Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film

Lee de Forest

Lee de Forest King of Radio, Television, and Film Mike Adams

Mike Adams Department of Radio, Television, and Film San José State University San José, CA, USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4614-0417-0 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7

e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0418-7

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in the United States by Copernicus Books, an imprint of Springer Science+Business Media. Copernicus Books Springer Science+Business Media 233 Spring Street New York, NY 10013 www.springer.com Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937446 Manufactured in the United States of America. Printed on acid-free paper

For Barbara Adams, who always encourages me to be better

Foreword

Lee de Forest could hold in one hand one of the most important devices of the twentieth century, the triode vacuum tube that he had invented in 1906, and in the other hand, a gold Oscar that the American Academy of Motion Pictures awarded him mid-twentieth century for his pioneering work in bringing sound, voices, and music to movies. De Forest’s driving fascination with the power of sounds to carry intelligence, and hearing those sounds, links the two. Mike Adams tells Lee de Forest’s story in a new and compelling way. De Forest’s story ranges from an early technical mastery of flame, to the final mastery of sound. It is a splendid tale of a definitive twentieth century life. De Forest is the paradigm inventor, perhaps all-toohuman. Mike Adams’ story is well told. De Forest went through fortunes and he went through wives. But in the end, his technical legacy astonishes, and his last marriage to young movie star, Marie Mosquini, sustained them both into his ripe old age. Lee de Forest discovered “an Invisible Empire of the Air” just as he claimed. It is now the Empire of Electronic Media in which we live. But radio provided the foundation for it all. De Forest, more than anyone else, deserves the title “Father of Radio” just as he also claimed. For de Forest heard the world as much if not more than he saw it. His was the Aural World, not the Visual World. He knew great music and wrote good poetry. He heard and wanted to help others, millions of others, also to hear. The wireless telegraphy born around him printed its messages. But de Forest conquered that technology by hearing the signals sent out by the early spark transmitters. He improved that art by making its signals tones of higher frequency, more easily heard in poor conditions (and in retrospect on primitive equipment). We think of the twentieth century radioman wearing earphones. For that we can thank de Forest. He moved on, a restless man and a restless inventor. He invented one of the most important devices of the twentieth century, the three-element vacuum tube (the “radio tube”) working first with flame. He did so in order to hear signals. He leapt at the suggestion of the name “Audion” for his device. To him, there was the near

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viiiviiiForeword magic in “audible ions.” He put those audible ions to work so we could hear the wireless telegraphy, otherwise so hobbled by slow unreliable printing devices. For success, de Forest turned to skilled telegraphers who had long worked by ear. Vast networks of such audible signals soon evolved. But restless he was, so he turned to another device (the continuous wave “arc”). His goal was sending out music in the ether, to be heard by all. In 1908 that was a revolutionary act, with few antecedents but world-historical consequences. Those consequences flowed from the use of de Forest’s own Audions to provide the continuous waves to carry radio, that is, voices and music, around the city, around the region, around the nations, and around the world. De Forest first perfected his device to provide these powers in 1913: amplification and oscillation. In less than a decade, radio, heard by millions every day nearly everywhere, changed the world. Yet, one twentieth century medium of entertainment and information, the “movies” was silent. Actors could speak with their facial expressions but not their voices. Lee de Forest created the “soundtrack” giving voice (and music) to the movies. To be sure, others worked to the same effect, just as many others had perfected the radio arts. But once again, de Forest’s focus on sound carried the day. In our day, it’s all Internet and multimedia, but the roots of it all come from Lee de Forest’s seedlings, the Audion, the radio transmitter and receiver, and the film soundtrack. About the Audion, de Forest later said: “I held in my hand the longsought Aladdin’s Lamp of our new world, ‘a lamp by which one might hear instead of read’… and all but remake our world.” He had earlier written: “The Audion is … to the sense of sound, what the microscope is to the sense of sight.” We can hear so much now because Lee de Forest dedicated his life to helping us do so. If the real “bottom line” is, as inventor Edwin Land suggested, in heaven, then Lee de Forest is a rich man indeed. Thus, Lee de Forest invented the “radio tube” more than 100 years ago, making modern electronics possible and perhaps inevitable. Yet, he failed in “Radio” after striving mightily – nobly or ignobly, depending on one’s point of view. He turned to Hollywood in the middle of his life, in about 1920. Lee de Forest then pioneered the “Talkies” by bringing sound to motion pictures and their industry. Having brought the sound of radio – voices of entertainment, news, and history, music good and bad, real and imaginary events conveyed by the nuance of audio – into millions of homes in America and in the world, he then brought sounds to the movies, in thousands of theaters, again for millions of Americans and the world. He called his first radio tube the “Audion” precisely because it enable us to hear what was otherwise undetectable and invisible – radio waves – and he

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devoted his life to helping us hear music and people in what we now call “the media” – two of which, radio and movies with sound, he practically invented single-handedly. Mike Adams has a most interesting story to tell. Bart Lee San Francisco, CA, USA

Preface

The applause has died out. The audience has left the theater. It is the year 1930 and inventor Lee de Forest is all washed up. The inventions that should have defined him do not add to his income, and they have not brought him fame. The man who invented the radio tube and radio itself, the scientist who developed the first successful talking picture technology has seemingly lost everything. He is now in court daily, and he is estranged from his third wife, his daughters, and the scientific community. He has spent the previous decade developing a theory for the technology of synchronized sound-on-film into patents, practice, and public notice, only to lose it all. He is alone. He is penniless. These are the worst of times for Lee de Forest. Lee de Forest could “hear” but he could not “see.” In the 1920s, he had found a way to add sound to the then silent motion picture. His technology was solid, the one that Hollywood would eventually adopt, but he made a big mistake. He made films and invited audiences to see them. These films clearly demonstrated that while the cinema could be made to speak, the “talkies” as created by de Forest showed that he had no understanding of the visual content, or the art that had already defined the successful cinema. Nevertheless, he made hundreds of films and created an unsuccessful business based on his flawed vision of filmmaking. The audience reaction was unenthusiastic, a collective, “so what.” If the life of Lee de Forest can be compared to a three-act screenplay, the sound film may have been his final act. First he tried, succeeded and then failed to make a go at a wireless telegraph business. In the second act, he invented the three-element vacuum tube, and applied it to the development of radio broadcasting and sound amplification. In the final act he tried the film business. The Yale Ph.D., who invented some of the most important technologies of the twentieth century, now believes that he has just wasted an entire decade on a system to bring sound to the movies, only to have it virtually disappear into a haze of legal briefs and betrayal.

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Lee de Forest was prominent in those important years when the mass media was actively being imagined by him and others. It was a time when the cinema evolved from recording simple outdoor scenes and stage performances into a mature media, and radio developed from the experimental to the popular. It was during de Forest’s time, the first three decades of the twentieth century, when the silent film and radio found their technology, their language, and their audiences. The de Forest influence on radio was significant: as early as 1907 he told of his plan for sending music into homes using a wireless telephone he had invented. After he created the “voice” for the wireless, he turned to the movies, believing they also needed a voice. What followed was a period in which he both created and learned about the evolving relationship between science, art, business, and audience. More than just the story of how sound came to the movies, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film is a broad and sweeping perspective on the inventing process and the life of inventor-scientist Lee de Forest. Beginning with his fascination as a student with the “speaking flame” and its application in physics and electricity, de Forest not only invents technology for the entertainment media but he also creates its content and consumers. But this is not the story of how a lone inventor has an “aha” moment, creates a technology, and reaps both monetary reward and everlasting fame. What becomes evident in this story is how the invention process really happens, how each new device builds on those previous to it, and how patents are developed, granted, and then challenged in a number of increasingly higher courts, where they are upheld or overturned as invalid by judges who may or may not fully understand the technology upon which they are ruling. Mostly you will know Lee de Forest as the tortured lone inventor. But in his quest for a sound-on-film system he actually made a friend for the first time in the person of fellow Yale alumni Theodore Case. They collaborated. They worked together. They invented. In the beginning there was mutual respect. Even though de Forest was the alpha, the senior scientist, he and Case had a unique relationship, much of it documented in hundreds of letters exchanged between the two leading to their final legal showdown. Previous de Forest biographical writings have missed the real story of de Forest and Case. Some have ignored it altogether, while other authors have lined up on one side or the other. Some believed that de Forest simply stole the inventions of Case and attempted to profit from them. Others have written that Case was merely a de Forest employee who took his boss’s invention and sold it to Fox Pictures under the name of Movietone. The truth about the de Forest–Case relationship is a complex one. Neither inventor could have succeeded alone. De Forest had the original theory

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and the early patents, but he needed Case’s components to make his system, he called Phonofilm, work well enough to gain serious audience attention. The de Forest–Case relationship culminates at the end of the 1920s in a place familiar to all inventors – the courthouse. In the end, neither de Forest nor Case will be considered victorious, both having been swallowed up by the big business of the movies, both clearly overshadowed by the frenetic rush to the talkies. There is no question that Lee de Forest was an important scientist. In his story you will meet inventors with whom he collaborated, learned from, took from, agreed and disagreed with, confided in and impressed with his technical tenacity, yet at the same time angered with his aggressive audacity. In his first three inventing decades, 1900–1930, he was actively melding and expanding electricity, physics, chemistry, optics, and basic mechanics. Working without computer and intricate fabrication machinery, the scientists and inventors of de Forest’s time must have fascinated the public with their magical construction of inventions. For him these included wireless, the vacuum tube, the amplifier, broadcast radio, and a sound-on-film process. And significantly, all of the twentieth century inventions of de Forest and his contemporaries will be shown to have their scientific roots in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Controversy surrounds Lee de Forest. Many called him dishonest and unethical, and tried to prove through the legal system and in the court of public opinion that he really didn’t deserve credit for some of his inventions. It was claimed that he stole the ideas of others and exaggerated his inventing prowess. Like Richard Nixon in the 1970s, de Forest too had an “enemies list,” those he believed had wronged him in some way. As an inventor some of his success derived from his manic habit of working hard and continuously on many projects at once, reaching emotional highs to achieve invention and falling into depression upon failure. Adding to the inventor’s story is the fact that during his development of Phonofilm, from its concept on a scrap of paper in 1918, to its first public showing in 1923, to its demise in 1930, he began his second family. In this decade, he sired two daughters, yet lost a son and a wife only to marry again, all the while writing countless poems, corresponding with hundreds of people, seeking publicity for his films, starting and losing several companies, spending time in court depositions and hearings, and traveling internationally. This is a rich and interesting story, placing him within the larger history of science and invention.

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He is a man whose life will seem a perpetual drama. Between 1900 and 1930 he both succeeded and failed, won and lost, yet was ever active in promoting his ideas about the new electronic mass media. But now in 1930 Lee de Forest at age 57 is pretty much finished with his contributions. He will spend the final decades of his life telling and retelling his story and defending his legacy. He will not go quietly.

Contents

Foreword.................................................................................................... Preface .......................................................................................................

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Born to Invent ................................................................................. The Century of the Inventor .......................................................... Toward Communication Without Wires ....................................... Inventing the Motion Picture ......................................................... Enter Lee de Forest.......................................................................... Toward the New Century ................................................................

1 1 7 12 20 37

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The Race for Wireless ..................................................................... The Significance of Marconi .......................................................... De Forest’s Early Career ................................................................. The Search for a Better Detector ................................................... The Wireless Business..................................................................... A Silent Film Industry Emerges.....................................................

41 42 45 49 56 76

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The Meaning of the Audion ........................................................... The Dawn of Modern Electronics ................................................. De Forest Creates the Audion......................................................... Broadcasting’s Pioneers .................................................................. De Forest as an Early Broadcaster ................................................. De Forest’s Complex Love Lives .....................................................

85 86 89 98 105 116

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California Days ............................................................................... 125 The Film Industry Finds Language and Locations ...................... 126 De Forest and the Law .................................................................... 140 The Audion Amplifies ..................................................................... 145 The High Bridge Broadcasts .......................................................... 156 1920: A Watershed Year ................................................................... 163

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Radio’s Arrival................................................................................. The RCA Agreements...................................................................... Defining American Radio Broadcasting ....................................... Hugo Gernsback and Radio News ................................................. Creating a Radio Audience ............................................................. Radio Technology Matures ............................................................

167 168 172 176 192 197

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Phonofilm, The Promise................................................................. De Forest’s Inspiration.................................................................... Inventing Phonofilm ....................................................................... The Case Connection ...................................................................... The Arc of Family Part 1 ................................................................. The Phonofilm Decade ...................................................................

203 204 219 229 235 236

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Phonofilm, The Realization ........................................................... 253 Case Is Impatient............................................................................. 254 De Forest Introduces Phonofilm.................................................... 256 The Business of Phonofilm ............................................................ 275 De Forest Diversions ....................................................................... 292 What the Phonofilms Say ............................................................... 298

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Phonofilm, The Rejection .............................................................. 305 A Deaf Ear to Phonofilm ................................................................ 306 Death by Vitaphone ........................................................................ 317 The End of Mary ............................................................................. 320 Sound-on-Film Technology Wars .................................................. 324 The Industry and the Public Adapt ............................................... 334

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Phonofilm, The Lawyers ................................................................. 349 The De Forest vs. Fox-Case Suit ..................................................... 350 The Final Days of Phonofilm ......................................................... 355 The Loneliness of Lee ..................................................................... 365 Hollywood Happiness..................................................................... 367 Old Patents and New Awards ......................................................... 369

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Lesson and Legacy .......................................................................... 389 The Father of Radio Is Busy ........................................................... 390 Awards and Accolades .................................................................... 411 Other Opinions of de Forest .......................................................... 415 And in the End ................................................................................ 419 The Significance of Lee de Forest .................................................. 421

End Notes .................................................................................................. 429 Bibliography ............................................................................................. 473

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Archives and Acknowledgements .......................................................... 477 Appendix Notes ........................................................................................

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Index..........................................................................................................

535

About the Author .....................................................................................

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In my isolation there in the Talladega parlor I felt in my heart that I was, not that I was to be, an inventor!1 The Century of the Inventor Toward Communication Without Wires Inventing the Motion Picture Enter Lee de Forest Toward the New Century

In this story of the three important decades of Lee de Forest, it is his inventions of the vacuum tube and the radio that will make the talking picture possible. But this is not just the story of one inventor or a single invention. It is about many interesting and influential people and how they transformed Nineteenth Century science into Twentieth Century art. In this story of invention the film is shown to evolve from a chemical process into entertainment, and wireless telegraphy into radio broadcasting. Lee de Forest puts it all together and creates the sound motion picture. While this story concentrates on the decade of the 1920s and talking pictures, it is also about the creation of the electronic entertainment media and its audiences.

The Century of the Inventor The latter half of the Nineteenth Century is very important to the story of Lee de Forest and sound movies. While the sound-on-film system that technically supported Hollywood’s greatness in the 1930s began in the early twentieth Century, its roots go back to a time before the electric light, the automobile and the telephone, and before film, radio and television. These three great entertainment media began as theories and evolved as crude devices based on incomplete and vague ideas developed in the years between 1875 and 1900. It is in this era that an Edison, a Hertz, a Marconi, and a de Forest were born into a time when they would begin to M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_1, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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study the science of the past in order to create future inventions. The Morse telegraph of 1835 did not become a wireless telegraph until 1895, so it did take 60 years of wired communication before that first publicly reported breakthrough known as wireless. Faraday’s 1831 discovery of electrical effects and Maxwell’s theories of electromagnetism did not find a practical use until after Hertz’s experiment of 1886, 55 years later. It seems that there is no moment when a useful device appears fully formed. Each important invention evolved very slowly, its success often postponed until another inventor discovered or improved a related needed piece. Of course, important inventions have always displaced existing technologies and caused jobs and trades to disappear. As the electric light made the gas lamplighter unnecessary, sound films replaced the piano player and orchestra that accompanied silent films. The cinema threatened its progenitor, live theater, and the radio and record player had an effect on concert attendance and reduced the sale of sheet music and pianos. The entertainment technologies of de Forest’s time were revolutionary, and are important enough that they remain viable today. The phonograph of Edison became the iPod of today, the radio continues and gained pictures for television, and the motion picture has been continuously improved.

