pooled their patents
Speaker 1: together in a series of cross licensing agreements to avoid
Speaker 1: any conflicts of having one company attempt to leverage its
Speaker 1: essential patents over the other partners in the operation of
Speaker 1: r C as business. So essentially they were all saying,
Speaker 1: here are all the patented technologies that we have our
Speaker 1: disposal that relate to radio transmission technologies. We want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we're not creating impediments for our c
Speaker 1: A to do business. To head up this company, the
Speaker 1: partners chose a guy named David Sarnoff. Sarnov himself had
Speaker 1: a really interesting history. He was born in Russia in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety one, but his family immigrated to America in
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred. He had started working as a messenger boy
Speaker 1: for a telegraph company in nineteen o six, and he
Speaker 1: became a telegraph operator for the American Marconi Company a
Speaker 1: couple of years later. Legend has it that he picked
Speaker 1: up the distress calls from the Titanic in nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: while working in the radio station that was owned by
Speaker 1: John Wannamaker, but the truth appears to be that Sarnov
Speaker 1: had instead picked up signals of rescue ships that were
Speaker 1: responding to the Titanics distress call, and then he relayed
Speaker 1: that information to the local press in New York. He
Speaker 1: was promoted to chief inspector of American Marconi a few
Speaker 1: years later, and he wrote a memo in nineteen sixteen
Speaker 1: in which he proposed building radios for home consumers and
Speaker 1: he called it a radio music box. So this is
Speaker 1: before the days of commercial radio, but he had thought
Speaker 1: this technology has the potential to bring culture, entertainment, news,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff into the American home through transmission,
Speaker 1: if we want to pursue that. This was in the
Speaker 1: days when only amateur radio enthusiasts had any access to
Speaker 1: radio equipment outside of the professional industry. Otherwise the only
Speaker 1: places you would find it are in these radio stations
Speaker 1: where they were acting almost like telegraph operators. So he
Speaker 1: would then become the commercial manager for our c A
Speaker 1: and eventually become the general manager, and then further down
Speaker 1: the line the CEO. Sarnov was a really ambitious man.
Speaker 1: He was also really good at self promotion and who
Speaker 1: is also really good at sensing the potential impact of
Speaker 1: radio broadcast technology as well as related technologies like television broadcasts,
Speaker 1: which I'll talk more about in the next episode. Well,
Speaker 1: in the early days of our CIA's history, it mainly
Speaker 1: did two things. It operated the various radio stations which
Speaker 1: were still almost exclusively transmitting messages in morse code, and
Speaker 1: it sold radio equipment manufactured by the various companies that
Speaker 1: had formed our CI. A. While this was intended to
Speaker 1: build out a communications infrastructure similar to the telephone system,
Speaker 1: something else was happening at the same time that changed
Speaker 1: the course of the industry, and that something was the
Speaker 1: rise of amateur radio operators. The United States had banned
Speaker 1: amateur radio during World War One, saying that they needed
Speaker 1: to have those radio waves free for communications, but the
Speaker 1: the government lifted that ban on October first, and more
Speaker 1: people were interested in radio communication and setting up our
Speaker 1: own radio receivers at home. The rise in amateur radio
Speaker 1: encouraged Sarnoff and gave credence to that idea he had
Speaker 1: proposed a few years earlier about his radio music box. Well.
