11. The invention of the Vitaphone (BellaLabs/Western Electric, 1925) sound on disc system contributed to some major technological cinema development. List 5.

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was the last sound-on-disc system and the only one which was widely used and commercially successful.  The Vitaphone records dialogue and music separately on phonographs to be played as the film ran. The vitaphone was linked to the projection system to keep the sound and pictures matched up, and the marriage of the two elements proved tremendously successful.  The invention of Vitaphone had led to 5 technological cinema development as follow:

1. Stereo Sound - in 1931 at Columbia's Studios in Hayes, Middlesex. Alan Blumlein began using a twin microphone technique he had developed to record a stereo signal on to film in the same area taken up by the standard mono optical track.


2. 3D Sound & Film - Warner Brothers, after putting the Vitaphone in bed due to popularity of Sound-on-film, were experimenting with stereo images in the form of 3-D which they called NaturalVision, again to try and offer audiences that extra something that television could not. Their first 3-D film being 'Bwana Devil' in November 1952.


3. Projectors - more and more sophisticated projection being designed and built commercially to fit inside cinemas to adopt various new technological sound-film production as well as give more compelling experience to the audience.  From 70mm projection to 35mm projection format has been built throughout the 1950s. 


4. Dolby Stereo - Although there had been several attempts to improve optical sound quality in cinemas it was not until Dolby Laboratories, working out of Clapham at the time, looked to apply their already successful 'noise reduction' system to film sound. The first experiments were only mono and it soon became obvious to the engineers at Dolby that what the industry really wanted was high quality optical stereo. 


5. Digital Theater Sound (DTS) - A birth of digitalize sound-on-disc technology for cinema digital sound experience as how it started.  The invention begin 4 years after Dolby Lab produces Dolby Stereo in the 1990s.

These 5 items have contributed a wide array of technological advancement in cinema audio and projection after the invention of Vitaphone.  The vitaphone phenomenon and legacy in sound-on-disc had brought the birth of these 5 items into the world of cinema that we know today.