The Significance of Edison There are striking parallels between Thomas Alva Edison, 1847–1931, and Lee de Forest, 1873–1961. Both inventors were born in the Midwest into comfortable middle-class homes. Both of their families endured geographically challenging moves in their early years, the Edison’s family from Ontario, Canada to Northern Ohio, and de Forest’s from Iowa to the postReconstruction South. Both were attracted to science: As a boy Edison was interested in chemistry while de Forest began with mechanical devices. Both were fascinated by trains, with the teenaged Edison eventually working for the railroad, while the younger de Forest was creating a toy wooden model of a steam train in the family back yard. Because of the difference in their ages Edison worked with wired telegraphy in early adulthood, while de Forest reached a similar age in 1900 and moved directly into wireless telegraphy. Edison was not a good student and he dropped out of school at an early age. While never formally educated, he did read voraciously and independently of a school structure and was said to have been a self-taught, self-educated man. Conversely, de Forest earned a respected Yale Ph.D. in physics and electricity.2 Both Edison and de Forest used the written word to communicate to a larger audience. As a teenaged telegraph operator on the Grand Trunk Railway, Edison purchased a printing press and published a newspaper he sold to train passengers. “It contained gossip, news and advertisements of

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people and businesses in the towns along the rail line, including such items as the price of agricultural products, mail express and stage service information, and notices of births and military recruitments.”3 De Forest wrote scientific articles for journals and his autobiography.4 The evidence suggests that in the main Edison was respected by those who worked under him at his companies. But it was also reported that he could be impatient with his staff, that he pounded the table and shouted angrily, and that he often showed high spirits, later to be depressed. De Forest was said to be a loner, aloof, and difficult to please, and like Edison he too had bouts of depression. In later years former de Forest lab assistants spoke well of their experiences working with him. As inventors both men were driven, tenacious, hard working, and sober. De Forest excelled at mathematics and Edison did not, perhaps making de Forest better suited as a research scientist while Edison was decidedly an applied scientist. Edison was good at running a collaborative laboratory and business, de Forest was not.5 Edison often said once he invented something truly spectacular: “it is so simple, why didn’t someone think of it before?”6 And both men endured the brunt of adult punishment in their youth for their exuberance in the service of inventing. Edison was expelled from a train for keeping dangerous chemicals in one of the cars, while de Forest nearly burned down the family home with his blast furnace experiments.7 Genius is often not fully appreciated. Edison found monetary success as an inventor early in his career, selling in 1870 a stock ticker to Western Union for the then giant sum of $40,000, an amount he invested into new companies for new inventions. Edison’s influence was broad: while Alexander Graham Bell received the patent for the telephone in 1876, it was Edison’s transmitter that both improved the telephone and introduced both men to a patent infringement lawsuit for the first time.8 In the 1920s Bell graciously and finally admitted that Edison’s improvement to the original Bell telephone device made a positive difference, and that it would not have been a success without it.9 By 1880 Thomas Edison had begun to perfect the incandescent electric light, a technology that would replace the arc lights used for large buildings and street lights, and the natural gas lights used in homes. This invention took years and thousands of men working hundreds of thousands of person-hours. And this points to a major difference between Edison and de Forest: While de Forest was more of a lone, pondering, thinking inventor, Edison hired and surrounded himself with the best and brightest and made them work long hours toward an inventing goal. More important, both inventors were attracted early to the possible uses of electricity in personal and business communications and entertainment media for an audience. In 1874 when de Forest was a 1-year-old baby, Edison was experimenting with a primitive wireless device, sending a tiny spark a

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few feet to be “received,” or detected visually using two closely spaced carbon rods. He called this phenomena “Etheric force,” and it was a primitive precursor to wireless signaling.10 Soon after that, Heinrich Hertz would build on the electromagnetic theories of James Clerk Maxwell and send a spark an even greater distance, thus beginning the very long progression of the development of the radio. By 1920 Radio would be seen as a line from Edison’s curiosity to Maxwell’s theory to Hertz’s experiments to practical applications by Marconi, Fessenden, de Forest and Armstrong, with de Forest inventing one of the key components that made it possible for wireless communication to evolve into the entertainment media of broadcasting by radio. It would also directly influence the science of the sound film. According to Edison’s biographers, it may have been in the year of the birth of Lee de Forest, 1873, that Edison thought about the possibility of having moving pictures with sound. Even if this is true, such an invention was not possible at that time as there were no sound recording and reproducing devices, and the only images were chemically coated glass and metal plate photographs. Nevertheless, in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century Thomas Edison had become the first and most important inventor in the development of the motion picture, in both its silent and sound version.11

Edison’s First “Baby” In 1878 another device that Edison always considered his most important and favorite was patented, one that forever would remain an important support technology for radio broadcasting, home entertainment, and the early sound film experiments. It was a device that recorded, stored, and played back sound for the first time. He called it the phonograph. As a telegrapher Edison had developed a device that recorded and played the dots and dashes of telegraph messages, using a spinning disc onto which the code was embossed, later to be read, and resent or transcribed. It was on this device he based his phonograph. His early versions used a spinning wax-like cylinder on which grooves representing sound vibrations were made by a needle connected to a diaphragm coupled to a horn. The reverse was used for playback. Very simple. Oddly, Edison did not reap the benefits of the phonograph until many years later. It may have been because of the uses he saw for it: “Letter writing and other forms of dictation, records of books as read by elocutionists, educational purposes, music, family record, toys, musical boxes, annunciator attachments on clocks, advertising, preserving the voices as well as the words of our Washingtons, our Lincolns, our Gladstones.”12 Buried in that long list is the word “music,” a use that years later would overtake all others in importance.

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Figure 1.1 Closeup of early Edison cylinder phonograph showing diaphragm and needle, from Paul Bourbin collection.

His views about the phonograph reveal another important comparison that can be made between Edison and de Forest, and that is their differing concepts of how their inventions should be used and how they could be marketed to the public. De Forest sees entertainment using the new media in a public, consumer-driven way. He sees an audience and hears their applause. Above all he believes that the content of these media should be of “high brow” character, like opera, and that its main purpose should be to uplift the masses. The more practical Edison saw a commercial market for his devices rather than the entertainment uses for which they would mostly be known. As an example he “expected his phonograph to fit into an expanding market for business machines such as typewriters and telephones.”13 Edison would continue to assign the development of the consumer entertainment uses of the phonograph to his assistants (Fig. 1.1). The phonograph is a very simple device based on sound vibrations. When you speak into the horn, the air currents caused by the voice vibrate the diaphragm and the needle, creating “grooves” in the wax that are a copy of the sound wave. To play it back you simply reverse the process and the squiggles embedded in the wax vibrate the needle, in turn vibrating the diaphragm which is often connected to a horn for louder sound. Prior to this breakthrough, there were scientists who had discovered that sound waves could be recorded and viewed visually as squiggles exposed on film or scratched into lampblack, but none could play this visual information

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back as an audio replication of a sound wave. You could see it but you could not hear it. One such device was the 1857 Phonautograph of Leon Scott which was invented 20 years before the Edison phonograph.14 So even though Edison did receive plenty of public and press acclaim as a result of the first phonograph demonstration, it remained on the laboratory shelf for 10 years. In 1887 he began to work on it again and by 1910 he had received 100 patents for phonograph improvements. Try this at home: Pick up a piece of tissue paper and hold it a few inches in front of your mouth. Talk in a normal voice and observe what happens to the paper. What you are “seeing” is the result of your vocal chords moving the air which in turn moves the paper as a reaction to the sound waves. Here is another experiment to try the next time you are near a record player: Put a record, preferably an old one you do not care that much about, onto your spinning turntable. Take a piece of 8.5 × 11 printer paper and roll it into a funnel shape, and secure the small end by sticking a large hat pin through it. If you carefully and lightly place this needle at a slight angle on the spinning record, you will hear the music. It will sound similar to the way your great-great-grandparents would have heard it, and you will have replicated the 1880s music listening experience. The act of writing with sound on a phonograph record by creating a physical analogue of the sound as grooves, as opposed to sampling and converting to digital bits, 1 and 0 s, is a very old acoustic recording process. It is the first and original way to record and reproduce sound. There were improvements made to the phonograph between the first Edison cylinder in 1878 and the later versions, but until electrical recording and amplification in the middle 1920s, the basic process of the record player in all its iterations was not that different from the first time Edison sang, “Mary had a little Lamb.” Emil Berliner improved the Edison phonograph in the early 1900s by introducing a flat disc to replace the cylinder, and that format prevails to this day. But it would take Edison almost 25 years from the time it was invented and patented before he could claim that his phonograph was a useful invention. It is like all new entertainment media: it has to be a simple and quality technology that a person would use in the home. There has to be a reason to buy a phonograph. By 1900 recorded music became the content and a system for duplicating cylinders was in place, and the sales of the phonograph topped over 100,000. “The growth of the phonograph business had been the result of a long period of innovation in the development of both a market and a technology suited for it.”15 The significance of the recording and storing of sound using the phonograph is that it is an early first step toward the sound film, but it will be

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decades more before the related pieces would all be in place and work in a practical way that would allow the full commercialization of the talkies. The phonograph is just one piece of the many needed, but the realization that it is now possible to transform sound into a stored entity to be played back and listened to on demand, is how the sound motion picture will begin.

Toward Communication Without Wires Before the publicly acclaimed 1900 world premiere of practical two-way communication without wires, there was desire. There was a perceived need to get beyond the limitations of the wired telegraph and telephone. Before these relatively recent technologies, two-way communication was accomplished by archaic methods such as smoke signals and semaphore flags, systems that were limited to a mile or two, so-called line of sight. After the wired telegraph was introduced, the “wireless” signaling technology remained visual for a long time, like a device that employed arc lights with shutters that could be opened and closed to send Morse Code from ship to ship or to shore. As with similar devices it was always weatherdependant. If the skies were clear you might actually signal for several miles, but only if the person on the receiving end had his binoculars aimed in the right direction, and if he had 20–20 vision. This was communication by light waves. If it was a foggy day your “wireless” signal might only be able to be seen for a few 100 yards. These are the communications technologies of the Nineteenth Century, imperfect, limited, and frustrating to be sure. Merchants, yachtsmen, shipping companies, and the navies of the world long clamored for a system that was useful over longer distances as well as consistent and dependable. Wired communication technology was also limited but less so. The telegraph, invented and introduced in America in 1837 by Samuel F. B. Morse and improved upon by Edison, was a system of wires, poles, batteries, keys, and a receiver called a sounder that used an electromagnet to reproduce dots and dashes (Figs. 1.2 and 1.3). A switch called a key would open and close to represent the dots and dashes of the Morse code and this would pass battery voltage that would cause a device at the receiving end to “click” and be translated into a message, one letter at a time. It was only practical if the operators along the telegraph lines were awake and if the wires did not blow down in a storm, or cut by a nefarious criminal, or chewed by the random animal. But it was a system that lasted for nearly a century. Telegraph signals could be relayed from station to station, and getting a message across several

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Figure 1.2 A telegraph key. The key is just an on-off switch that is operated by hand. When the key is closed or pushed down, the circuit closes and the battery current flows to the receiver. Author photograph from the Antique Wireless Association.

Figure 1.3 A sounder, a device that acts as the receiver of the dots and dashes of the telegraph. The sounder is an electromagnet that receives current from the battery when the key is closed, and makes a mechanical clicking sound which the operator reads as code. Author photograph from the Stewart Oliver Collection.

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states and even across the country became routine. The various undersea transatlantic cables were an early form of the wired telegraph. And while actual wireless communication by radio was yet to be realized, there were a number of experiments that demonstrated the usefulness of two-way electrical transmission and reception of voice messages without wires. One of the earliest and best known technologies was the 1878 Photophone of Alexander Graham Bell. This early version of wireless telephony used a carbon telephone microphone and a battery to modulate or cause to flicker a beam of light, which was received using a seleniumlike cell, and a battery, and earphone.16 This technology was never practical because its range was limited to line-of-sight, and though electrical in nature it still relied on the visible spectrum of light waves. In this technology the audio is converted to fluctuating light which is picked up by a sensitive cell and converted back into sound. The significance of Bell’s experiment is that it provides a prelude to the sound-on-film inventions of the twentieth Century, all of which initially used some form of selenium cell to read the light images recorded on the film’s sound track. Bell’s lessthan-practical device is another piece of the many that will be needed for films with sound, movies good enough to satisfy a yet-to-be created audience. Another failed communications technology relied on the properties of the earth which can act as a carrier of electrical current. Called ground conductivity, it was used for both voice and code. It was described in 1909 as having been discovered by a Steinhill of Bavaria and later on experimented by Preece who was able to communicate over a distance of five miles: “In the conductivity method the terminals of a strong battery in series with the key are grounded with the two legs a distance of 50 ft apart. Directly opposite at a distance of 50 ft the receiving end is placed, the grounds being the same and the receiving end device is a telephone receiver or galvanometer. On pressing the key the current is sent out in the ground and will cause indication at the receptive end.”17 This was basically a shortrange telegraph using the wetness of the earth in place of the wires, and based on the theory that the current of the battery will travel through the ground to seek the shortest path to the receiving end. It was never practical, but it did lead to claims of “first broadcaster” by Nathan Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky, who used a similar system for voice, using telephone equipment and the earth acting as the “wires.” There were similar systems using above ground air conductivity, with large inductors (transformers) placed a few feet apart, and while wireless they were never practical.18 The various experiments using modulated light or ground conductivity or inductance in open air were interesting but of no practical value.

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And while they were wireless they would never be good enough to replace the existing and mature technologies of the telegraph and telephone for long distance communication. What was needed was a system that did not depend upon wires, or clear skies or the earth after a heavy rain. Needed was a true wireless signaling system that would allow dependable communication over long distances on both land and sea. Early nonwired systems depended upon “seeing.” You can see light waves, and you can hear sound waves, and this is known as the visible or audible spectrum, or what a human can perceive with his or her eyes and ears. It is what you cannot see or hear, an unknown and unseen force called radio waves that will be discovered to be useful in two-way communication over long distances. Radio waves were first believed to be some sort of electrical disturbance in what was called the “aether” or “ether.” A major thinker in this area was James Clerk Maxwell whose theory “implied that all forms of electromagnetic radiation, including light, traveled through space in the form of transverse waves, and that the wavefront moved with a finite velocity.”19 This was first demonstrated by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, Ph.D. (1857–1894). Hertz in 1887 created an early practical wireless application in the form of a verifiable experiment based on the combined theories of the scientists Maxwell, Faraday, Henry, and Lodge. What Hertz did was very simple: he charged with electricity a “Leyden Jar,” which was a glass vessel with two plates of metal foil separated by air, an early version of the condenser or capacitor found in all electronic devices. This jar stored the electrical charge for a short time. Wires connected to the two metal plates were connected through a telegraph key to closely spaced electrodes so when the key was closed a spark appeared between the electrodes. On the other side of the room a metal circle with both ends just about touching would “receive” or indicate a spark visually when one was “sent” from the Leyden jar, key, and spark gap. This needed to be improved upon but it did confirm that Maxwell’s theory had validity. Hertz proved that this unseen electrical force is transmitted through space and received without connecting wires, and that it had a wave-like nature that could be measured. Historian Hugh Aitken says this about the Hertz experiment, “Three related Hypotheses were involved: that electromagnetic fields could be generated by the acceleration of electrical currents, as for instance when a spark jumped across a gap; that these fields could be propagated through space; and that their velocity of propagation was finite-specifically, that it was identical to the speed of light.”20 This describes radio communications, the sending of a message using interruptions in the electromagnetic spectrum, and over distances never before realized using previous technologies. Hertz’s experiments proved Maxwell’s theories of the presence of an

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electromagnetic field and demonstrated the very beginnings of what we now call radio. Sadly Hertz lived a short life, a mere 36 years, and so he never saw how his imaginative experiments were improved upon, organized, realized, and commercialized for communications in the future work of Marconi, de Forest, and others. These small pieces will play their parts in the future of film, radio, and television. The works of the theorists and practitioners were not inventions as much as they were discoveries of elements already existing but not fully understood: “Such waves as proven by Hertz are always present on a sudden electric discharge as from the Leyden jar, a flash of lightening, induction coil or other high tension discharge. It was further proven that these waves had all the properties of those of light and heat and were capable of reflection, refraction and diffraction.”21 Many of these elements were waiting for the great minds in their laboratories to put the pieces in the correct order for a usable result. And it would happen quickly between 1887 and 1900, as Nicola Tesla, Alexander Popov, Guglielmo Marconi, and thousands of lesser-known experimenters in schools and universities and laboratories would all attempt the sending and receiving of wireless signals from a few feet to a few miles. But Hertz did start something – his simple work attracted the interest of a cadre of Nineteenth Century scientists who would be responsible for the communications revolution. Its importance was summed up by another inventor important to this story, Reginald Fessenden: “Great interest was excited by the experiments of Hertz, primarily on account of their immense scientific importance. It was not long, however, before several eminent scientists perceived that the property possessed by the Hertz waves of passing through fog and material obstacles made them particularly suitable for use in electric signaling.”22 The significance of Hertz is that he inspired others to move into the inventions that made communication without wires possible. These individuals discovered better transmitters, receivers, and antennas, all of it leading to more reliable communication without wires. The inventors of the next century will turn these embryonic experiments into commercially viable communication businesses. The Nineteenth Century scientists created the basis for voice communication by radio which will evolve out of wireless telegraphy, and in turn make possible a starting point for a companion technology, sound for motion pictures. While the invention of the phonograph demonstrated that sound could be recorded, stored, and played back, the technology of wireless will lead to the development and understanding of modern electronics, including devices such as amplifiers and improved microphones, and loud speakers. The silent motion picture, which will evolve out of the technology of still photography, will be

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the next piece needed for the development of the talkies. All of these will be welcomed into the new century as platforms for the entertainment media that surround us today – radio, television, and film. The talkies will emerge out of 100 years of applied physics and chemistry theory, experimentation, and invention.

Inventing the Motion Picture Before the film there was the photograph. Photography uses a chemical reaction that responds to light reflected from a subject, and stores the resulting reactions as images on a glass, metal or plastic surface for repeated viewing. Still photography is a Nineteenth Century invention, one that evolved out of the centuries-old camera obscura, a device used by artists to project a subject on a white surface or canvas for tracing and later painting. The problem with this device was that there was no way to capture permanently the images projected. “At the beginning of the nineteenth century, several individuals began to address the question of how to use chemical means to capture the image projected by the camera lens. The problem was independently solved by both L. J. M. Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839.”23 The discovery of the chemistry of photography allowed images from the camera obscura to be permanently stored on a glass or metal plate for repeated viewing. The French word daguerreotype became the common name for the early photograph, one based on its inventor. In its simplest form, a daguerreotype was created in a light tight box with a covered lens on one end. The other end of the box held a glass plate that was treated with an ever-evolving collection of chemicals such as silver nitrate and silver chloride. The lens was aimed at a nonmoving scene, and the cap of the lens was removed for an exposure of several seconds to several minutes. The entire device was taken into a dark room where the plate was removed and was acted upon by chemicals to create a negative. From the negative, a positive was made. For the remainder of the Nineteenth Century many inventors worldwide experimented with negative plates and sizes, chemicals, lenses, and exposures as the technology and art of the still photograph was being developed. In the early photographs there are scenes of city and country, portraits of the rich and famous and ordinary, and there are scenes of war. Some of this was art, some commerce, and it all added to the process of defining the photograph, of finding content for the chemicals. A similar process will take place for the motion picture. How do still pictures become moving pictures? At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, a number of toy-like devices appeared with names

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such as the Phenakistoscope and the Zoetrope, that took advantage of a biological phenomenon of the eye–brain system called “persistence of vision.”24 This means that every time your eye perceives an image, your brain retains that image for a fraction of a second after it has disappeared from view. If a group of still images of a moving subject are photographed and then viewed rapidly, motion is perceived because of this persistence of vision. When you watch a film or television you are actually “seeing” a series of photographs, frames of individual still images, at least 24–30 of them projected each second. Your brain is telling you that those frames are a continuous moving image. Even today there are novelty toys consisting of pads of paper with simple images on each page, each one progressively different like the cells of a cartoon, so when the pages are flipped through rapidly the animation produced fools the eye into seeing a crude moving image composed of several frames per second. The Zoetrope is a cylinder on which a number of still images are mounted, with each image being a slightly different version of a simple movement, like a person running. When the cylinder is rotated by hand, the images seem to blur into a single moving image, as those dozen or so images are repeated over and over. Novelty devices based on the Zoetrope were the earliest demonstrations of motion pictures, but for technical reasons, the movies would have to wait until much later in the century. Before that could happen, there were several experiments that would point the way to the possibility of motion pictures. There was the 1881 experiment by Professor E. J. Marey, who studied motion using a series of tiny still pictures. There was no attempt by Marey to project or exhibit as he only used this work for his motion research. He captured and studied the motion of animals and people using a gun-shaped camera he called his Chronophotographic Gun.25 This was a necessary piece in the development of the motion picture, but it was not related to the use of film for entertainment purposes. It was for science only.26 Eadweard Muybridge, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was hired in 1879 by railroad baron Leland Stanford of California to study the movement and the position of horses’ hooves as they ran, galloped, and trotted. (Later Stanford would found a university in Palo Alto and named it for his dead son, Leland Stanford Jr.) Muybridge set up a series of box cameras along a horse track, the shutters of which were connected to thin strings that crossed the track at closely spaced intervals. As the horse galloped by, its legs broke each string one after the other, thus opening and closing each shutter sequentially. Developed, the series of pictures showed movement from one frame to the next, and while not projected or animated, it demonstrated to Stanford what he wanted to learn from this experiment, that at times when a horse is in movement, all four legs are off