Speaker 1: During World War One, there were some hints at what
Speaker 1: would become the standard for commercial radio in use by
Speaker 1: the military. In a publication called The Wireless Age featured
Speaker 1: a short range system that could broadcast news and music
Speaker 1: to hospitals to entertain convalescing soldiers. For example, on the
Speaker 1: technology front, companies were exploring ways to make radio receivers
Speaker 1: more compact and less expensive. To make radio signals loud
Speaker 1: enough for commercial radio to be practical, those radios would
Speaker 1: have to have amplification, and so companies began investing in
Speaker 1: research and development to improve vacuum to manufacturing processes to
Speaker 1: make radio as a practical consumer item. Before the transistor,
Speaker 1: the vacuum tube was your primary way of taking in
Speaker 1: an incoming week signal and boosting it to a stronger
Speaker 1: outgoing signal and amplifier. In other words, I have more
Speaker 1: to say about the early days of our CIA, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: And so is our CI A oversaw radio stations transmitting
Speaker 1: communications across vast distances, and various companies began to work
Speaker 1: toward a goal of building consumer radios. The race was
Speaker 1: on for the first true commercial radio station, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be our CIA to launch it. Instead, Westinghouse applied
Speaker 1: for a license to operate such a transmission station. They
Speaker 1: applied to the US government and received permission in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was in the business of manufacturing radios, but demand
Speaker 1: for radios was lagging behind, and so leaders at the
Speaker 1: company reasoned that one way to increase demand would be
Speaker 1: to create programming. Now today that seems pretty clear that
Speaker 1: if you want to sell a technology to someone, a
Speaker 1: technology that allows people to access content, you need to
Speaker 1: create content for people to access. Otherwise they just have
Speaker 1: a useless tool. But this was a big step in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty. Radio had mainly been used as point to
Speaker 1: point communication at that At that stage, it's just that
Speaker 1: the points were undefined because there were no wires, So
Speaker 1: you know, you had a receiver that could pick up
Speaker 1: a signal that would be a point. So this would
Speaker 1: open up the possible uses for radio and allow them
Speaker 1: to become entertainment devices. It was precisely the stuff Sarnoff
Speaker 1: had been saying in his memo back in nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: Westinghouse approached a ham radio operator named Dr Frank Conrad,
Speaker 1: who had already been playing records over the radio for
Speaker 1: some of his other amateur radio operator friends, and on
Speaker 1: November two, nineteen twenty, Westinghouse launched k d k A
Speaker 1: out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah, it was the first commercial
Speaker 1: radio station. Saranov had been working on his own approach,
Speaker 1: receiving the blessing of the companies that founded our ci
Speaker 1: A to do so. They gave him some funds so
Speaker 1: that he could pursue this, and on July two, nine
Speaker 1: Sarnof showed off the market potential for radio by broadcasting
Speaker 1: a boxing match between Jack Dempsey and George Carpentier. Dempsey
Speaker 1: was a celebrated US champion. Carpentier was a boxing hero
Speaker 1: in France and he had a reputation for knocking out
Speaker 1: British champions, so this was a super hyped event back
Speaker 1: in n Dempsey would win by knockout in the fourth
Speaker 1: round and the broadcast was a sensational hit. Our CIA
Speaker 1: began to sell more radio receivers to customers, and radio
Speaker 1: stations began popping up all over the United States. The
Speaker 1: first radio commercial on record happened in August nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: and a New York real estate developer aired an ad
Speaker 1: in New York City. Two years later, in nineteen there
Speaker 1: were more than six hundred commercial radio stations in the
Speaker 1: United States. These were mostly independent stations, and that's when
Speaker 1: r c A made a really big move in the industry.
Speaker 1: Partnering with Westinghouse and A T and T, r ci
Speaker 1: A formed a new company called the National Broadcasting Company,
Speaker 1: or INBC, which had its first broadcast on November nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. The concept was that NBC would produce material
Speaker 1: for broadcast, which would then be sent out over different
Speaker 1: radio stations in different regions, with the stations being part
Speaker 1: of the overall network. Which was a new idea at
Speaker 1: the time. You know, creates your your content in a
Speaker 1: central location and then distribute it using these various radio stations.
Speaker 1: That was revolutionary. NBC had two semi independent networks under
Speaker 1: its governance shortly after it was formed, so it split
Speaker 1: off its its operations into two networks. One was called
Speaker 1: the Blue Network and one was called the Red Network,
Speaker 1: So you had NBC Blue and NBC Red. The center
Speaker 1: of the Blue Network was a radio station called w
Speaker 1: jay Z, which had been founded by Westinghouse in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one. The center for the Red Network was a
Speaker 1: station called w e a F, which was founded by A.
Speaker 1: T and T in nineteen twenty three. While all this
Speaker 1: was going on, Sarnov was already looking at the potential
Speaker 1: future of television. In nineteen twenty four, r C A
Speaker 1: transmitted the first transatlantic radio photo from New York to London.
Speaker 1: This was before the invention of electronic television's, when the
Speaker 1: early prototype TVs were largely mechanical in nature, and I
Speaker 1: talked about that in the History of Television episodes on
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. So there was a limited market for mechanical television's.
