Nahno McLein

2.    How did the adoption of synchronised sound in the late 1920s transform cinema as a visual medium, and as an institution.

Since the beginning of cinema, experiments were made with sound, leading to Harold Arnold’s electrical recording technology that Western Electrics and Bell Labs used for sound-on-disc inventions, demonstrating the first talking picture in Yale in 1922 The Audion. Warner Bros., the only interested studio, for the film economy went well and had no needs, bought the Vitascope system and with Western Electric, Bell Labs and their Vitaphone Corporation made the first successful commercial sound-effect film Don Juan (Alan Crosland) in 1926 (Sandiego.edu).

After further big successes like the first spoken language film, The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927), elevating Warner Bros. to a major studio, the other big studios, like MGM and Paramount, adopted sound technologies, allying with Western Electronics (James Chapman: 90-92), who combined the Fox Film Corporation’s sound-on-film, Movietone, with their amplification system in 1931 (Virginia.edu). This photoelectric cell became standard, lasting longer than the 24-play-discs and being more synchronous (Sandiego.edu).
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