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the ground. Muybridge showed the series of photos in print form, although he could have reduced the size and attached them to a Zoetrope-like device.27 Other devices, such as the Zoaproxiscope were used to get a number of still photos on a disc or other mechanism, but the problem was always the length of the show, just several seconds because of the limitations of storage and the number of images needed to view at a speed that would show motion. What the experiments of Marey and the practical work of Muybridge showed was that moving pictures were possible. Thomas Edison meets Muybridge and is influenced by him for his work into motion picture technology which he initially sees as a companion to his phonograph: “Although the phonograph provided Edison with a mechanical analogy, his thinking about the problem had been stimulated by a visit from photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who was famous for his stop-action photographs.”28 Edison was so interested in developing a system that used moving still photographs that he attended a Muybridge lecture where animated zoo animals were projected. As a result of seeing this demonstration, Edison began a collaboration with Muybridge in which they would use the phonograph to provide the sound track for moving images. When Edison submitted his initial prepatent caveat in 1888 he included “Muybridge’s idea of producing talking pictures, which Edison proposed to do by connecting the phonograph and Kinetoscope cylinders.”29 This work showed a desire to combine two devices, one that stored and played sound and the other that played a series of still images to create motion. But this idea was so early that it would be years before the more complex film technology was as well-developed as that of the simple phonograph (Fig. 1.4). Two important elements would have to be developed in order for the motion picture to become a useful technology. One was a flexible film base. In 1891 when Edison filed his first patent for his motion picture system, the Kinetograph camera, and Kinetoscope viewer, such a medium had been introduced by George Eastman. It was the roll of film used in a new line of Kodak still cameras, and while not specifically designed for motion pictures, it was a major break from the glass and metal plate film base. By coating the chemical emulsion on a flexible plastic base rather than a piece of glass, the film could be on a roll inserted into the camera. The film was threaded past the lens opening, and the mechanism was mechanically advanced one frame at a time using sprocket holes on the side of the film, as the exposed film rolled onto a second spool. After the roll was exposed, with its 20 or 30 frames of small negatives, it was processed and printed onto a positive paper for a snapshot. The advantage of this system, as promoted in the advertising was, “You push the button, we do the rest.”30

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Figure 1.4 An Edison Kinetoscope parlor in the mid-1890s. You could deposit a coin and peer into the viewfinder and watch a 30 second movie, from the Case Research Collection.

It is this Eastman roll film that Edison and others use for their cameras and projectors. The second element of a successful movie film camera was a mechanism that allowed for the intermittent motion needed to photographically expose each frame, one at a time and rapidly. In the film camera of today, each frame must stop briefly before the lens, an opaque shutter opens for exposure, then closes, then the next frame must do the same, and this process occurs 24 times each second. This start and stop or so-called intermittent motion is facilitated by engaging the sprocket holes in the film for both advancement and to hold it in place for each frame’s exposure. Edison based this piece of his early film apparatus on the telegraph: “And to produce the intermittent motion necessary to take and view photographs at a rate of ten per second he planned to use an escapement mechanism controlled by a favorite device from his telegraph year – the polarized relay.”31 It will be a series of inventions from an entire century

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that finally leads to the motion picture camera and projection systems that de Forest and others command to talk. In 1925 Edison was asked to write a few paragraphs to be presented to the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the SMPE, about his role in the invention of film: “When I first turned my mind to the subject in 1887, it was with the thought of creating a new art. I was not interested in analyzing motion because that had been done with brilliant success by Muybridge and Marey before me. Just as with the phonograph which makes a permanent record of an indefinite number of successive sounds, I wanted to make a permanent record of an indefinite number of successive phases of movement, doing for the eye what the phonograph had done for the ear. This meant the photographing instantaneously of a scene.”32 He described his 1891 silent movie camera patent, “to produce pictures representing objects in motion throughout an extended period of time which may be utilized to exhibit a scene including such moving objects in a perfect and natural manner, by means of a suitable exhibiting apparatus. In carrying out my invention I employ an apparatus for effecting by photography a representation suitable for reproduction of a scene including a moving object or objects comprising a means, such as a single camera, for intermittently projecting at such rapid rate as to result in persistence of vision, images of successive positions of the objects in motion as observed from a fixed and single point of view, a sensitized tape like film, and a means for so moving the film as to cause the successive images to be received thereupon separately and in single line sequence.”33 This language, in the patent syntax of the day, clearly describes all the elements needed for a film camera and projector. Beyond art or entertainment, Edison understood the commercial viability of the Kinetoscope: “The most fruitful field immediately available before me was the exhibition of the pictures by direct observation rather than by projection, because in the year 1890 and for some time afterwards a very popular form of entertainment in this country was the so-called slot parlor where phonographs were installed, arranged to be operated by coincontrolled mechanism.”34 In this letter Edison wrote that he always had in mind that his films would be projected, but the availability of the slot parlor venue convinced him to use that existing opportunity. He also understood that while there was enough light for the Kinetoscope viewer, at that time the projected image was not bright enough for commercial exploitation (Fig. 1.5). Who really invented the Kinetoscope? Edison received the patent, but in later years William Kennedy Laurie Dickson claimed much of the credit: “Their relative contributions remain a matter of some debate today.”35

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Figure 1.5 The cover page drawing of the Edison Patent for the Kinetoscope, showing how the loop of film would be threaded around rollers for continuous movement. This was an early if not the first use of the flexible film base developed by George Eastman. From Google Patents.

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What is known is that Edison assigned Dickson to work on the Kinetoscope, and that work was based on an idea and the drawings Edison had originated earlier in 1889. According to Edison’s biographer Paul Israel, “During the first months of 1889 Dickson developed an arrangement of lenses and microscope objectives that enabled him to take microphotographs, and he experimented with a variety of photographic emulsions applied directly to metal and glass drums.”36 As a photographer Dickson was uniquely qualified to make the Edison vision a reality. The Dickson version of a movie viewer is far from the flexible film base and intermittent motion that would follow later. But by 1891 the camera and viewer of Edison and Dickson was ready for public demonstration. As the novelty of the Kinetoscope waned, Edison began to believe that his salvation lie in the field of projection for an audience as opposed to the personal viewing device in the penny arcade. The transition from peep show to projection followed an established venue, that of the lecture for an audience illustrated with lantern slides: “With these visual aids lecturers created narrative programs. Film exhibitors were working out of these traditions, and it is not surprising that they influenced the evolution of the motion picture business as projection replaced the peephole Kinetoscope.”37 After making hundreds of short films for the Kinetoscope Dickson eventually left the employ of Edison to develop his own technology for the projection of films and he collaborated with some of the early names in film technology inventing: C. Francis Jenkins, Thomas Armat, and the Latham Brothers. Edison apparently was more interested in manufacturing and selling the equipment than running a film company, but he did own and vigorously defend most of the useful film patents in existence, and his company made thousands of pictures to go with his devices. Another important inventor of early cinema technology was Louis Lumiere of Paris, who with his brother August began to develop their film camera and projector in 1894, leading to their first public exhibition in 1895. The brothers were aware of the Edison Kinetoscope, but were also aware of the very dim light of that system which, “could not pass sufficient light for good projection.”38 Their camera was better. “The device allowed a frequency of 16 images per second which I had previously established, and an illumination time of 1/25 of a second per image, which is more than is needed for projection.”39 Like Edison and other film experimenters, the Lumiere Brothers became de facto film makers. Their subjects were early documentary, using the camera to record and preserve real life. There was no language of film, just a stationary camera focused on a daily activity like walking down the street or watering the garden. It was done first in the service of experimentation, but gradually audiences were able to view and

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react to projected images much in the same way that individuals reacted to the Edison’s personal movie viewer. The act of watching a film, no matter the content, would forever change when it became a group event. Now you are not watching a film alone, but you are watching it with others, most of whom you do not know, but the laughs, the gasps, the applause, and the reaction of the group would be the beginning of the movie-going shared experience that would survive to this day. The Lumiere brothers gave their first public showing of their work on December 1895, and charged admission for films made of their environment, the first documentaries, like “Men and Women Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory,” and “The Baby’s Lunch,” and other films taken outdoors where there was sufficient light for the less-sensitive films of the day. Recalling that first film showing to an audience, Lumiere believed that, “On that date, December 28, 1895, was really born the expression, ‘I have been to a movie.’”40 It would be the next year, in April 1896, that the first publicly projected movie was shown in New York City on a device called the Panoptikon: “the brothers Otway and Gray Latham showed a film to guests and reporters at their workshop on Frankfort Street.”41 Film historian William Everson suggests that in that same month, “The major breakthrough came on April 23, 1896, at the Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York City, when a few brief movies were shown on a large screen. They were cunningly selected, showing not only that the movies could duplicate the stage by the inclusions of some typical vaudeville acts, but that they could do things that the stage could not – illustrated via travel scenes and seascapes.”42 This event by Edison featured his projector, the Vitascope, and demonstrated another element that would be needed for a future film industry to be successful as entertainment media, that of the audience: “Above all, the presentation demonstrated the movie’s need for audience: the shared wonder of the seeming magic of the movies, and the shared laughter at the comedy material, created an exhilaration that the single-viewer Kinetoscope could never hope to achieve.”43 This showing by Edison may have predicted two elements of the future film, first that it would begin with the formats of existing media like vaudeville, and that its showings would take place in theaters designed for live entertainment. A new mass audience experience was about to be born. Of course not all agreed that the movies were a good thing: US Navy Admiral Bradley Fiske praised the concept of Edison’s original film invention, but looking at the cinema years later he was not so sure it had been a good idea. Invoking a familiar theme still used to describe new media he said: “Whether it is for the public good to produce so many shows for idly disposed men and women to spend their time in looking at, is perhaps a subject for enlightening discussion.”44

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By 1900 most of the technical elements were in place for motion pictures to be practically presented as an entertainment business. After 75 years and thousands of hours of experimentation, there is sprocketed roll film available on a flexible plastic base, there is a device that combines a shutter with a pull down mechanism for intermittent motion needed for a camera and projector, and it all works as the motion picture because of the biology of the eye–brain system known as persistence of vision. In the Nineteenth Century biology, chemistry, and physics have come together in the service of an emerging art form. The silent film has arrived. The audience is waiting.

Enter Lee de Forest The words used to describe the parents of Lee de Forest would be welleducated, religious, thrifty, and musical. Some of these are traits that young Lee eventually eschewed, mostly those of religious and thrifty. According to the information given to de Forest’s biographer Georgette Carneal,“Lee’s father and mother had met in Iowa. Both descendants of pioneers, both intensely religious, they found common cause in bringing the gospel to the hardy folk of the corn belt.”45 Lee’s mother, the former Anna Robbins, was a descendant of the original Mayflower group and a graduate of Iowa’s Grinnell College, and important for the story of her first son, she was a leader in the music of the church, both as singer and choir director. Her musical proclivity would prove to be a positive influence on Lee, who was born into this exceptional family in Council Bluffs, Iowa on August 20, 1873. Lee’s Father Henry was a Yale graduate, and the local Congregational minister. Lee’s early childhood can be classified as “normal” with the exception of the high educational level of his parents, which was way above-average for the mid-Nineteenth Century. It is interesting to note that while both de Forest parents are college graduates, their income level was not high. They were not at all wealthy.46 The de Forest family is an old one, having arrived in the New World in 1636 and settled in the Dutch enclave of New Amsterdam, on what is now Manhattan Island. The original de Forest brothers founded Harlem. One of the earlier de Forests, the successful merchant David Curtis de Forest, was one of the few wealthy family members in Lee’s past. The importance of this de Forest is that he bequeathed his fortune to Yale in the form a special de Forest family scholarship, and this allowed Lee’s father, and Lee, and his brother to attend. Lee’s father, Henry Swift De Forest, was born in 1833, graduated from Yale in 1857, and died in 1896 at age 63. He was the first in his family to

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graduate from college. After this he taught at a small college, and later entered Yale Divinity School where he received his Doctor of Divinity. He was drafted and fought in the Civil War under U.S. Grant.47 A note on the capitalization of the first letter of “de Forest.” The original spelling from the 1600s was always with the lower case d, as in “de Forest.” Lee’s father Henry changed it to “De Forest” for the family, but while at Yale University Lee changed it back to its original “de Forest.” You will see it written several different ways throughout this book, and while for the most part lower case, there are news stories and other writings where it variously will be seen as “De Forest, DeForest, de Forest, and deforest.” The standard spelling used in the narrative of this book and his biographies is what Lee himself wanted, “de Forest.”48 Perhaps he believed his new preferred spelling was more sophisticated, continental or European. Growing up in the de Forest family meant access to fine music. This childhood exposure to concerts at the nearby college had a lifelong effect upon the science and inventing career of de Forest. Throughout his life he insisted that his inventions of radio and film be used in the service of “good music.” By 1878 this demonstrably happy family had added a sister, Mary, and a brother, Charles, and by this time the family was content, secure, and residing in Waterloo. Then there occurred an event that is potentially lifechanging for any young family, no matter how strong their bonds and beliefs. Under a church-requested transfer, the family moved from the peaceful Midwest to the deep South, 15 years after the Civil War and Emancipation. Dr. Henry De Forest was asked to be president of Talladega College in Alabama, a school “established 10 years previously for the general schooling and higher education of the ‘Freedmen,’ as the Negroes were then called so soon after slavery.”49 During the 17 years of his presidency, Talladega went from an ill-equipped normal school with primitive facilities and low educational standards, into a respected college. Henry De Forest raised money and worked hard during his apparently effective presidency to improve the educational and thus the vocational and cultural lot of the former slaves. Lee de Forest’s father was an important figure in postEmancipation education. The college survives and thrives today.50 Growing up in Talladega young Lee has mostly good memories of the black students that he lived among at the College, although previously as a child in Iowa he had no contact with other races. It was in Alabama that he first learns that there is a color line. The whites of the town look down upon the de Forest family because they represent the education of the Freedmen. The children of the white families make fun of Lee, and call him names he does not understand. He has few friends among the white people of the town of Talladega and he mostly keeps to himself or plays with the

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young black children who are being educated by the de Forest run school. “Particularly distasteful to the white gentry were the efforts of Northern missionaries to educate the Negroes. My parents, their children, and also those of all faculty – educated, refined men and women from the best schools and influences of the North – were totally ostracized by the white citizens of Talladega.”51 Compared with the Midwest, the South was very different: “The de Forests were outcasts, associates of Negroes.”52 Was Lee de Forest a racist? As racism is understood today, and as is evinced in his writings, the answer would have to be yes. His minister father was assigned to Alabama and a school for black youth, an undertaking from the head church that he took seriously and apparently without rancor. Lee was a child when the family moved from Iowa to undertake this assignment and had never before experienced people other than his own white protestant Iowa neighbors. He refers to the “colored children with whom he played a great deal” as “nigs,” which today is clearly a racist epithet. In the 1880s it was likely a mere description. What was clear was that de Forest looked down upon both the blacks and the whites of Talladega. “Constantly scrapping with both ‘scrub fool rebs’ and ‘rough ignorant vicious niggers,’ Lee had few friends in Talladega.”53 As a Midwestern-born child growing up in the deep south, he was not comfortable with the rougher Southern whites or blacks. He was alone in an unfamiliar milieu.