Speaker 1: They really didn't make a lot of progress in the
Speaker 1: consumer market. They were very expensive, they were very complicated,
Speaker 1: and they had limited success full results, let's say. But
Speaker 1: the real boon would come when inventors began to create
Speaker 1: electronic televisions, and that wouldn't begin until the late nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about commercial TVs, you're talking about
Speaker 1: two more decades on top of that. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not entirely a happy story. In nineteen twenty nine, Sarnoff
Speaker 1: met with an engineer at Westinghouse named Vladimir Zwarakin. And
Speaker 1: if you've listened to my episodes about the origins of television,
Speaker 1: you know Zarakin is one of two inventors who typically
Speaker 1: get the title of inventor of television. The other would
Speaker 1: be Philo Farnsworth. Saranoff convinced Westinghouse to fund Zarakin's work,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen thirty r c A would take over
Speaker 1: the research as Warakin would actually go over to our
Speaker 1: CIA as well and become an r c A employee. Sarnoff,
Speaker 1: seeing the power of patents, wanted to run out of
Speaker 1: business any person or a company he felt was horning
Speaker 1: in on his action, and so in ninety two our
Speaker 1: CI A would file a patent suit against Philo Farnsworth.
Speaker 1: The case would last seven years. Ultimately Farnsworth would win
Speaker 1: that case and our c would have to pay fines
Speaker 1: and royalties to him. But by that time his health
Speaker 1: was in shambles. He had had a nervous breakdown from
Speaker 1: all the stress. And I'm going to get back to
Speaker 1: Starnoff's lutitious ways throughout these episodes, but bouncing back to
Speaker 1: for a moment. So this is before all of the
Speaker 1: legality issues with Farnsworth, I need to talk about another
Speaker 1: company that would play a very important part in our
Speaker 1: Cier's early history. Now, if you've heard my episodes about
Speaker 1: the history of turntables, you'll remember the early days of
Speaker 1: the phonograph and the graphophone and the gramophone. I covered
Speaker 1: a little bit of the turbulent patent battles and the
Speaker 1: cutthroat business strategies that were all part of the early
Speaker 1: days of home audio, and I'll have to do a
Speaker 1: more in depth series in the few sure to really
Speaker 1: focus on it, because it gets nasty, y'all. But the
Speaker 1: Victor Talking Machine Company was born directly out of all
Speaker 1: that strife. Now, since this is not an episode about Victor,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to give you the super short version, which,
Speaker 1: let's face it, I'm Jonathan Strickland of tech Stuff. Super
Speaker 1: short for me is a lecture for anybody else, but
Speaker 1: let's go with it. The Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: founded by Emil Berliner, was the company that really was
Speaker 1: the focus of this this strife. Berlinard gets the credit
Speaker 1: for inventing the first flat disc record. Before his invention,
Speaker 1: engineers would press recordings onto cylinders. So you had these
Speaker 1: cylinders that you would put on a spool essentially that
Speaker 1: would then rotate and you could play it back on
Speaker 1: various devices. The discs were much easier to store, right,
Speaker 1: you didn't have as much space and as much bulk
Speaker 1: as a cylinder did. They were easier to ship, and
Speaker 1: once the manufacturing process was refined, they lasted a lot
Speaker 1: longer than cylinders did as well. It took a while
Speaker 1: to get the right materials, but once they did, those
Speaker 1: discs just seemed more practical. Berliner made a deal with
Speaker 1: an enterprising manufacturer and machinist named Eldredge R. Johnson. Johnson
Speaker 1: developed a wind up spring motor for Berliner's gramophones. Now
Speaker 1: previously those gramophones had relied on hand cranks, so you
Speaker 1: would literally turn a crank which would then turn the
Speaker 1: gears inside the device and turn the platter so that
Speaker 1: you could listen to the disc being played back on
Speaker 1: the gramophone. Johnson did good work. He created a spring
Speaker 1: motor that worked reliably, but Berliner would enter into a
Speaker 1: sales agreement with a man named frank Cman, and this
Speaker 1: would lead to massive trouble. Frankie wanted more money for
Speaker 1: himself and eventually began to sell knockoffs of Berliner's works
Speaker 1: while simultaneously bringing legal action, much of its spurious in nature,
Speaker 1: against both Berliner and Johnson. The process eventually prevented Berliner
Speaker 1: from selling gramophones in the United States and nearly bankrupted
Speaker 1: both Berliner and Johnson in the process. And this was
Speaker 1: infuriating to them. I mean, they were the ones who
Speaker 1: had created this technology, and now this salesman Day had
Speaker 1: worked with was claiming that they were the ones infringing
Speaker 1: on his patents, his ideas, and his trade secrets. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen o one, Johnson, Berliner, and some other entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: got together and founded a new consolidated company that took
Speaker 1: Berliner's facilities and Johnson's manufacturing plants as the basis for
Speaker 1: the new organization. And this was the Victor Talking Machine Company,
Speaker 1: which incorporated on October third, nineteen o one. So the
Speaker 1: Victor Talking Machine Company was older than the Radio Corporation
Speaker 1: of America that would not be born until nine But
Speaker 1: Saranov looked at the Victor Talking Machine Company and thought,
Speaker 1: this is a way I could sell more radios. I
Speaker 1: could take this company and take their product, the the
Speaker 1: gramophones essentially, although they didn't call it that in the
Speaker 1: United States, they couldn't. They started calling it things like
Speaker 1: the Victrola that was one that the Victor Company made.
Speaker 1: I can take that. I can incorporate a radio into
Speaker 1: the design of those machines, sell it as a new product,
Speaker 1: and sell more radios this way. Also, just as a
Speaker 1: quick aside, the Victor trademark is one of the more
Speaker 1: famous ones in business history. It shows a dog, specifically
Speaker 1: a fox terrier, sitting in front of a gramophone horn
Speaker 1: and the dog's head is tilted slightly. It's from a
Speaker 1: painting titled His Master's Voice, and the artist was Francis
Speaker 1: Borrowed and it was made in The dog was named
Speaker 1: Nipper and once belonged to Burrowed's nephew Mark mark Ark
Speaker 1: had tragically passed away. And then Francis saw a Nipper
Speaker 1: one day sitting near a gramophone with his head cocked,
Speaker 1: and that led Francis to wonder what the dog's reaction
Speaker 1: would be if they had happened to be playing a
Speaker 1: recording of his old master Mark speaking. That was the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the painting. He tried selling the painting as
Speaker 1: a magazine illustration to no avail, and ultimately sold it
Speaker 1: to the Gramophone Company for the princely sum of one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. Sterling Johnson got permission from the Gramophone Company
Speaker 1: to use it for his products under the Victor Company,
Speaker 1: and berlinerd had trademarked the design and at some point
Speaker 1: transferred that trademark over to the Victor Company. The whole
Speaker 1: story is super fascinating, and I'm sure I'll devote a
Speaker 1: future episode to the Victor Talking Machine Company, but for now,
Speaker 1: let's remember that it started in nineteen one, and even
Speaker 1: though it grew out of an older company and then
Speaker 1: would eventually get incorporated into our c A. I'll explain
Speaker 1: more in just a moment, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. The acquisition of the
Speaker 1: Victor Talking Machine Company meant that our C A was
Speaker 1: now getting into the consumer electronics business. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: up until nine nine, r c A was primarily in
Speaker 1: the business of operating radio broadcast stations and selling what
Speaker 1: was effectively industrial equipment. But now our c A owned
Speaker 1: the company that had created the iconic Victrola machine, and
Speaker 1: they created a subsidiary company called r c A Victor.
Speaker 1: That company also took a majority ownership in the Japan
Speaker 1: Victor Company, which is also known as j v C.
Speaker 1: Also in ninety nine, r k O Radio Pictures released
Speaker 1: a film called Synco Patient, which relied upon a new
Speaker 1: technique called r c A photophone, which is not to
Speaker 1: be confused with the technology developed by Alexander Graham Bell
Speaker 1: that was also called photophone. Now, this was a technique
Speaker 1: of recording audio onto film for the purposes of synchronized
Speaker 1: visuals and audio, in other words, a way of making
Speaker 1: talking pictures. And the formation of r k O Pictures
Speaker 1: itself is a great story that ties directly into our
Speaker 1: history of our CI A. So the development of the
Speaker 1: r C A photophone technology would date back to the
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenties, there was a man named Charles A.
Speaker 1: Haxie who was working on recording audio to photographic film
Speaker 1: as a project for General Electric, which you'll remember was
Speaker 1: one of the founding partners that created our c A. Now.