Boy Inventor He spends this time in isolation drawing designs for possible mechanical projects and simple inventions. There was a scarcity of books and other reading material at the college so, “Most of his reading consisted of ‘Youth’s Companion,’ ‘the Patent Office Report,’ and an encyclopedia of mechanics. All three of these he read constantly.”54 By the age of 12 he focused his interest and reading on topics connected to electricity, such as various appliances, magnets, motors, and cells. He relates the story of an early experiment in battery cell-making that required carbon for the positive electrode. Because carbon was not readily available in the local stores, it was said that while on an auto trip with his father, young Lee asked if he could walk beside the car and collect the used carbon electrodes from the auto arc lights, which were discarded and on the ground. Using these, his experiment was successful and his battery could ring a bell. Early biographer William Arvin confirms that de Forest developed early a habit of making notes on everything he was reading and working on, and there is ample evidence in the de Forest papers that this was true. In his college notebooks and various science publications to which he subscribed, his hand is always visible in the margins (Fig. 1.6).55

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Figure 1.6 A young Lee de Forest, from the Perham Foundation de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Young Lee remained passionately interested in electricity and mechanics despite the lack of support from his minister father. The elder de Forest had descended from a long line of ministers and it was assumed that Lee would follow that career path, so any deviation, like electrical experiments, would not be part of the family plan. Nevertheless he “invented” a perpetual motion device which at first he thought worked. “It is strange that after the years of toil used by geniuses of the past in attempts to construct a perpetual motion that I, a comparative youth, should succeed where they failed.”56 Soon he realized that he had failed as had the others, and that perpetual motion was an elusive dream rather than a reality. Nevertheless, on the surface his childhood appears an idyllic one, including playing in the surrounding forests, riding his horse, chopping wood, getting into childhood trouble with his brother, and going to the woodshed for punishment from his father, all parts of a very typical 1880s childhood. According to Lee, his parents loved and respected each other and their children. Henry was a stern father, but his son believed he wanted the best for his children and he raised them with good values.57 Lee de Forest spent the remainder of his precollege years in Talladega as a “boy inventor,” building anything possible with wood and scraps: “That was the first question Lee asked of the universe: What makes it go?”58 He built a giant replica of a locomotive in his back yard, he built a working blast furnace, and did get the attention, both good and bad, from family

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and neighbors. He writes about his train replica: “When done, it became the talk of the neighborhood. The children, white and black, all came to inspect this wonder. Even my father took parental pride in this creation of his son.”59 Later he developed a method for electroplating and made a few dollars electroplating the silverware of the neighbors. Although his family and home life was centered on the church, Lee began to pull away from it and “As he grew older, the loneliness of his life forced him, not particularly against his will, into deeper and deeper study of his chosen line. From the time of adolescence until he entered prep school his reading became more and more constant and his experiments more and more pretentious.”60 At a young age it was obvious that the bright child that would become the inventor would not follow the generations of de Forests who were ministers. His father, noting that Lee was spending all his time on inventions, tried in vain to get him to read classics and prepare to study for the ministry. It would not happen. Finally, as he is about to complete his basic education at Talladega, he writes a letter to his father, finally admitting publicly that his plan is to enter the science school at Yale, not the Divinity School. “I intend to be a machinist and inventor, because I have great talents in that direction. In this I think you will agree with me. If this be so, why not allow me to so study as to best prepare myself for that profession? In doing this it would be much better to prepare myself for and take the Sheffield Scientific course.”61 It was already predetermined that he would be able to attend Yale because of the David de Forest scholarship bequest for family. Much to the chagrin of his father, the Yale Scientific School rather than the Yale Divinity School was young Lee’s chosen destination. In a postscript to his mother he wrote: “Dear Mama, the only footprints I will leave will be my inventions. I had better take the scientific course. Don’t you think?”62 Henry De Forest was initially disappointed but would try to understand and respect his son’s decision. Because the films made by de Forest in the 1920s were not drama, but music, vaudeville, and documentary, it might have been that because as a child, he did not really care much for drama. When several faculty and parents of the College decided to put on “Little Red Riding Hood,” and young Lee was selected to play the Big Bad Wolf, at first he refused: “I was coached to come in on all fours, emitting ferocious growls, and savagely to devour the poor grandma who proved to be my sister Mary. Came time for the wolf ’s appearance, and I went on strike, not from stage fright at all, but because I did not think the sheep rug was at all becoming to my assumed character and, I very much disliked the idea of making my entrance on all fours.”63 The adult de Forest will turn out to be a serious individual, not

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generally playful, and definitely not a make-believe person. But he does appreciate great literature. In addition to his science reading he enjoys the fiction of James Fennimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, and he read the bible “from cover to cover.”64

Toward a Formal Scientific Education On July 6, 1891, Lee de Forest exits Talladega for Boston and summer camp before entering the Mt. Hermon Preparatory School that fall. Mt. Hermon was founded by Dwight Moody on fundamentalist religious values and agriculture, so in addition to religious training, each boy must spend several hours a day working on the school’s farm. De Forest never complained, even though because of the low income of his parents, he was forced to more work hours of manual labor than other students. His social life is not all that different from the one he led in Talladega, and he spends most of his time alone, reading, studying, dreaming of that life of invention. “He was not extremely efficient and decidedly was not a hale-fellow-well-met. When a roommate or fellow student became restless or talked while he was studying, de Forest could not concentrate and would become slightly angry.”65 He had few friends, and none he considered close while at Mt. Hermon. “There was no one he considered as a confidant or no particular chum with whom he shared his feelings. It was mostly work, little if any play.”66 It is at Mt. Hermon where he experiences his first serious higher education classes in physics, algebra, and philosophy. Mt. Hermon was considered a preparatory-for-college school, and its curriculum was part advanced high school, and part junior college, to put it in the context of the modern educational structure. As a result of the 2 years’ stay there, he was “prepared” to enter Yale. In his final year at Mt. Hermon he was most interested in laboratory work and related courses, and he graduated among the highest in his class. It was a positive development that while at Mt. Hermon he and his father exchanged weekly letters. In one of them Henry writes this advice to Lee whom he considered “an awkward boy,” as he knew him in Talladega: “May both my boys be stalwarts, regular Gideons of the tribe De Forest! No weak-kneed, fainthearted namby-pamby among my male successors; only two, but each a lion. Heroism at school augurs success in after years.”67 One of the major changes in the life of de Forest while at Mt. Hermon is his gradual emotional separation from his religious family upbringing. One transitional event involved a bible essay he wrote before graduation. Because de Forest was broken as usual, he entered the contest hoping to win the cash prize of $50. He began to pray often that his essay would win

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the big prize. But he lost, and not gracefully, calling the winner his enemy, and insisting that this person already had plenty of money and did not deserve the prize because he was ranked lower that de Forest in class standing.68 This begins one of numerous times throughout de Forest’s life when he invoked “my enemies” and became paranoid in his thoughts, believing that an unnamed “they” were out to get him. The outcome of this experience was that, “God has been given a chance; this is an experiment even as a salt and an acid in a test tube. My father has spent his life in the service of God; I have always been devoted to His ways, and now, when I am in great need, my father God grants the prize to one who has little necessity for it. Therefore the conclusion I may draw from this is that God does not take a hand in the regular affairs of man.”69 After this contest de Forest began to move away from accepting those life values given him by his father, ones based on early religious training, and he embraces the logical processes of a scientist. Lee de Forest was losing his religion. Before he enters Yale in the fall he attends the Chicago World’s fair and works part time as a chair pusher, all so he could be around the machinery exhibit: “Fortunately for me, the Amalgamated Order of Chair-Pushers has gone on strike in the fairgrounds, and the company in charge of the grounds advertised for strike breakers. Although it’s against my principles to side against rather than for the poor men who push the chairs, I took a job as chair pusher yesterday because the idea of leaving the fairgrounds is like the idea of leaving heaven. The salary is small and the uniform cost $8, but it means staying longer in this city of dreams. I spend every spare moment in Machinery Hall, seeing the same electrical exhibits, the same machines, time and time again.”70 Notwithstanding the understandable educational value of being around early technology, here he is presented with an early moral dilemma, a need for money vs. the act of strike-breaking. Money wins, but he is obviously aware of how his decision will affect the working men his choice has displaced. His principles are apparently easily broken. What will this imply for his later life when he meets major ethical challenges?

A Yale Man Yale at last. The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University was a 6-year program for Lee de Forest, three as an undergraduate and three in the Ph.D. program. Entering as a freshman in 1893, he begins his inventing career almost immediately, submitting several of his ideas to companies. None are successful. “The resulting reaction on the young inventor was not so much one of disappointment as it was a sense of being blocked in, cut off from contact with the world of achievement in which even failure was dignified.”71 One of his early inventions was the design of a new trolley car for a contest,

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Figure 1.7 Lee de Forest in academic regalia receives one of his two degrees from Yale University, from the Perham Foundation de Forest papers, History San Jose.

and the winning entry was a cash prize. Needing money he took it seriously, and worked diligently on it, and even had it evaluated by experts before submission, but before the results were announced the contest was called off by the company. But he could not ignore the call of inventing, he could not sit still. Even in his job in the Yale psychological laboratory where he plotted curves from data, he invented an improved drawing machine to aid in his work, but he was prohibited by the professor in charge from using it. In his free time he worked on inventions for steam engines using formulas from his physics knowledge, he worked on solving the problems of a practical airplane, and on the transmission of light, and heat directly into electricity. As a member of the Editorial Board of the Yale Scientific Monthly, he wrote an important and prescient article, “Progress in Aerial Navigation,” 8 years before the first flight of the Wright Brothers. Others of that era were writing that such a feat as a flying machine would never happen.72 While only a Yale freshman de Forest was already taking the initiative in what he believed would be his career, that of an inventor (Fig. 1.7). The evidence indicates that he loved everything about the school, and he often described himself as a “Yale Man.” He liked football games, the beauty of New Haven, the education he received there, and throughout his life he returned as an active alumnus, although is it not known if he gave them a large donation or added to the family scholarship. He worked hard as a student, believing “if there is a task to be done, it must not be delayed

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until afternoon. If there is a good book to read, a deep truth to learn, let me do it now.”73 He believes that once lost there is nothing that can bring time back. De Forest admits in his later years that his Yale experiences were the best of his life, and he writes about all things Yale in a poetic and romantic way. Reading his descriptions you can feel the breezes, the cold winters, the lake waters, and the elm-lined streets. Only at Yale did he write so poetic and carefree, so confident in his growth as a scientist and human. It was here that he adopted his new philosophies of life, those that would last his lifetime. According to the excellent de Forest family biographer James Hijiya, Lee continued to undergo a conversion from an unquestioning belief in God and the religion of his father, to an atheist/agnostic who believed in evolutionism and Darwin. In his early Yale years he began to believe more in science and what can be explained, rather than taken on faith, as his philosophy became common sense over divine inspiration. He also began to realize his conflicting feelings about women. He apparently loved to flirt but seldom had success. He felt guilty about his thoughts of sex, but he did not worry as he was rarely if ever successful. He was painfully shy. De Forest learned in his first Yale years that, “experience, like knowledge has value only in application. Experience first teaches and then teaches avoidance. De Forest seemed to know the value of defeat. Another trait which worked much in his favor was inherited from his forefathers. It was the dogged tenacity, the extreme belief in his own work.”74 Hijiya does an excellent job of portraying de Forest the person, and his philosophy, his beliefs, the inner man, and his political and social opinions such as his recommendation on “How to divide up China between the UK and Italy.” He also predicted the end of nations and borders believing that there would eventually be a world republic with a universal race and language, English in his opinion.75 Politically, de Forest described himself as a “progressive,” and he supported Progressive Republican candidates for office. His favorite was Theodore Roosevelt, while his least favorite candidate was Woodrow Wilson. Tragedy turns into opportunity. Before his last year of his undergraduate education his father Henry dies of a fall, and his mother Anna discovers that her late husband left a comfortable amount of money. Using this she buys a house in New Haven and Lee and his brother Charles, and sister Mary live there and for a time his money problems are lessened. For graduation he writes, “These last days at Yale as a man – how much they mean and will mean in later years! How my father would have relished these days as I graduated. I found the class statistics interesting – I am voted the nerviest in the class, also the homeliest.”76 With Henry gone, de Forest will take care of his mother for the remainder of her life. She will live where he lives, in the cities of New Haven and Palo Alto and New York. And while they

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Figure 1.8 Lee de Forest’s mother Anna mother seated with photo of Lee on table. De Forest did take care of his mother until her death in the mid-1920s. From the Seaver Center collection, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

disagree about religion and philosophy, Lee was the “good son,” the one who was with her for her lifetime into the mid-1920s (Fig. 1.8). So in 1896, in his final year of undergraduate study at Yale, de Forest is at the top of his class academically, and he admits both conceit and self confidence, wondering if his destiny as an inventor might bring great wealth to this perpetually poor student. His egotism was said to be a defense mechanism, a shield against the weakness of his position, the poverty and loneliness of his youth and student days. And there is more than just science. In his final year as a Yale undergraduate he falls in unrequited love with his blond second cousin, and he discovers his literary side, studying and writing poetry. De Forest started his Ph.D. in 1896 at Yale Sheffield Scientific School. Between undergraduate and graduate school, he tried to read as much as possible on electricity, now realizing how much he did not get in his undergraduate studies. In this first doctorate year he did not socialize, but instead he attempted to get on a sound footing with his classes. Whatever else is said about Lee de Forest the person, he was a serious scholar with good study habits. He received a great deal of reinforcement for his scholarship,

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including always being ranked near the top of his class, and the invitations to publish in the University science journals. He might not have been a genius, although he believed he was, but he surely made up for it by making best use of available time. Absent friends and other social life, and given his penchant for success and to meet his long-stated goal of being an inventor, he allowed for himself few distractions. In later years he recalled his solitary and largely friendless Yale life: “How often as I turned down Grove Street after recitation, or left the campus for my distant room, have I felt a vague, half-recognized regret, a bitterness that I was thus alone, that others were not more cordial, better acquainted.”77 In his opinion, the electricity curriculum at Yale graduate school was not as robust and up to date as that of its mechanical engineering program. He even expressed some jealousy that his contemporaries at Columbia and Cornell were better off in their pursuit of electricity. In a new and evolving area like electricity, the reputation of a university often depended upon that single great professor in residence.78 One such professor of practical mathematics at Yale, J. Willard Gibbs, did impress de Forest who wrote in 1898: “My mathematical training this year I find already of the greatest value. Without such, and every bit of it, I could not read these books leading up to Maxwell. I want another year, still higher. Then I can expect to deal intelligently with light and wave phenomena, along which lines I see lies the great future of electronic advance.”79 This passage is significant in that it demonstrates how de Forest was interested in and following Hertz and others who earlier studied the theories of James Clerk Maxwell. It must also be one of the earliest uses of the word “electronic.” The Spanish-American War briefly interrupted his time in graduate school, and in 1898 he and others of his class enlisted in the Yale Light Artillery Battery to fight in the war to free Cuba. He believed that the war would not last more than 6 moths, and he was correct, spending his months as a bugler, a position he received by virtue of his cornet skills. This war was the one in which the majority of citizens apparently believed a noble cause, and as students protested in favor of this war, young Ph.D. candidate Lee wanted to serve his country. He also believes that it might allow him to get some outdoor exercise. It was a quick war, and he did not do much other than guard duty before a quick discharge. From this experience he wrote that he saw the incompetence of the government and the war department, and the lack of health care for the soldiers, believing that many more died in camps waiting to fight the war than actually died in battle.80 Returning to school after that brief detour, de Forest was trying very hard in his final year to understand all the emerging wireless technology. Having read the writings of Maxwell and Hertz, he began to learn as much as possible about “Hertz’s simple experiment.” He wrote in his diary: “What

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Hertz actually did in 1887 was simply to create electric sparks in his laboratory at the opposite end of which was mounted a ‘resonator,’ that is, a metal ring not completely closed, and therefore provided with a little gap. When sparks crackled in the sending apparatus, tiny answering sparks could be seen in the gap in the ring. I see it all in my mind very clearly, but I cannot say that I understand it.”81 That you cannot really “see” radio waves, and that what you “hear” is the sound of the spark but not the wave, must have confused many who upon seeing it happen, had to take the existence of the radio wave on faith. For Lee de Forest, this realization and a series of lectures on this subject convinced him that wireless would be in his future. Why would Lee de Forest get involved with something as novel and esoteric as wireless was before the turn of the century? Biographer Georgette Carneal, who knew de Forest personally beginning in the late 1920s, suggests that “Lee de Forest was one who fought inward battles day by day, night by night, while his college mates indulged in athletics or in girls. Throughout his college days, for instance, his conscience, inherited from his Christian training, arose at every step of the way and turned from what was interesting and exciting to what was moral, dutiful and upright.”82 Perhaps for de Forest, a person who admittedly was friendless, knowledge in a mysterious area like wireless might have been one way to feel superior to fellow students, most of whom he did not respect. But science as a duty? Probably not. The evidence suggests that he really was deeply interested in electricity and wireless, and during his final days at Yale this interest continued and quickly overwhelmed all other areas of science and engineering. He began to be interested in the condenser: “My specialty then, shall be the condenser. It is the stepping stone between the electrical art of today and the final and more mysterious ‘wavy’ form to which we must come. It is the ladder to the final realms of the air.”83 In scientific terms he is mostly correct (Fig. 1.9). Along with his passion for science, de Forest did continue to undergo a change in philosophy, and he wrote in his diary about how he and his mother, “who was trained in the old and narrow path of blind belief and fabled myths,” were not in agreement: “I cannot always be following idols and sham. I must begin to be true to myself . . . A curse on the old puritans, and the old puritanical narrowness that cannot see when it has exhausted its usefulness and become a stumbling block to progress.”84 This was more than a gradual change, and it would cause de Forest to adopt of life of agnosticism, determinism, and Darwinism. He began to believe that he is the master of his destiny, that science can explain all, rather than a god or an unseen divine force. It was said about his philosophy that, “His position shifted gradually from the faith of his father to a rationalistic, scientific one.”85 This was Lee de Forest the student becoming an adult.

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Figure 1.9 The condenser, then and now. The earliest condenser, a device that stored electricity for a short time, was a Leyden Jar, image left. Later the condenser found use in all electronic devices. Shown, middle, is a 1930s versions of a tubular condenser, just rolled layers of foil and paper, and right, a variable condenser used to tune in radio signals. The condenser in Lee de Forest’s career plans was renamed in about 1950. Author photos of condensers and the 6 Leyden Jar in series from Bart Lee, copyright 2010, 2011; UK National Trust installation at the Marconi Lizard Point Wireless Station, David Barlow, Curator, photographed and published with his permission. What is a condenser? First, it is an old term for today’s “capacitor,” a device that is made up of two electrodes separated by a nonconducting or insulating element, a so-called “dielectric.” It could be a piece of paper or just air as a separator as in the Leyden Jar of Benjamin Franklin and Heinrich Hertz. In that first example of a condenser it was used to store an electric charge for a short time, a charge derived from a lightning discharge of static electricity. In the 1950s the industry designation for the condenser was changed to capacitor. Today, the capacitor is used in all power supplies for smoothing out the AC waves, which are manifested as an audible hum caused by the alternating current of 60 Hz or 60 vibrations per second found in the home. DC, direct current, is needed for most electronic devices. Beyond the power supplies, capacitors are also used in computers, phones and radios, and televisions to allow AC to pass through while blocking DC. In a radio, this allows both the amplified signal and the radio frequencies to pass through but blocks the direct current of the power supply needed for the transistors to operate, and keeps it out of the path of the signal. See the Fig. 1.9.

He was also developing personal opinions and, “his belief in the shallowness of most human beings left him very exclusive as to companions. At Mt. Hermon he had no friends,” and later at Yale “he did not cultivate companionship, possibly because he had not the first idea how, since his early life has been spent entirely alone. Most all of his potential friendships of the first years were immediately nipped before they had even a chance at development by de Forest’s characteristic extreme righteousness.”86 Biographer Arvin, who interviewed de Forest in the early 1920s, wrote this about de Forest’s experiences with the young girls of New Haven, “When romance winked he followed them home and wrote in his diary of the sordidness of stolen kisses and sweet vows.”87 Still influenced by a set of values

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inherited from his religious upbringing, Lee de Forest was a man who felt guilty about having fun, and while he believed that he should devote himself to constant study, he continued to move toward a better, morebalanced sense of self. As he advanced in the university he made more friends with which to discuss his philosophy of life, and he became less shy and detached as he put the narrowness of his religious upbringing behind him. He published articles in the Yale Scientific Journal, and he was in the top three of his class. He was an excellent student. In his senior year as an undergraduate he added outside reading, a book by Nicola Tesla, and he began to devise formulas for understanding electricity and began to have some original thought and theory. He said this of Tesla, “I admire him greatly. His works are the greatest inciters to zealous work and study. How I pray that I may equal and excel him, that all the settled and fore granted beliefs in my genius and destiny are not idle visions of conceit. I want millions of dollars.”88

De Forest was a Scholar Of all of the definitions that have been used to describe de Forest, there is one that stands out as a positive trait, that of a scholar. In the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, it was almost unheard of for a man or woman to graduate from college - the actual graduation number was less than 1%.89 It is remarkable that Lee de Forest received his Yale undergraduate degree in 3 years, and his Ph.D. in three more. He was not among the moneyed elite in his class, like the wealthy sons and daughters of industrialists and the barons of capitalism. He was one of the so-called “legacy” students, on a scholarship, and he worked part time jobs while other, more economically endowed students lived the College Life. You might say that while many of his Yale contemporaries played, de Forest took the vow of scholarship. You can see the thought process of de Forest the scholar in his notebooks and papers. The articles he saved show that he always did what graduate students call the “literature search,” knowing what similar inventors were writing about a new theory or invention or process, and while reading these, making notes in the margins, agreeing or not, looking at possible ways to better it, always looking for a way to create something new out of existing ideas. He did this as a Yale student, and there is evidence in his class notebooks that while he was taking notes, or sitting in a classroom, he wrote questions and possible ideas for inventions in the margins. While listening to a lecture on electricity in 1897, he draws at the top of the notebook page a schematic diagram of an arc transmitter. It is of the basic design of Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen and others, showing a microphone on the right of the drawing, a carbon button model as used in

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the telephone. This microphone is in series with a battery and the primary of an inductance, a transformer-like device that shows two coils in proximity, perhaps wound around each other, but using insulated wire so they do not actually touch other than by induction. The secondary of this transformer is connected to the arc and a high current DC source. Next to this drawing de Forest has written, “Talking ark, like ‘speaking flame.’ It gives a very fine reproduction of sound at the microphone – it is due to the changes of temperature in the arc.”90 This description of how it works may not have been entirely correct, but it is similar to the transmitter that de Forest and others will use during the radiotelephone development period between 1909 and 1916. From the evidence in his college notebooks, the young inventor seems to have anticipated a correct technology 10 years in advance of its use in his early radiotelephone experiments with the “speaking arc,” which he also refers to as his “flame.” This schematic drawing will prophesy his work in wireless detectors, radio broadcasting, the vacuum tube, and sound-on-film. He will return to the “flame” throughout his inventing career (Fig. 1.10). These de Forest notebooks from the Yale graduate years are enlightening because they show what an advanced science student knew about the new field of electricity in the 1890s. Most of the lecture note books are titled “electricity,” and it appears from the various pages that de Forest, who was at the top of his class, listened and made notes about the great thinkers of the time. He also made drawings, some of laboratory experiments, and in the notes he asks questions, he answers them, and as a diversion he even draws people and objects, perhaps out of boredom. Looking into his future, in an 1898 notebook called “Electricity IV,” he has created a list of 21 items with the heading, “Patents to be taken out.” The list includes wireless devices such as, “Two senders, to prevent cutting in,” “Mechanical syntony,” “Coherer in magnetic field,” and “tub capacitors, distributed capacity in connection to the antenna,” all parts of the typical wireless system that very few knew about at the time and only a handful of scientists and inventors even understood. Based on the de Forest notebooks, it is clear that at the Yale Sheffield Scientific School, a unique and powerful education in physics and electricity was possible.91 Having this list of possible wireless patents 2 years before the publicity surrounding Marconi’s famous transcontinental message put him a very elite group of educated men. He is more than ready to seek his place among wireless inventors. In this endeavor he will be successful (Fig. 1.11). There is one more assignment that must be completed in order for him to qualify for the Yale science Ph.D., and that is the graduate thesis. De Forest read Oliver Lodge’s book, Modern View of Electricity, and anything he could

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Figure 1.10 A page from one of the many Yale notebooks saved by de Forest. The top half of the 1897 page shows the “talking ark” that will be important for his inventing in later years. He will use this principle as the basis for a flame detector, a radiotelephone transmitter, and a sound-on-film light source. From the Perham de Forest paper collection, History San Jose.

find by and about Maxwell and Hertz, and this body of early electrical knowledge would point him toward his topic. His doctoral thesis, which today would be called a dissertation, is titled “Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires,” a page of which is shown in Fig. 1.12. This

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Figure 1.11 In a 1898 Yale notebook, de Forest has written down a list of “patents to be taken out.” These will guide his early wireless telegraph device inventions. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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document and its conclusions are part theoretical and part based on actual laboratory experiments. This work, according to de Forest was, “to determine the loci thereon of nodes and antinodes, to measure the wave lengths of the ultra high frequency oscillations, self excited by my spark generator immersed in a shallow glass can of kerosene. I was seeking to determine, by observation and theory, the divergence of the actual and calculated final quarter wave lengths of the Lecher system.”92 For this research he uses the Branley Coherer, and it is during this work that he realizes that this detector of wireless waves is the weakest component of the new Marconi wireless system. Shortly after graduation de Forest will develop and patent a number of better detectors. Dr. Lee de Forest graduates from Yale Sheffield Scientific School in 1899 as a Doctor of Science (Fig. 1.12).

Toward the New Century Hundreds of small pieces. It will take that many Nineteenth Century ideas, theories, practical experiments, and patents to make possible the new devices of the new century. The first of these is the film. It begins with chemistry experiments and the discovery of the photograph, a way to store an image for later and repeated viewing. Next is the phonograph of Edison, a technology that allows the recording, storage, and playback of sound. Each appears promising, but it takes most of the century to evolve the photograph into the projected silent motion picture. The phonograph that was invented in 1878 lay dormant for several decades before it would become an important piece of modern entertainment technology. Most important of the Nineteenth Century scientific discoveries are the new uses for electricity, including the electric lamp and the wireless telegraph. Both of these are intermediate steps toward the radio as the second important entertainment technology to be developed in the new century. The talking motion picture will evolve out of this body of work. How did these ideas become inventions? How is a useful device discovered? One way is by informed original thought. The first, informed, is underutilized and the latter, original thought, is misunderstood. The first task in research leading to invention is to be informed, and that means the performance of a thorough search to find out what is already known, or what was discovered before your idea. But what is original thought and is everything already “known?” Is it too late? Does it take a special person to have an original thought? Perhaps not. Thomas Edison himself always said that his “genius” was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The concept of original thought is probably overrated. Edison admitted that he worked everyday, all

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Figure 1.12 A page from de Forest’s handwritten Ph. D. thesis. His work was in physics and electricity and involved designing, conducting, and proving an experiment in Hertzian wave theory. At the Yale Sheffield Scientific School the final doctoral project was called a “thesis,” as opposed to its current and more common designation of “dissertation.” From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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day and into the night, sleeping little while he methodically tried, tested, and discarded or adopted those pieces that led to a successful and patentable invention. His phonograph was a combination of existing ideas from his code recorder, and the experiments by those who first wrote and recorded sound waves visually. Edison was aware of these experiments. The phonograph is a very simple invention, very basic, but it took an informed and organized mind to complete it. For Edison to invent his motion picture film apparatus he had to understand the known world of photography before he could overcome the problems of the moving image. From the science of the Nineteenth Century came the building blocks upon which the great entertainment technologies of film, radio, and television will be constructed in the Twentieth Century. These electronic-based media will come to fruition because of original thought based on previous information. The radio evolved in this way beginning with communication without wires. The individual who receives much credit for this, Guglielmo Marconi, understood the work of Hertz and others and put together the best known pieces to create a wireless system. The spark gap of Hertz, the detector of Branley, and the key and the code from the wired telegraph were put together correctly for that first crude system. Marconi also designed the wireless to meet an unmet need, the protection of ships while at sea. Then de Forest, Fessenden, and others made further improvements, always with an understanding of the previous successes and failures. The papers of de Forest indicate that he made every attempt to understand the work of others, to analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and then use the best elements of each to create a better system. Successful engineers and scientists work this way, some as lone inventors, others as part of large corporations. Writes wireless historian Hugh Aitken: “Science is that sector of society which specializes in the systematic production of new knowledge. The essence of creativity, here as elsewhere, lies in the combination of bits of information into new patterns.”93 Next, new Ph.D. Lee de Forest will leave the comfort and security of Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School and enter the work place. He invented and he contributed to the body of scientific knowledge, and he began to fashion the electronic age, primarily in the form of its entertainment technology. He created devices and their audiences.

The Race for Wireless

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If you had been afloat in this town, with scarcely a dollar in your clothes, not knowing where the next meal was coming from, in daily contact with hardheaded businessmen, the leaders of American finance – with the idol of your life’s ambition in jeopardy of being lost, thru this damnable delay and argument – then you, too, perhaps, would begin to realize that this is not the inventor’s world; that things to us are not as we would like to hear them, but as they are.1 The Significance of Marconi De Forest’s Early Career The Search for a Better Detector The Wireless Business A Silent Film Industry Emerges

The early inventing life of Lee de Forest can be viewed as a prelude to his final invention of significance, his version of the talkies, the 1920s Phonofilm. His post-Yale years and his early wireless inventions will show a pattern of a man who is interested in communication systems using electricity. While at Yale, he learned about the theories of James Clerk Maxwell and how Heinrich Hertz turned those theories into practical applications when he sent a spark across the room and received it using a crude detector. At Yale he was a curious student, embellishing his lecture notes with ideas, questions, and diagrams, as he begins to understand the scientific world to which he now belongs. He has graduated and he is on his way to what will turn out to be a complicated life as a wireless inventor. In this endeavor, de Forest follows Marconi and attempts to build a better system. De Forest had his motivations for his inventions, and often said that he was inventing for the public good, not just for personal profit, but perhaps he also had an economist’s understanding that making a profit can only happen by satisfying public demand. Having just completed the electricity and physics curriculum at Yale, he ponders two-way communication, starting with the embryonic wireless of the spark gap and coherer. In the first years of the new century he will quickly establish himself as a leader in the invention and marketing of wireless systems. His technology and M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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the company formed to sell it are initially successful, but soon he will get into legal and financial trouble. He will discover that he has been betrayed by unsavory business colleagues, and he will end up penniless and accused of unethical business conduct. After this experience, he will quickly tire of coded messages and turn to devices for sending musical entertainment into homes and movie theaters.

The Significance of Marconi As Lee de Forest was beginning his graduate work at Yale Sheffield Scientific School, another individual, who was 1 year younger, was already learning about Hertz and conducting his own experiments in wireless. He was the Italian, Guglielmo Marconi. Within a few years, de Forest and Marconi will be fighting it out, in the newspapers and in the courts, and in the contract negotiations for the wireless business of the US Navy. It was said by Marconi during the early development of the wireless telegraph that a major purpose for such a system was the safety of ships at sea. Marconi was a yachtsman, and well understood that the current visual signaling systems did not work beyond the ability to see them. Any combination of flashing lights or semaphore flags that depended upon the weather were wholly impractical. As a business person, Marconi reasoned that if the commercial ships that were sailing in intercontinental waters with perishable food and dry goods could always be in touch with each other and shore stations along the way, they would be able to signal if there was bad weather or worse. He realized that by using such a system their cargo could be kept track of, thus insuring a more efficient business. Marconi viewed two-way wireless communication as a way to aid the safety and efficiency of commerce using ships at sea. He also believed that by using the dots and dashes of Morse code, the transactions of commerce would remain largely private. Marconi was 1 year younger than Lee de Forest. Born in Italy in 1874, he was the son of an Italian father and Irish mother. His family had both wealth and friends in high places. His education was in private schools: “Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others.”2 Marconi was early in wireless telegraphy, and the evidence suggests that he also saw early the possibility of it as a business. First, he replicates and improves upon the previous work of Hertz, and by 1895 he is able to send signals as far as a mile and a half. This was significantly farther than Hertz. In those early years, wireless was unproven and unheard of save for a few scientists. Hertz had conducted his famous experiments based on Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, Oliver Lodge had added improvements, and it was

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Figure 2.1 Guglielmo Marconi, from a series of 25 early twentieth century cigarette cards, one included in each pack. The series was called “Wireless Telegraphy” and it was sponsored by Lambert and Butler Cigarettes, Great Britain. From the Bart Lee collection.

this work on which Marconi built. Hertz and Lodge were academics while Marconi was the curious and bright son of a merchant who saw the possibility of wireless leading to a business of his own. In his native Italy, he had studied informally with the scientist Augusto Righi, who upon the death of Hertz in 1894 had written a newspaper obituary including the details of the Hertz’s wireless experiments. It was from Righi that young Marconi learned about the principles of wireless communications (Fig. 2.1). In the beginning, Marconi was unable to interest his own countries’ government in his work causing him to try his luck in England. It is believed that he may not have been ultimately successful without the social and financial connections of his mother Anne. It was she who apparently opened doors for young Guglielemo, allowing him access to highly placed officials such as Director Preece of the British Post Office, his patent attorneys, and anyone else who could elevate his ideas and get them noticed. Shortly after that he established a company and set up regular communication between England and France, transmitting and receiving across the Channel. For his première before Preece he uses a spark similar to the one he had observed in Righi’s lab, and for the detector/receiver he uses a modification of Branley’s coherer. Historian Aitken said this of Marconi the inventor: “The original acts of creative insight were seldom his. Where he excelled was in the indispensable process of critical revision.”3

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In his early experiments, Marconi used the Hertzian system of short dipole antennas, and while he did not realize it at the time, this system radiated at very high frequencies, causing signals to weaken after very short distances. His early wavelength was decades ahead of its practical use, and later it would be known as VHF or Very High Frequency. It was limited to line of sight and was not viable for long distance communications. Marconi began to experiment with antennas, at the time unknowingly moving his wireless signals down to lower frequencies where they could travel farther by following the curvature of the earth or reflect off of the ionosphere. Only then would his system become viable for early radio communication. Using the trial and error of inventing he discovered that long distance transmissions worked best if a long wire antenna and a wire buried in the earth were used as both the transmitter and the receiver. Thus begins experiments that will finally move beyond those of Hertz and toward a patentable system for Marconi, one unique enough to be sustained in a court challenge. The famous number “7777” series of British patents by Marconi, granted in April 1900, covered “tuning” and “Improvements to wireless telegraphy,” and they were also filed as an American patent, 763,772, issued in 1904.4 Now that patent protection is in place, Marconi’s next step is to set up stations on ships and shore. Commenting on his antenna revelations in his 1909 Nobel Prize speech, he told how he, “began to examine the relation between the distance at which the transmitter could effect the receiver and the elevation of the capacity areas above the earth, and I very soon definitely ascertained that the higher the wires of the capacity areas, the greater the distance over which it was possible to telegraph.”5 The issue of distance is one that haunts the memory of Marconi today. His major claim is that in December 1901 he sent the coded letter “S” or dit dit dit, from Poldhu, England to St. John’s Newfoundland in Canada, a distance of 2,100 miles. This received a great deal of press coverage and it was likely the first time that many citizens heard of communication without connecting wires. But the question that is asked 100 years later is this: Did Marconi in December of 1901 really receive in Newfoundland the message sent from England, or was it just random noise? This does not take away from his verifiable accomplishments and his obvious influence; but this very long distance early transmission could not be repeated for 7 years after 1901. Wireless historian Bart Lee writes, “It is, however, not at all clear, even now, how Marconi’s spark signals managed to get across the Atlantic, from Cornwall in England (at Poldhu on the Lizard Peninsula) to St. John’s in Newfoundland, more than 1,800 nautical miles, in the middle of the day.”6 Even today, the broadcasts of the most powerful short wave transmitters in the world are essentially deaf in the afternoon using the best possible receivers in optimum

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locations. Lee suggests that the perfect propagation factors (no sunspots, no other stations on the air, an improved mercury coherer detector, minimal atmospheric interference) may have been in place such that the signal did bounce off the ionosphere and did reach Newfoundland, ideal conditions for early wireless. It would be difficult today to attempt to replicate the 1901 experiment because the radio frequencies used are overcrowded and there exists much more interference. Nonetheless, British and Canadian experimenters did achieve a successful midday medium frequency transatlantic crossing in 2006, leading to a further understanding of the technology during Marconi’s time and the propagation conditions he enjoyed.7 In later years, Marconi received many accolades for his work, including honorary doctorates from several universities, and the Nobel Prize for Physics, which in 1909 he shared with Professor Karl Braun.“He was named a Senatore in the Italian Senate and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in England. He received the hereditary title of Marchese in 1929.”8 In the end, Aitken best sums up the significance of the first wireless pioneer: “What differentiated Marconi from his contemporary rivals was not his scientific knowledge, nor, initially, the distinctive excellence of his technology. It was his sense of the market, of where a demand for this new technology existed or could be created. A creative genius in electronic engineering Marconi could have been; but he was also a commercial entrepreneur.”9 But another new wireless inventor, Lee de Forest, has also heard of the successes of Marconi and is preparing to compete fiercely with him in inventing and in business. There will be a decade or more of intense rivalry between the de Forest and Marconi’s interests, in the beginning over competing wireless systems, and later over a littleknown but upcoming detector of wireless called the Fleming Valve. Marconi has licensed this device as a detector of code and the litigation-strewn revolution that leads to modern day electronics begins.

De Forest’s Early Career After graduation and before entering the job market as a newly minted Ph.D., Lee de Forest takes a side trip to Iowa to visit an old childhood girlfriend named Jessica Wallace. They had corresponded by letter while he was in college. He did spend time with her in Iowa in what appears to be a traditional and proper courtship, and this relationship marks the beginning of a pattern that he would follow many more times: She sings to him and he reads poetry to her. In his domestic future, three of the four de Forest wives were singers. With Jessica his intentions are obvious, and

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during an evening on the lake he is moved to write, “It was an hour never to be forgotten: for we were one and infinitely happy; the light of love in our eyes grew with the dawning light of the moon, as the orb of our love and our happiness ascended.”10 This was obviously a summer romance, one of those moments in life that burns brightly and passionately, but burns out quickly. He is disappointed when the romance fails, but as is his custom, he is moved to write one of the hundreds of poems he will write throughout his life. This is a short, succinct, and sad poem about the end of love: There is a flower that blooms once only, When faded dies forever; A bird which startled ne’er returns to its nest; A tide which ebbing never more flows; A star, which, falling, gleams no more – And my Love

De Forest recovers from this lost love as he will many more times in his life. The important task now is to begin the central purpose that Lee de Forest, Yale doctor of science, plans as his life’s work. It is the invention of a better wireless system and he is in a hurry to enter this new game. Following the successful experiments of Hertz, and the wireless system and business created by Marconi, de Forest now wonders where he will find his place in the new industry. He is fully aware of all of the ideas of the turn of the century inventors and he wants to be a part of it. He recalls that while a Yale student during the year Marconi’s first wireless patent was issued in England, he reads an article by Sir William Crookes titled, “Some Possibilities in Electricity,” and he remembers how it spoke to him about the possibilities of wireless: “Any two friends living within the radius of sensitivity of their receiving instruments, having first decided on their special wavelength and attuned their respective receiving instruments to mutual receptivity, could thus communicate as long and as often as they wished by timing the impulses to produce long and short intervals on the ordinary Morse code.”11 This was wireless communication as described in 1896 by the scientist Crookes, a seemingly limitless view of its use a few years before the public would be introduced to its possibilities.