Speaker 1: Hawxy's work at that time was more about preserving audio
Speaker 1: recordings for playback, not necessarily as a way of creating
Speaker 1: talking pictures, but just recording audio in itself. But by
Speaker 1: the mid twenties, General Electric was thinking about applying Hawxy's
Speaker 1: work in the direction of talking pictures. Now, the desire
Speaker 1: to match sound to moving images dated back to the
Speaker 1: earliest moving pictures. Edison himself worked on this challenge, and
Speaker 1: a lot of different companies were taking various approaches to
Speaker 1: this problem. So, for example, Warner Brothers had created a
Speaker 1: system called Vitaphone. Vitaphone, you would record a soundtrack onto
Speaker 1: a disk similar to an LP record, and when you
Speaker 1: were ready to play the film, you would synchronize the
Speaker 1: film playback with the audio from the disk. So that
Speaker 1: was a pretty primitive approach, but it was how some
Speaker 1: early talking pictures were made, including the first one, The
Speaker 1: Jazz Singer, which debuted in ninete r C. A photophone
Speaker 1: used a totally different approach. The sound was recorded in
Speaker 1: a narrow band on the side of the frame of
Speaker 1: film some actual photoreactive film. Uh, the band would be
Speaker 1: out of you when the film was put through a projector.
Speaker 1: There was a frame on a projector that covers up
Speaker 1: the edges of the film, and the audio track is
Speaker 1: on one of those edges. The width of this strip
Speaker 1: on the side of the film varies with the frequency
Speaker 1: of the sound that was recorded onto the film. So essentially,
Speaker 1: you have sound that's transmitted into a microphone. It is
Speaker 1: turned into an electric signal, which in turn is used
Speaker 1: to treat this this photoreactive film, so that it has
Speaker 1: this record of the frequency. It's almost like a wave form.
Speaker 1: If you were to think of that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in a modern sense, if you were to look at
Speaker 1: an audio file on a audio editing software. So then
Speaker 1: when you're playing it back, you have a bright lamp
Speaker 1: that shines light through this narrow strip, and you have
Speaker 1: a photo cell that picks up the light that's coming through,
Speaker 1: and it generates an electric current that matches the amount
Speaker 1: of light that's hitting the photo cell, and that signal
Speaker 1: goes to a pre amplifier, which can then boost the
Speaker 1: signal strength so it can go to an amplifier and
Speaker 1: then ultimately speakers. The lamp for reading this optical sound
Speaker 1: and the photo cell are not in the same position
Speaker 1: as the projection lamp that would just get in the way.
Speaker 1: So this is actually it creates something of a challenge.
Speaker 1: It means that the soundtrack is offset from the actual
Speaker 1: frames of the film itself. The soundtrack is either running
Speaker 1: a little ahead or a little behind the action of
Speaker 1: the film, depending upon the method that was actually used.
Speaker 1: So in playback it's all synchronized because if you as
Speaker 1: long as you put the film through the right type
Speaker 1: of projector, the audio track gets read through the audio
Speaker 1: system at the same time as the video or the film.
Speaker 1: Rather the images are being projected through the projection lamp
Speaker 1: and it all gets synchronized together. So in playback gets synchronized.
Speaker 1: But if you were to look at the film itself,
Speaker 1: like if you took the film out of the projector
Speaker 1: then you held it up to the light and you
Speaker 1: saw where the audio track is, the audio you were
Speaker 1: looking at would not be the audio that occurs in
Speaker 1: synchronization with the image you're looking at the advantage of
Speaker 1: that approach was that all the synchronization would be done beforehand.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to set up a disc and a
Speaker 1: film in separate chambers to try and match up to
Speaker 1: each other. It was all in one piece of film.
Speaker 1: But the format itself changed several times, sometimes with the
Speaker 1: optical soundtrack running ahead of the action, sometimes behind the action.
Speaker 1: This meant the movie theaters had to invest in different
Speaker 1: equipment to play back those films properly, because if you
Speaker 1: put in a film where the soundtrack ran a little
Speaker 1: ahead of the action, but you put it in a
Speaker 1: projector that was designed to run a film that had
Speaker 1: the audio a little behind the action, you would have
Speaker 1: terrible experiences because the audio would not be at all
Speaker 1: synchronized with what was happening on screen. It would just
Speaker 1: be a total mess. This ended up creating kind of
Speaker 1: a format war that waged in the late twenties after
Speaker 1: our CIA's approach debut. It is not the only audio
Speaker 1: on film format, and it also did battle with the
Speaker 1: vitaphone approach, where it was the recorded to disc version.