De Forest as Employee The new college graduate needs a job. It is 1899 and de Forest’s first employer after his doctorate is Western Electric in Chicago where he is hired to wire telephone switchboards. It is an entry level position that will not offer the young inventor any challenge. But he is noticed, and eventually he does get promoted, and it is in this lab that he is able to work on his inventions during his nonworking hours. At least he is working in the

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telephone business and he begins to see new uses for that humble device: “What finer task than to transfer the sound of a voice of song to one a 1,000-miles away. If I could do that tonight!”12 Later in his career, he will make this come true, first with a wireless radio version of the telephone, and second, by inventing an amplifier that improves the wired telephone. More than clairvoyant, this is de Forest the dreamer, the romantic, a side to him opposite that of the scientist. He is the humanist who sees poetry and music where others like Marconi see only dots and dashes and dollars. De Forest in 1899 imagines the transmission of music as a use for what all others believe is only a serious two-way communication device, in this instance the telephone. It was while working for Western Electric in Chicago that de Forest rediscovers his interest in classical music, a passion and a diversion that will become an important part of his life and have a great deal of influence over his inventing. In a few years, he will imagine the radiotelephone as the perfect vehicle for the dissemination of his favorite music: “Beauties that are unknown to thought, to words or eye, hover invisibly in the air and kindle the soul through the avenue of sound. It is the dearest culture in all the world.”13 De Forest also embraces opera, a genre that will prove to be his favorite. In the life of de Forest, there are several constants: one of these is that he did little for relaxation other than attend events of serious music and opera. He is a music lover, it is his art, and using his inventions he will succeed early in the presentation of several forms of entertainment art to new audiences. He has a position but he is already becoming restless. While he would rather spend all of his time as an inventor, he has to earn a living. He is working in a field related to electricity, but at this early stage of his career he will not have the luxury of inventing full time. In his spare time, he visits the library and reads the scientific journals of the day, mostly those in the areas of physics, wireless telegraphy, detectors of wireless, even the radiotelephone. He reads that a professor Aschinass has found a new detector of Hertzian waves that could replace the Branley Coherer. It was described as “the use of a thin piece of tin foil laid upon a plate of glass and cut in two with a razor. When a battery was connected across the terminals and a drop of water or alcohol placed over he gap he could hear in a telephone receiver in the circuit a weak ripping sound when a spark generator excited electric waves in the vicinity.”14 From his research de Forest realizes that, “what wireless telegraphy required was a self-restoring detector which would permit the operator to hear in the headphones the sound, as it were, of the transmitter spark.”15 He named his detector the “responder,” as in responding to the dots and dashes of the spark transmitter. He believes his detector will be better than that of Marconi’s coherer.

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Figure 2.2 An early coherer detector. In the upper left hand corner, above the bell, is the small tube containing the conducting filings. When a signal is received, the bell rings and its tapper also causes the tube to de-cohere and thus break the circuit, making it ready for the next dot or dash. This device was very slow and undependable. From the author’s photo taken at the Antique Wireless Association annual conference.

This was de Forest’s early exploration into the liquid detector, and it was this idea that he began to adapt as his “responder.” His new device allowed “listening” to the sounds of code on a telephone-like earphone similar to the sounder of the wired telegraph. While at Yale, he duplicated Marconi’s experiment using the Branley Coherer and found it slow and clumsy. The coherer was a tube of iron filings in series with a battery that responded mechanically to the presence of wireless signals, which caused the filings to “cohere” and complete a circuit to ring a buzzer. He calls his liquid detector an “anticoherer” saying that its advantage is the faster reception of messages. In the existing wireless systems, it was the coherer detector that slowed everything down to a maximum of ten words per minute. It was also while working at Western Electric that he met and became friends with Edward Smythe, who according to de Forest was not knowledgeable in wireless science, but was willing to learn: “Ed Smythe now proved himself to be a practical, modern electrically minded engineer. He was swift to grasp the significance of my experiments, watched my work with interest, discussed the problems with me, and occasionally contributed helpful practical criticism and advice.”16 Smythe would remain with de Forest for several years as a trusted laboratory assistant (Fig. 2.2). In less than a year, he left Western Electric for what proved to be a temporary position in Milwaukee with a Professor Johnson, an inventor who

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apparently shared de Forest’s interest in developing a better wireless detector. Johnson’s device proved to be a variation of the coherer, and almost immediately de Forest realized it was a step backward. He used his time in Milwaukee to continue work on his own invention of the responder, but when Johnson saw how much better the de Forest device was than his own, he claimed that he should own it since de Forest was working for him. De Forest was fired when he refused, and he returned to Chicago. This begins the era of the odd job and the struggle for money. First, he worked as an assistant editor for Western Electrician, where he translated French science texts, but it was a job that allowed him access to the scientific writing of the day. As a trade out for lab space, he teaches technical and electrical skills part time at the Armour Institute. He is following the path of most college graduates, taking any part time job just to survive, all while believing that a future inventing career awaits. More important, he is also discovering that his future cannot be one of working for and gradual advancement in a large company. He already knows he will be a lone inventor, an independent who avoids the secure position in order that he might have the time and freedom to invent, “twice have I renounced good and fairly promising positions for my faith in an idea and in myself.”17 But this life of part time jobs and part time inventing is not without its problems. As de Forest begins to take stock of his life, at age 28 he sees himself aging, and he knows he has just enough money to pay the rent. And worse, because he has to have a part time job he cannot devote 100% of his time to inventing, and he cannot afford to buy the type of equipment needed to fully stock a real laboratory. This is his time for the reflections of the young, to consider those personal characteristics he sees in himself, like those of industry, diligence, courage and optimism, but as he reads about the wireless experiments of Marconi, he now sees this moment, in 1900, as the time to step up and take a chance. If he is going to be an inventor, he had better invent! It sounds good, but in the real life of Lee de Forest, “the clothes are tattered, the shoes run down, the meal ticket punched out.”18

The Search for a Better Detector The development, patenting, and the marketing of inventions will require money. Lee de Forest knows that before he can attract the capital with which to establish a wireless telegraph business, first he will have to solve the problem of the detector. He has identified the detector or receiver of wireless as the weakest part of the Marconi system. For months he has

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Figure 2.3 A 1903 schematic drawing of one of the many iterations of the de Forest detector, the “responder.” On this he notes: “for one responder connected for noninterference by un-tuned waves.” From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

worked part time on his responder while working full and part time jobs, but now he has to make some big decisions: Will he continue to work for others and allow them to profit from his ideas? Or does he work just enough to eat and pay the rent, giving him more time for his work? Or might he find a way to spend all his time on the wireless? The urgent question is, will he allow Marconi and other to pass him by? The answers are obvious: “Time is short. Marconi is headed towards America with his wireless detector and I alone can pilot this weather-beaten craft. If I cannot meet him next Spring, it may as well sink now. And if it sink, I sink deeply with it.”19 There is a race for wireless on the horizon and it will be between de Forest and Marconi, and at this point Marconi had clearly heard of de Forest. Before he finalizes a wireless system, he needs to spend more laboratory time experimenting with the two types of receiving apparatus that he has been thinking and reading about, a liquid detector and a flame detector (Fig. 2.3). Records kept of the de Forest–Smythe detector experiments in 1900 show the very slow process of invention: “Even for long dots the signal sounded uneven and jagged, dashes would have been more uneven. At the receiving end, imperfectly to jiggled, but better than the day before. The spark was generally a straight bolt, not bunches, although these generally

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accompanied this center spark a spray of fine ragged ones of small volume. The decohering engine worked poorly, either too fast or not at all.”20 This description of a failed experiment is a day that some would consider wasted, but it is the scientific method of trial and error, and if the results are accurately written down the same mistakes will not be made again. Two days later another experiment did yield more information, and de Forest wrote, “With the coherer care must be taken not to get the end electrodes too near the edges of the other two, thus enough space must be left. This coherer is more sensitive when the aerial and ground lead to the pair of electrodes nearest each other and the battery to the other pair.”21 As one of the first wireless inventors, de Forest was working in an area with little previous information available. He was discovering new information. De Forest is also experimenting with an open flame as a detector, writing in his notes, “In developing a hypothesis to fit the observed effect of the inductance coil discharge on the Welsbach light it was suggested that effect was due to an electrification and consequent expansion of the gasses of the flame.”22 Eventually the flame would prove to be useless as a detector, but only after repeated experiments: “If it should be found true that an electrification of a volume of gas causes expansion, a detector for transmitted impulses might consist of a volume of gas confined and provided with a sensitive instrument adapted by indicating slight changes in pressure.”23 Early he is given some hope because the flame appeared to be affected by a spark produced in the same room, but after more experimentation it was found that the flame reacted only because the sound wave from the noise of the spark disturbed the air, thus causing the tiny flicker of the flame. It was not the spark’s electromagnetic waves itself but the spark’s acoustic effect that was causing the response: “On the evening of September 19, 1900 experiments were made to determine the manner in which the operation of the induction coil affects the light given off from a Welsbach burner, a phenomenon which had been first observed on the evening of September 10.”24 The flame detector experiments were a failure. At the same time he begins the systematic collection of information on the wireless work of other inventors. Sitting at his desk in Chicago, he writes on a single page the names of the inventors, a description of their work and the periodical in which it was published. This was his “index” to the collected wireless references that he would use to base his original patent applications.25 De Forest the scholar knew that in order to invent a device that could be patented and stand up to patent challenges, he had to continuously survey the literature and make certain that his ideas were different enough to be legally original. In the beginning Marconi relied on the previous work of Hertz and Branley and Farraday and all those who

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preceded him, just as de Forest was now doing. Like Marconi, de Forest is evaluating the previous wireless experiments of others, gathering information to create a unique and patentable solution for a wireless communication system. In late 1900, along with W.W. Smythe, de Forest took out a patent for a detector, and called it “the Electrolytic Anti-Coherer.” Even though he believed that he had contributed the lion’s share of the science behind this invention, it was Smythe’s money that allowed it to happen, and thus de Forest agreed to the shared patent credit. By 1901, he writes of the results of a successful experiment using a spark transmitter consisting of an oilinsulated induction coil creating a spark of ½ to 5/8th of an inch. The receiver this time was an improved de Forest Responder, described as “three responders of the tin filings discharge glycerin type connected in series.”26 He writes that there was rain and thunder, and that it took a while to separate the false signals and interference from the transmitted signals less than a mile away. Finally, the received signals were regular and could be detected: “The sound in the telephone receiver was comparatively loud and of excellent quality.”27 This early detector, the de Forest/Smythe responder, had already proved to be better than the slow coherer. Other detector inventors would strongly agree about the shortcomings of the coherer, among them another wireless competitor, Reginald Fessenden: “It is a question whether the invention of the coherer has not been on the whole a misfortune as tending to lead the development of the art astray into impractical and futile lines and thereby retarding the development of a really practical system.”28 In a few years, Fessenden will accuse de Forest of patent infringement over his detector. It would not be long before the de Forest wireless system was ready to compete with that of Marconi. As the testing continued, de Forest seemed to be taking another measure of his situation, “Oh, the loneliness, the difficulties of these days. I have no place to work. No facilities. And I have to earn my food. Smythe’s aid is and has been small enough for a task of this magnitude, an invention of this scope and difficulty. I am dwelling in a new realm. All in the dark. No precedents. No theory to guide. No apparatus. No co-workers. All things to be tried and tested. Thus, under such encouraging auspices and with such magnificent support, I began to lay the slow and tedious foundations of a lengthy and most difficult research.”29 The first long distance test conducted by de Forest and Smythe using the improved responder was the transmission of the letter “H” or four dots. This test will be the prelude to that first contest between the de Forest and Marconi systems, one that would pit Marconi and his coherer against de Forest and his responder. Before that contest could take place, there was a

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final test on Lake Michigan using a boat equipped with a spark transmitter sending to de Forest who was stationed on shore with his detector and earphone. The Chicago newspapers in 1901 carried stories of this test and for the first time de Forest receives public notice of his work. Based on this favorable press attention, there began to be interest in turning experiment into practice. His first wireless company was formed, and it included Smythe and another assistant and Western Electric colleague Freeman, and money from a Mr. Seidler. The American Wireless Telegraph Company was thus incorporated, and by August 1901 he and his assistants had brought their wireless technology to New York for the International Yacht Races. It will be the first bout of Marconi v. de Forest.30 This is an important and early public trial run of wireless in America. Marconi equipment will cover the race for the Associated Press and de Forest arranges to cover it for the Publisher’s Press Association, competing wire services that provide stories for newspapers. Both ships are wireless equipped with their respective systems with the goal to send up-to-date race results to two shore stations. What really happened on the day of the race was a never before phenomenon: interference! The Marconi and de Forest spark signals were so powerful that they canceled out each other, resulting in neither system working to report the races. In the beginning of wireless communication there were few to no wireless signals on the air, and because the transmitters were broadband and the concept of tuning was not fully developed, every receiver responded to every nearby transmitter. Nevertheless, the papers of the day had stories of how the race was reported by wireless, but in truth it was really by old-fashioned semaphore flags, the original method of signaling without wires!31 The American Wireless Telegraph Company did not survive and again de Forest is out of money. He writes to a family friend about borrowing $100 from a friend of his mother’s: “If you had been afloat in this town, with scarcely a dollar in your clothes, not knowing where the next meal was coming from, in daily contact with hard-headed businessmen, the leaders of American finance – with the idol of your life’s ambition in jeopardy of being lost, thru this damnable delay and argument – then you, too, perhaps, would begin to realize that this is not the inventor’s world; that things to us are not as we would like to hear them, but as they are.”32 This first company did not last, but as a wireless inventor Lee de Forest had entered the business early, at least 2 years before it would begin to be profitable. More inventing and improving the pieces of the wireless system would have to happen before this communications technology would be viable enough to attract capital and support a business – and Lee de Forest.

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De Forest, the Inventor Arrives Lee de Forest is inventing. He reads articles about electricity and writes ideas in his notebooks. He begins to better understand and clarify the operation of his system, and this time he is working on a better version of the spark transmitter: “the Hertzian wave train consists of millions of varying frequencies, they decrease for a time and then increase. It must be the spark gap which is to blame for this imperfect attainment.” His solution: “use the spark merely to discharge a periodically two plates, without self-inductance.”33 He continues to study the writings of previous scientists, who like him were learning about all things electrical. Articles like “Influence of Electrification on the Electrical Spark” seemed to guide him as he studied and made notes on the pages.34 A 1902 Electrical Review article, “The Poulsen Wireless Telegraph Station at Cullercoats, England” interested him in the Poulsen arc, but as a transmitter of code as opposed to his later use of it as the basis for the radiotelephone. He underlined explanations about the wave lengths employed, the coupling to the antenna, and the use of the hot wire ammeter “When the arc is burning, the reading of this instrument is steady at nearly 10 amp.”35 In the margin next to this, de Forest wrote in large letters “10 amp” and underlined it. This is the scientist at work (Fig. 2.4). By now the coherer had been disgraced and nearly abandoned, and other systems were actively being explored. One is based on Sir Oliver Lodge’s invention of a steel wire against a metal surface called,“A Telephonic Detector of Hertz Waves.”36 This was described as, “a coherer consisting of steel needles resting on carbon blocks.” How it works is especially important to de Forest as he collects ideas, “A telephone could be used in connection with it to detect the transient influence of the Hertz wave.”37 The presence of a signal caused a buzzing in the telephone receiver, a device using coils surrounding a permanent magnet, so the current passing through the coils would vibrate the diaphragm, resulting in the buzzing. He has underlined the advantages of using such a telephone-based audible “coherer.” In a drawing by de Forest dated May 19, 1902, he shows a coherer based on a carbon pencil, steel wires, and electromagnet, possibly based on the Lodge device. “When coherence occurs magnet is energized, the two steel wires are thereby jarred slightly, and de-coherence results.”38 This device is also slightly similar to the 1898 Telegraphone wire recorder device of Poulsen (Fig. 2.5). So, while the wireless transmitter of the new century remains a spark across a gap, it was the receiver, the detector, that is getting most of the interest, with the goal a more accurate and faster system. And while de Forest was experimenting on improving the pieces of his system, rival

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Figure 2.4 de Forest as the scholar. In his papers are many examples of what today is called a “literature search,” or reading all that is known about a topic. In this page from a 1902 periodical, The Electrician, de Forest has made many notes on an article, “flames in alternating fields,” and in the left margin he has drawn a diagram of a flame as a detector. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Figure 2.5 A drawing, dated 1902, by de Forest of a carbon detector, perhaps inspired by Sir Oliver Lodge. It may possibly be a variation of Marconi’s Magnetic Detector. Both of these devices may be based on the 1898 telegraphone wire recorder device of Valdemar Poulsen. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Marconi would channel his experimentation toward higher and higher powered transmitters, longer antennas, but still using the spark.

The Wireless Business “Those who once enter this work, on whom the enticing spell of the wireless once falls, never quit it, no matter what the demands on patience or how great the sacrifices, always hopeful, always in effort, fascinated forever.”39 Even though de Forest was poor and had essentially followed the lone inventor’s promise of poverty, in order to get his wireless system in shape for the next yacht race, he will need money. At the end of 1901, de Forest moves his tiny wireless operation from Chicago to New York, leaving behind Smythe and his other Western Electric colleagues. He is still hoping that there will be someone who believes in his work and will invest hoping to gain in a future when wireless will be an important and reliable

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Figure 2.6 Lee de Forest, seated at the operating position of his wireless telegraph with Abraham White, standing, right. This may have been taken at the de Forest exhibit at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

communications technology. The event that would stimulate investor’s interest was Marconi’s first transcontinental wireless message in December 1901. De Forest will benefit from it and interest a group of capitalists to raise money to start a company around the de Forest wireless system. The following month, January 1902, de Forest was introduced to Abraham White, ironically known as “Honest Abe,” who had been known for his success with stock gambles, and he offered to help de Forest. The American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company was formed. De Forest said of White: “He readily saw the possibilities, the unusual opportunities for wealth, for which he was seeking. He undertook to aid me, realizing at once that a new and larger corporation would be essential.”40 Like many if not most of de Forest’s associates in business and science, White would begin as the great savior but quickly move to the enemies list (Fig. 2.6). Shortly after the company is formed he receives public notice in the form of positive press, a 1902 story in the Pittsburgh Press under the headline, “Wireless Telegraphy is not an Experiment.” This is a time when very few know or even understand the wireless, but this reporter seems to get it

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right based on an interview with its inventor: “Wireless telegraphy has been taken out of the realm of theory and experiment and made a profitable commercial possibility by the invention of Dr. Lee de Forest, an American inventor and a graduate of Yale, who has perfected the de Forest receiver, or ‘responder,’ which consists of a small glass tube, open at both ends and holding in its bore two small wires. Between the ends of these wires is placed a small amount of special paste, which ordinarily offers a passage for the local current. When the electrical wave from the sending machine traverses the responder, on its way from the upright wire to ground, it increases the resistance of this device, but its conductivity is automatically restored the instant the electrical wave has passed.”41 The story explains that a record was set with this technology of 52 words per minute: “This is by far the fastest speed yet attained by the wireless telegraph; being 5 times as rapid as is ordinarily attained by the Coherer system, such as Marconi commonly uses, which only has a speed of 10–12 words per minute.”42 There is also a small subtext in this story, one that appears in other articles of the time, and these are references to “de Forest the American Inventor.” Is it possibly a swipe by reporters at Marconi the foreigner? By the end of 1902, the de Forest system had been the topic of more favorable press, resulting in tests completed by the largest potential buyer of wireless systems, the US Navy. The three systems tested were those of Marconi, Fessenden, and de Forest. In its report the Navy wrote, “The stations of both the Marconi and Fessenden systems were practically inoperative from the start, and the entire burden of the three fell to the de Forest system, which system, though handicapped by insufficient equipment, as well as by the adverse conditions prevalent in warfare, performed its work in so eminently successful a manner that General Greely personally congratulated the inventor in complementary terms, stating, ‘the de Forest system was the only one, of the three represented, fruitful of results, and therefore the only one of any benefit during the operations.’”43 This is the prologue to commercial success for Lee de Forest and Abraham White. This is also a period of delirium mixed with hope in the de Forest story. This is a time in the inventor’s life when it must seem as if there are no limits to what could be accomplished. Early in the century when wireless telegraph held for young people a certain excitement and the feeling of being in the right place at the right time, you might even believe that you were ahead of your time. The sending of messages from one city to another, and without wires, had to convince you that you were one of the special ones, and that maybe this period of technology would never be equaled in your lifetime. De Forest was clearly qualified to speak for all

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wireless inventors, “It was the game, the fun, the unequaled satisfaction of traversing new lands, of overcoming strange new obstacles, of doing what no one else had done, that spurred them on. Wireless! Messages transmitted without wires, across cities, over waters wide and ever-widening!”44 An obviously elated de Forest writes in 1902 of his success: “I am sitting in our little station here, telephone to my ear, awaiting a message from our tug boat lost somewhere on the broad waters of the Sound. Wherever it is I will soon hear its mysterious call speeding over waters and islands – invisible, bodiless – yet awakening responses in this tiny tube which rests on this case before me and always listens. It is a marvelous thing, this etheric language, and when not too much engrossed in the mechanics and business of it all, my mind is lost in admiration of its infinite mystery.”45 Who else but de Forest could add this level of romance and drama to the wireless experience, who better than he could mix science and prose in that way? When he writes about the “tiny tube” it is not yet the Audion to which he refers, but his liquid detector, now called the “spade electrode” detector. As it turns out, it was not de Forest’s according to the courts, and in a long-running patent infringement suit, its provenance would be awarded to Reginald Fessenden.

De Forest Makes New Enemies The story of de Forest and Fessenden and the Liquid Barretter detector begins with de Forest’s visit to the Fessenden lab and a meeting with Fessenden assistant, Dr. Frederick Vreeland. According to de Forest, “during that visit Vreeland confidentially informed me that he and not Professor Fessenden, was the inventor of this novel type of detector.”46 Soon de Forest began to use the Fessenden/Vreeland principle for his own detector. Both of the inventors’ detectors were of similar design, and had been for several years, but the original impetus for it was said by de Forest to have come from an article in Electrical World written by Professor Michael Pupin. Before the lab visit of 1903, both inventors had been using for their noncoherer detectors electrodes in liquid in series with earphone and battery. De Forest had always insisted that he attempted to remake his own based on the unpatented idea of Pupin, with the goal to make it better while at the same time not infringing up the Fessenden patent. De Forest’s patent attorney had agreed and for his system’s receiving apparatus the responder was replaced by a “spade” detector, a Pupin and Fessenden inspired device. After a 3-year court battle, de Forest was charged with patent infringement and fined. Fessenden had won. But whether of de Forest or Fessenden or Pupin or Vreeland design, this device marked another important technical development in radio and wireless. The electrolytic detector was a rectifier,

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meaning that it changed AC into DC, or more practically for wireless, it recovered the lower audio frequency modulations impressed on the higher, and inaudible, radio frequencies. Later, this method of detection would be valuable for receiving voice over wireless – the radiotelephone. And while de Forest was prohibited from using the infringing version of the Fessenden liquid detector, both his and Marconi’s wireless had discovered a better receiving device, the crystal detector of General H.H.C. Dunwoody. According to wireless historian and attorney Bartholomew Lee, “Dunwoody’s crystal detector saved Lee de Forest from a federal injunction sued out by Reginald Fessenden, and then saved the Marconi Company from the long-wave static that challenged the first transatlantic circuit from Ireland to Nova Scotia in 1907 and subsequent years.”47 Dunwoody discovered a less mechanically fussy detector in the form of a rock, manmade carborundum, one of the first semiconductors. After that, wireless telegraphy operators had no need for the slow coherer or the unpredictable liquid detectors or even the Fleming Valve diode used by Marconi. In a few years, the de Forest three-element Audion would replace them all for commercial use, but the crystal detectors of Dunwoody, Greenleaf and Pickard, and others would live on for more than a century as a hobbyist’s first radio receiver (Fig. 2.7). “Marconi Company Protests, Notice of patent rights sent to de Forest concern – what the latter’s president says,” was a 1902 New York Times story based on the Marconi company’s threat of a suit over patent infringement. A representative of the Marconi company visited the de Forest operation, after which he told the reporter, “We wanted to show them the difference between our system and theirs…. We do not want to steal any man’s brains nor do we wish to utilize any invention to which we are not justified and legally entitled, but we do not intend to be deprived of any of the rights or privileges that the United States Patent Office has already allowed us under 58 consecutive claims.”48 De Forest is clearly frustrated over the patent system, writing to friend Jessica Wallace on the de Forest wireless company letterhead: “I had rather be in the laboratory discovering something new, or learning more of the dark secrets which lurk there, rather than to prove to the fossils of the patent office that I have found something.” He continues, in what sounds like a cross between the Zen of inventing and bipolar disorder, “I half-believe I hear faint voices calling to me – whispering some great secret! If I could only hear them clear, and understand!”49 This sheds some light on one of the recurring but confusing parts of the de Forest story – his penchant for legal trouble. Too many times he will say that he would rather be in his lab than in the business office. Too many times he will blame his legal troubles on others, always saying that he did not have

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Figure 2.7 De Forest poses with shirt sleeves rolled up, his hand poised over a wireless key, as if sending a message. What is wrong with this picture? Simply that according to de Forest assistant Frank Butler, de Forest did not know the code and therefore could not send or receive it. This promotional photo is signed. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

time for business. This part of the de Forest story, a murky ethics record, is the major reason why opinions of him are sharply divided to this day (Fig. 2.8). Nevertheless, he was a largely successful wireless inventor, having applied for and received more than 40 patents for wireless telegraphy between 1902 and 1906. Wireless became one of the first big businesses of the new century, the signaling without wires between ships at sea and shore stations. De Forest was a major figure in wireless telegraphy, and he sold to the Navy and US Army Signal Corps, he acted as a communications conduit for the press, and traveled worldwide to demonstrate his system. De Forest’s competition, Fessenden and Marconi, were also having success, but it was the de Forest and Fessenden’s companies that had long abandoned the coherer used by Marconi, thus allowing sending and receiving at up to 35 words per minute as opposed to the 15 word per minute of the

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Figure 2.8 A young and confident-looking de Forest poses with an unknown colleague in front of a de Forest wireless telegraph company office. In this image de Forest is smoking a cigar but that had to have been largely symbolic, say of good times ahead. It is known that de Forest neither smoked nor drank alcohol. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

original coherer. De Forest and Fessenden will gradually leave wireless telegraphy for other research areas, while Marconi would stay in the radio communications business until the end.

The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair Wireless has matured and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair provides a platform for the de Forest company to show off its successes and its improved technology. The de Forest wireless tower was the tallest of the fair buildings, and on the ground floor was a working wireless station. “Eager crowds see messages flash from the wireless tower, and the flash of 20,000 volts every time the operator presses his key is to them a thing of fascination. It is so loud that the operator must keep his ears full of cotton. It fairly deafens visitors.”50 This was likely the first time that many fairgoers had ever seen a wireless operation, as previously the activity had been confined to the Eastern Seaboard, and mostly for commercial and government communication between ships and shore stations. Most city to city communication was still undertaken by the wired telegraph and telephone. Under “Honest Abe” White’s direction several highly publicized stunts were conducted,

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Figure 2.9 The de Forest wireless tower at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. From The Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

including sending a coded message from the exposition to a hot air balloon, a feat previously believed not possible. For their St. Louis to Chicago transmission, the de Forest wireless won both the Grand Prize and the Gold Medal on “electricity” day. Seeing that success, the US Navy purchased more de Forest wireless equipment (Fig. 2.9). De Forest presents in 1904 a paper to the Electrical Congress of St. Louis, titled, “Electrolytic Receivers

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in Wireless Telegraphy.” This is a scientific paper about the device he is alleged to have stolen during the visit to the Fessenden laboratory. He begins with a historical summary of the problems of the Branley Coherer of 1891, “that the effect of electrical oscillations upon a body of metallic filings was to produce a marked increase in the conductivity of the mass, a conductivity which persisted until the particles were broken apart again by mechanical jar.”51 He gives credit to the modifications to the coherer by Popoff and Lodge, and explains how it resulted in the first system employed by Marconi. De Forest the scholar explains that there were two schools of thought as to how this worked: One believed it was by electrostatic attraction, while the other camp believed it a breakdown by minute sparks of the dielectric film existing between opposing surfaces of the filings. He explains that the coherer, no matter its numerous improvements, is only capable of receiving 12–15 words per minute. His solution he calls the auto-coherer, or the so-called microphonic contact, allowing wireless signals to be “heard” using an earphone. He describes how his detector raises the receiving speed to 25–35 words a minute. He also spends a great amount of time differentiating his device from that of the Fessenden Liquid Barreter. While this was billed as a scientific paper, it was partly a reiteration of the superiority of the de Forest choices in wireless technology, as well as an attempt to add his own context to the as yet unresolved Fessenden patent interference suit. After the success of St. Louis and the resulting Naval contracts, there was disagreement among the principals of the American de Forest Wireless Company as to whether it would be a good time to expand greatly the number of stations. On one side was de Forest, who in 1905 wrote, “Along with certain honest and sagacious directors of that company, Charles Galbraith in particular, I began now to argue against pushing further the ambitious plans of White, Wilson, and some of the other stock salesmen, who advocated planting wireless stations all over the land as the promptest method of selling wireless ‘securities.’”52 In de Forest’s opinion, because of the newly discovered problem of static interference, it would be best technically to concentrate on building shore to ship stations rather than overland. He is the scientist in disagreement with the capitalists. And for the first time in their relationship, de Forest seems to be distancing himself from Abraham White, the man who would become a focal point for years of legal problems for Lee de Forest. For the first time de Forest uses the word “honest” in describing himself and those who are not in the Abe White camp. The end of this relationship – and the company – is near.

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Success at Sea It seemed that everyday new uses were being discovered for the wireless. De Forest was the first to provide wireless coverage of the small 1904 RussoJapanese war. The de Forest system, after tested by him near Dublin, Ireland, was installed on an English press ship and sent to the war zone, and a tense stand off resulted as the Russians threatened that the ship carrying the wireless would be boarded and the reporters would be arrested and treated as spies and their outfits confiscated. Two papers, the London Times and New York Times printed the story of the threat and because it received worldwide unfavorable press, the Russians backed down from their threats. Said de Forest, “Russia’s claims that the Japs might be benefitted is absolutely groundless. The Japs use the coherer and tape system of receiving, and can take only about six words per minute. Our correspondents use the telephone receiver, and can take 20 or 30 words a minute. If the Japanese tried to take what the correspondents send they would get nothing but a streak of ink on the strip of tape.”53 This may have been an early if not the first use of wireless to cover a war. “This equipment is the only newspaper wireless service in the Far East, and it has exclusive privileges north of Hang-Kow, which includes the whole war area. The Japanese have a system of their own on their war vessels, and the Russian ships are equipped with the Popoff wireless system.”54 Apparently the two latter systems both used coherers. De Forest would receive much favorable publicity because of this war: “Those who know him pronounce him one of the hardest workers they have known. But he also must be one of the most expeditious when at work, for he submits to an interview as if not afraid of being robbed of needed time. He is only 30 years of age, and appears no older in spite of the amount of work he has crowded into the last 4 years.”55 To always be available for the press is how de Forest becomes an inventor-celebrity. In a longer feature story about the de Forest system used in the war there are maps to illustrate how information is routed through several stations to get to the United States stations, like from Japan to China to the Philippines by cable to Hawaii and by cable to San Francisco. This achievement according to government experts, “was possible only by the utilization of ‘syntonic aerography’ in which the de Forest attuning apparatus is employed. It is a source of pardonable pride that this remarkable instrument is the product of the inventive genius of Lee de Forest, Ph.D., Yale, a young American, who has been responsible for so much of the wonderful progress made in wireless work within the past 10 years.”56 There is that reference again, de Forest as an “American” inventor of wireless, as

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opposed to the Italian Marconi and the Canadian Fessenden. A few years later de Forest’s wireless equipment was put to another novel use, this time during a strike of coal workers. The owners of the mine, concerned that the miners were, “aroused to a pitch of desperation,” wanted the system in case of attack, so that “wires cannot be cut and assistance can be speedily summoned.”57 It was reported that President Theodore Roosevelt, a favorite of de Forest, was keeping abreast of the Coal Strike, also using the American de Forest Wireless. Wireless had come into international prominence and de Forest remained in the vanguard. But not everyone was pleased with the wireless, even though there would be no scientific basis for this claim: “Scores of Aerograms shoot through human body; result, damaged nerves.”58 The unnamed experts warned that thousands of these messages penetrate your body at all times: “But if it will add to your peace of mind, the statement may be made that no one aerogram lingers long enough to allow others to collect in your body and form a blockade of messages.”59 Before you scoff at the idea of radio waves going through the body, recall that the jury is still out, scientifically speaking, on the cancer-causing possibilities of radio frequencies. It has been reported that perhaps having the cell phone next to your ear for long periods of time could cause brain tumors although it has not been proved. Of course all this may change as the now cultural tendency to text rather than talk will cause hands and fingers to get the bulk of the electromagnetic radiation. Nevertheless, when a radio or television or other transmitting facility is federally licensed, there are rules about how far it must be located from civilization, so even after 100 years the possible deleterious health effects of these unseen waves are still being debated without resolution.