Speaker 1: Now on the production side, if you were making films,
Speaker 1: it also changed how movies were made because If you
Speaker 1: watch some of the early films with sound, like some
Speaker 1: of the first films that had sound in it, you
Speaker 1: might notice people don't move very much. Shots are pretty static.
Speaker 1: Actors tend to remain in place well. This was largely
Speaker 1: because the limitations of the sound recording equipment at the time.
Speaker 1: Microphones were large and bulky and typically omnidirectional. Actors needed
Speaker 1: to be close to the microphones so that they could
Speaker 1: be heard clearly, but they also couldn't move around very
Speaker 1: much because the microphones would pick up everything, so you
Speaker 1: just have a lot of noise. The cameras themselves, which
Speaker 1: had been motorized in the late nineteen twenties to create
Speaker 1: a standard frame rate of twenty four frames per second
Speaker 1: that was necessary in order to have reliable sound playback,
Speaker 1: those cameras made a lot of noise too in those
Speaker 1: early days, and that could get picked up by the microphones.
Speaker 1: So as a result, the common practice was to put
Speaker 1: the cameras in enclosed, somewhat sound proved chambers. The cameraman
Speaker 1: camera operator, if you prefer, would be inside that chamber
Speaker 1: with the camera and they would be isolated from the
Speaker 1: rest of the set, so that the sound wouldn't leak through.
Speaker 1: They were jokingly referred to as ice boxes. I say
Speaker 1: jokingly because it would actually get scorchingly hot inside those
Speaker 1: as the cameras were running, and it limited what you
Speaker 1: could do with a camera. You could pan the camera
Speaker 1: a little bit on its tripod. That that was about it.
Speaker 1: And so early talkies typically don't have very much movement
Speaker 1: or action in them, which was a big change from
Speaker 1: the early days of silent films because in those days
Speaker 1: actors would make these really big dramatic movements in an
Speaker 1: effort to tell a story because they could not be heard.
Speaker 1: Another thing that would change was that in the early days,
Speaker 1: film crews captured audio and images on the same film
Speaker 1: at the same time, so, in other words, the audio
Speaker 1: and images were both being directly recorded to the same
Speaker 1: strip of photographic film. This made editing really tricky because again,
Speaker 1: the audio track wasn't in direct line with the images.
Speaker 1: It was running a little ahead or a little behind,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't just snip film to create a transition
Speaker 1: or cut out a mistake because the audio wasn't lined
Speaker 1: up directly with whatever was happening in the image. And
Speaker 1: that would eventually change when the industry began to capture
Speaker 1: images and audio separately and would only combine them after
Speaker 1: the editing process to create a master print. The audio
Speaker 1: track and the images were still offset, but you could
Speaker 1: at least make edits to the film without messing up
Speaker 1: the soundtrack, and you could do the same to the
Speaker 1: audio track without messing up the film. R c A's
Speaker 1: photophone would go up against not only the vitaphone system
Speaker 1: from Warner Brothers, but another sound on film system called
Speaker 1: movie Tone. Movie Tone came from a Western electric subsidiary
Speaker 1: called Electrical Research Products Incorporated or e r p I.
Speaker 1: That system was the dominant one when our c a
Speaker 1: was ready to debut photophone. So again the company goes
Speaker 1: out and says, what can we do to really compete
Speaker 1: in this market? Ah, again, idea, let's make a new company.
Speaker 1: So they go out. They purchased the Keith Albi or
Speaker 1: Feum chain of theaters. That was a chain of theaters
Speaker 1: that wasn't it wasn't just motion picture theaters but also
Speaker 1: vaudeville theaters as well. So our CIO goes out and
Speaker 1: buys this company that owns these multiple theaters, and then
Speaker 1: they merged that company with another company they buy called
Speaker 1: Film Booking Offices of America or FBO, and the merger
Speaker 1: of these two acquisitions becomes the Radio Keith Orpheum or
Speaker 1: RKO Pictures Company. So our CIA created an entirely new
Speaker 1: corporation in order to put its motion picture audio format
Speaker 1: onto the market, and it worked. Photophone would eventually evolve
Speaker 1: into the industry standard. Pretty audacious move and not the
Speaker 1: last one from our CIA. In our next episode, we
Speaker 1: will continue this story to talk about how our ce
Speaker 1: A weathered the Great Depression and what it was doing
Speaker 1: during World War Two. If you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know. Send me
Speaker 1: an email. The address is tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or head over to our website that's
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Speaker 1: older episodes. There in different ways to contact us, including
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