De Forest vs. Marconi: Again “A war to the knife and the knife to the hilt.” A fake story, charges and countercharges, and an overreactive press promises that early 1906 will be an interesting but trying time for the two leading wireless telegraph companies. Several articles in the newspapers detailed the long-simmering de Forest v. Marconi fight over wireless systems: “de Forest Company will Fight Marconi,” a story declared, and “A war to the knife has been declared between wireless telegraph concerns.”60 Led by President Abe White, this was a preemptive strike by the de Forest company to accuse Marconi of fraud, “on the grounds that the parties mentioned were using the mails to defraud the public by circulating advertisements falsely stating that an important decision had been rendered by the US Supreme Court and an injunction had been granted against the de Forest Company.”61 These stories

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reporting a Supreme Court decision were not true. But the press continued to report it and raised concerns about the effect of the court action on national security because Marconi was a foreign company. In many of the major papers on one day in March, 1906, it was reported that Supreme Court Justice Fuller declared that “the de Forest Wireless Telegraph Co. has been strictly enjoined to forever desist from the manufacture, sale or operation of any system of wireless telegraphy.”62 Not only did this guarantee a monopoly to American Marconi and force de Forest out of business, but it was a major headache for the U S Navy: “The government has been the chief patron of the undertaking as far as Mr. de Forest is concerned, and now that the decision has been rendered the United States will be left without a service unless it takes the Marconi.”63 All untrue. It was a major hoax reported erroneously in hundreds of newspapers in one 24-hour news cycle. In the de Forest papers are a large collection of the March 22, 1906 stories with headlines proclaiming, “De Forest barred,” “U S Supreme bench grants final injunction against wireless company,” “de Forest wireless enjoined, Naval stations hit.” A cruel joke that the newspapers apparently did not check for credibility (Fig. 2.10).64 This news story appeared across the country for at least a day, detailing a story about a trial that never existed, a story that was believed to have been planted by Marconi operatives. When asked to confirm Supreme Court Clerk McKenney replied that “no case between the Marconi Wireless telegraph Company of America, and the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company has ever been decided by this court, nor is there such a case now pending on the docket of the Court.”65 De Forest was vindicated and White promptly sought a court injunction prohibiting the Marconi Company from this false advertising. Were it not for the fact that it would all come crashing down soon under an ethics cloud, the de Forest Company seemed to be riding high. The newspapers of early April 1906 carried stories of the success of the de Forest system of wireless telegraphy: “Wireless Messages Clearly Transmitted by De Forest Method,” “Overseas Wireless a Fact, says De Forest,” “Ireland Takes Wireless Message from New York – de Forest Feat Occurred,” all good news for the de Forest Wireless telegraph Company.66

The End of de Forest Wireless Lee’s brother Charles de Forest who had been one of the company investors wrote to White in 1906: “Permit me to express myself as strongly in favor of further fighting the Fessenden interests in the patent litigation.”67 Earlier the patent for de Forest’s Electrolytic Receiver was judged to be in interference with that of Fessenden for the similar device. But Charles de

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Forest believed strongly that the invention was his original idea and he wanted to contest it because, “Lee de Forest has enough claim for originality in the electrolytic receiver to make us morally entitled to its use,” and he did contest it with all his resources, saying, “I do not believe for a minute that he knowingly appropriated what was rightly the Fessenden property.”68 It is a long and persuasive argument that details the work of lab assistant Babcock who worked on the development of the de Forest version of the electrolytic detector. Charles de Forest did put money into his brother’s company and so his letter had to be very persuasive. He pleaded that this had to be solved quickly in order to fulfill back orders for wireless equipment. It is doubtful that the Fessenden victory was ever challenged again as later in the year the entire company would be broke and gone, but based on a lifetime of court reversals in de Forest’s favor, he might have prevailed if there had been enough money to fight it again. What really happened in this case of conflicting detector claims is that both systems were made obsolete first by the less expensive and more dependable crystal detector, and later by the Audion vacuum tube. It is less than one month after the elation caused the by the vindication of de Forest after the false Supreme Court story planted by Marconi, but that joy has turned into fear. The business is going downhill quickly. It is April, 1906 and stories appeared alleging fraud by the de Forest company and a spate of headlines like “Claim Wireless Agent Sold $2 Stock for $10,” caused investors to complain, and those who believed they were defrauded came forward to tell of purchasing stock at a high price, stock that was now worth considerably less. This is the first harbinger of a formerly successful business gone bad. By June the fingers were pointing at company President Abraham White, who it turned out was originally named “Schwartz,” and that he changed his name to conceal other stock sale wrong-doing. The suit that was filed against White/Schwartz and the de Forest Company in the US District Court demanded the appointment of a receiver to determine what White did. It was alleged that White concealed from the creditors and stockholders the transfer of the stock of the American De Forest Wireless Company to a newly created United Wireless Telegraph Company. This meant that the de Forest company suddenly had no money and de

Figure 2.10 “Announcement,” an advertisement in the Atlanta Constitution of March 28, 1906 telling the public that the de Forest and Marconi news story saying the Supreme Court outlawing de Forest’s wireless was a fake. This was a story that lasted about 24 hours before it was proved to be a “plant,” a false story. It never happened and was likely placed by Marconi partisans to discredit de Forest. This was both an ad and a clarification. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Forest as Chief Engineer had neither position nor income. This would lead to the dissolution of the once successful company that carried the name of Lee de Forest.69 Initially White was unscathed by the charges. Later in a story, “De Forest Hungry as White Reveled” it was described how the poor inventor was living in poverty while White lived in luxury. “Fate did not change its proverbial shabby treatment of inventors in the case of Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor and developer of the wireless telegraph system which bears his name, though promoters of his invention were rolling in wealth, opening champagne in the Waldorf-Astoria and buying magnificent mansions.”70 But the money is now gone, and de Forest tells how he had lived in poverty during the past year so he could father a successful and profitable company, and that debt was piling up, and that he was literally starving while waiting for his wireless ship to come in. He claimed that he wanted to make it right, that he had not been aware of White’s malfeasance, and that he, de Forest was innocent of any of this. In the New York Press of September 9, 1907, “United States Officers on a Hunt for President of De Forest Wireless,” it was reported that White used the previous stock sale money to purchase a Long Island mansion and give lavish parties, but he was now in contempt of two courts. White was said to have converted the assets of the de Forest Wireless Company to his own use and thus the stockholders were left holding worthless paper.71 There was a newspaper feature profile of White before the news of his indictment, showing him posed with a stock ticker, under the headline, “How I Won a Million in One Day.”72 Is it any wonder that de Forest is confused and angry: “Once again let me get the power, once let me be the dictator – and I will dictate. Then and only then may I hope to succeed, free from the shackles and impediments of those who surround me. Never was one so tied and handicapped in the promotion of one of the most logical business ideas that have ever appeared before the microscopic mentalities of the men to whom I am forced to appeal. All of them, if they only knew it, could make for themselves a place in the history of communications as well as great wealth. I am left to do it all, to be diplomat, inventor, executive. Errand boy. I draw $5 a week if I am lucky. Three months of this have shown me the measureless disparity between the inventor’s and the investors point of view.”73

De Forest Resigns from His Company But it would not yet be resolved. Before he will resign, de Forest in April 1906 travels to Europe to sell his wireless telegraphy system to the Irish government, and while there he successfully sends and receives messages

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Figure 2.11 An actual American De Forest wireless telegraph company stock certificate, signed by Abe White, dated 1906, From the Bart Lee Collection.

over long distances. Surely, his system was as perfected as he cared to make it for telegraphed messages. Upon his return he learned of the arrest warrant for him and White in the Fessenden patent infringement matter. De Forest said to a New York Times reporter, “I know nothing about the order for my arrest, except what I heard on my arrival this morning. It all happened while I was at sea. However I can say that the use of the electrolytic detector has been absolutely discontinued by the de Forest company, I have invented a new receiver of a different plan. It is not like the electric coherer, nor is it like the magnetic detector. It promises to be better than any of them.”74 The end was coming quickly, as both the White stock fraud investigation and the earlier Fessenden suit were converging upon a hapless and now hopeless Lee de Forest (Fig. 2.11). Finally, it was just too much: In a November 28, 1906 letter from de Forest on American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company letterhead, he writes “Gentlemen, I herewith tender my resignation as vice president and as director of the American de Forest Wireless telegraph Company, the same to take effect immediately.” On the carbon copy saved in the de Forest papers he added to the formal typed letter in his own hand, “This is the funeral of my first born child! This is the finis to the hopes and efforts

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which has made up my strenuous life for the first 5 years. That which I had wrought with the fair and ceaseless endeavor to make grand and lasting and triumphant is frustrated, sand-bagged, throttled and despoiled by the robber who has fattened off my brains. But my work goes on while I live.”75 Even though no one really saw this note, but just the letter itself, it was directed at the president of the company, Abraham White, whom de Forest blamed for both his poverty and loss of reputation. But de Forest will rise again. Unknown to White, during this time de Forest had quietly been developing his next great invention, and when his wireless company was legally disbanded, he left with little money, less than $500, but in the fine print of the legal dissolution he retained control of the new patents for his signature invention, the Audion (Fig. 2.12).

What Would Tesla Say? Meanwhile, the scientist that de Forest most looked up to while a Yale student, and the man he had asked for a postgraduation job was in the press that same year. Those who have said over the years that Nicola Tesla was an under recognized genius would do well to read the story written by him in an unattributed 1906 news article in the de Forest papers. This story details Tesla’s plan to build a billion horsepower generator using Niagara Falls to generate voltage high enough to reach the planet Mars. Tesla wrote: “Whether we get an answer or not depends on who is there. More than likely the first answer from our neighbor will be: ‘Well, well, at last. We have been calling you the last 10,000 years.’”76 This is a parallel story to that of the soon-to-be-invented radiotelephone, but Nikola Tesla has the more grandiose intergalactic vision, “It will be as simple as telephoning from one part of a city to another after the preliminary attuning of instruments on the two planets and the study and interpretation of each other’s codes and languages are done. As the Martians are probably the most advanced and skilled they will take our code and language and learn it first and then teach us theirs in plain English. Difficult as this fact would seem, it in reality would not be comparable with the achievement of teaching a deaf, dumb and blind child to understand. Yet this is only a matter of patience.”77 This may have led to the origin of the expression, “What planet are you from?” Back on Earth it is 1906 and inventor Lee de Forest had just participated in a 6-year race for wireless, from which he had walked away as the loser. In this remarkable and brief period of time he had been successful as an inventor but failed as a businessman. As a new inventor just 6 years out of college, he quickly became one of the two or three most important figures in the emerging electronic communications industry. He now has little to

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Figure 2.12 In this letter to White and the Directors of De Forest wireless, de Forest resigns as the president and writes in his own hand at the bottom of his typed file copy, “This is the funeral of my first born child!” From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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show for it. The bad news is that he is back to the financial position of a college student, with just enough for rent and a few meager meals. He cannot even afford to attend the opera. The good news is that in the legal dissolution from Abraham White, he has walked away with some notes and some patents on a device that again will make him a star in the invention of electronic media entertainment technology. He is about to develop a glass tube that he calls the Audion, and this device will be one more piece needed for his future and final invention of significance, that of the motion picture with sound.

What the Boys and Girls Knew One question that will be asked throughout this book about the wireless telegraph, the wireless telephone, radio, and the motion picture is, “What did the boys and girls know, and how did they know it?” It was obvious how the technology of sending messages through space without wires and a career in wireless captivated the young person of the early part of the twentieth century. There were magazines for the boys, probably also read by their sisters, and there were the many series of adventure books that told exciting tales of how “boys just like you” learned about, invented, constructed, and used the wireless and later the radio and film to save lives, save the town from flood, and save the woman and children from fire and pestilence. According to Historian Susan Douglas, “The boy inventor-hero, like the inventor-heroes constructed by the press, exemplified how mass entertainment symbolically made sense of technical change.”78 One of the most read of the inventor-heroes was Tom Swift. An early story was Tom Swift and His Wireless Message, 1911, by Victor Appleton, a pseudonym for Howard Garis of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. This publisher of many juvenile series used contract authors for each volume, writing under a single house name. In this Tom Swift book about wireless, the sixth volume in the series, Tom uses the wireless to save himself and others who are stranded on an island. And because Tom somehow predicted that the island would soon sink due to an earthquake, he must hurry to save all its inhabitants. The character Tom Swift was both scientifically accurate and prescient in some stories, but clearly science fiction in others. It happened that there was a wrecked ship, and on that ship was enough equipment to build a wireless transmitter. He was able to use the gasoline engine, and the dynamo used for generating electricity, and constructing a home made telegraph key, he believed he could send out a message for help, an S.O.S. When the question was asked of this young man about how he could receive an answer, he replied using the proper jargon,“I have made a receiving instrument, though it is even more crude than the sending plant, for it

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had to be delicately adjusted, and I did not have the magnets, carbons, coherers and needles that I needed. But I think it will work.”79 He explains that because their airship that crashed on the island and stranded them there in the first place had a telephone, that device could be used for the receiver. Obviously it worked, and if you were a young person in that day you wanted to believe in Tom, “when he set the gasoline motor going, and the dynamo whizzed and hummed, sending out great, violet-hued sparks, they were all convinced that the young inventor had accomplished wonders, considering the materials at his disposal.”80 The romance of wireless was captivating. The story of Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator, 1913, used the familiar Marconi theme, the safety of ships at sea and the use of wireless to rescue a sinking ship, to foil pirates and save women and children from a watery grave. The saving of lives at sea was a popular story, and this one was published 1 year after the Titanic disaster and the common belief that if a nearby wireless operator had been on duty many lives would have been spared. There was a “teaching moment” in all of these technology-themed boys series, and more often than not it was real science, at least enough to interest most youth in the excitement of the device. Tom Swift’s moment came when asked the question, how does it work? He replied, “The theory is very simple, said the young inventor. To send a message by wire, over a telegraph system, a battery or dynamo is used. This establishes a current over wires stretched between two points. By means of what is called a ‘key’ this current is interrupted, or broken, at certain intervals, making the sounding instrument send out clicks…. In telegraphing without wires, the air is used in place of a metallic conductor. To send a wireless message a current is generated by a dynamo. The current flows along until it gets to the ends of the sending wires, which we have just strung. Once the impulses, or electric currents, are sent out into space, all that is necessary to do is to break, or interrupt them at certain intervals, to make dots and dashes and spaces.”81 While the Tom Swift series dealt with all communications media as well as airplanes and submarines, there were also theme-specific series that only had stories of the wireless. Most of those with wireless telegraphy as a theme were published in the mid-teens, 1912–1915, although some were released later in the 1920s when wireless telegraphy was nearly an antique technology. These books were to the youth of the early part of the twentieth century what radio, movies, and television would later become, as they told the same stories of triumph over technology. And because of it, they were, like film and radio would become, a shared experience. Writes Douglas about this literature: “The emergence of the boy inventor-hero is

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important to the early history of radio because the genre of popular juvenile writing surrounding this new hero provided information about wireless and encouraged boys to experiment with the invention. It also placed wireless work within the larger context of contemporary heroism.”82 This reading audience of young people would evolve into the listening audience for the next new mass media, radio.83

A Silent Film Industry Emerges At the time Lee de Forest began in the fledgling business of wireless communication, another industry is about to be born, that of entertainment using the technology of film being projected on a screen in a darkened room for a paying audience. It was 1900, and the motion picture film is beginning to evolve from a technical curiosity into a viable entertainment medium. In the last century, Edison demonstrated that there was public interest and a profit to be made from showing movies to an audience of one. His 1893 Kinetoscope took advantage of the existing “penny arcade” venues, and based on his experience with the public’s willingness to deposit a coin to hear a phonograph record, he believed that his film device would also be popular. There were no theaters devoted to motion pictures, and until then, the technology of projection would not have been ready for public exhibition. Film historian Peter Kobel makes the case that after 1895 and the work of the Lumiere Brothers and Edison with his projector, the Vitascope, “A new industry was born, with remarkable possibilities. It presaged great wealth, but even more important, a kind of communal waking dream shared in darkness. The cinema would open new worlds and would reveal our own secrets to ourselves.”84 By 1900, the projection of film for an audience was being noticed and the silent movies would soon become the first great new entertainment art and technology of the new century.

The First Silent Films The other part of the story of de Forest and the talkies begins with the film itself, and its development purely from a technical curiosity into a viable art form with its own unique language. To understand this parallel story of film, there are opportunities existing today to put yourself in the theater seat of a century ago. There are some very good collections of discovered and restored silent films, beginning in the Edison era and culminating at the beginning of the 1930s when all movies were talkies. There is the Museum of Modern Art collection of Edison shorts, restored

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in cooperation with the Library of Congress, with some of these based on a paper film duplicate used for copyright. There is the “Treasures from the American Film Archives” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives” series, and there is the Turner Classic Movie cable channel and their “Silent Sundays.” The public’s interest and foundation funding in recent years has helped to reintroduce 30 years of silent film classics, as museums and libraries now have access to the technology needed to create a more complete version of those scraps of films once screened in film schools. They can now be viewed in their newly preserved form, at the correct speed, with the missing pieces, and with some of the scratches and wear electronically removed. After over a century it is possible to see film classics in a form close to their original.85 By watching the early silent films accompanied by music as they were originally presented, you can begin to see the development of the art, the language, and the narrative story and documentary uses for the film, as it gains prominence as an industry.

The Edison Films The most important name in the early film business was Thomas A. Edison. The Edison Company received patents for most of the early film technology, and as de Forest would do in later years Edison made the films to accompany his devices. The most important person in the Edison operation was William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a European transplant who moved to America to work for Edison, and as an experienced photographer he led in the development of Edison’s early motion picture camera and player. Dickson was the first film director, making hundreds if not thousands of short films for the Kinetoscope. Subjects for these 30 second film loops were chosen to attract audience favor and their pennies, and it was content, some of it a bit risqué, that could not be seen in magazines or on the stage of the day. Topics included cockfights, boxing, dancing girls, kissing, shooting, Indians – any topic that could work in the 30 second peep show format. Some of these ideas were suggested by the men who worked for Edison and Dickson himself. Dickson functioned as Edison’s producer-director, and made hundreds of brief silent movies, like “Annie Oakley,” “Buffalo Dance,” and others between 1893 and 1895. All of these were preprojection, designed for the Kinetoscope, a device which was popular and profitable in penny arcades, at fairs, on sidewalks or any place where vending machines were used. The Kinetoscope died out quickly, to be replaced by the projection of films in theaters for audiences. Dickson left the employ of Edison in 1895 to start his own company, American Mutoscope and Biograph (Fig. 2.13).

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Figure 2.13 These frames from one of the first Edison films were saved by his assistant W.K.L. Dickson. It is titled “first successful Edison film,” and it is dated 1889. From the W.K.L. Dickson papers, Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

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By the beginning of the twentieth century, Edison the businessman owed most of the important patents for film devices, in addition to his film production and distribution company. The Edison Company made thousands of so-called one and two-reel films of 10–20 minutes in length and rented them for showing in theaters. This was the real beginning of the American film industry. The first Edison films were not story-driven, but rather simple portrayals of events. According to Edison’s biographer Paul Israel, “Edison had almost no involvement in his other major business, motion pictures, because they had already evolved into an art form and the important innovators were film makers, not inventors of new technology.”86 So Edison hired a director to replace W.K.L. Dickson. Edwin S. Porter was an important early director of films for the Edison brand, and while they were not all that innovative, they were popular with the public, and they likely encouraged others to make films, start companies, and generally improve the state of the art. Even Porter himself learned and progressed as a director.

Director Edwin S. Porter, an Accidental Artist The Edison Films are made mostly in Orange New Jersey. With Porter as director, the film evolves quickly, and soon the art becomes more important than the science. But it is likely that Porter did not consider himself an artist: “Porter was essentially a cameraman and a technician, who delighted in tinkering and solving narrative problems via mechanical means. Often he did not realize that those mechanics overlapped into art and could be formulated into a language of film.”87 Under Porter, stories are now being “directed.” One example was a film based on an existing story was the 10 minute “Jack in the Beanstalk” from 1902. It was true to the fairy tale with costumes like you might have seen in the storybooks of the era. The countryside “backdrops” were obvious large hanging paintings of outdoor and farm scenes. And though it did tell a story, it was staged like a play. It featured some in-camera effects like dissolves, meaning one picture fades out as the one replacing it fades in, and people disappearing from the frame, fantasy-like, becoming the first optical effects seen in Edison films. There were few intertitles used in 1902. In Porter’s 1903 short, “The Life of an American Fireman,” he uses for the first time close up camera shots and performs some basic editing. This “editing” could more accurately be described as physically gluing one scene to another for continuity, rather than for pacing or to increase dramatic tension as editing would be about a decade later. In Porter’s 1903 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” titles were now used to introduce each scene. In this film about slavery, the blacks outwit the whites, showing Porter’s views about race and class, a recurring perspective that will show up in his later films. The staging is still theater-like, and

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Figure 2.14 The famous final frame of the 1903 Edison film, “The Great Train Robbery,” directed by Edwin S. Porter. Frame from the author’s collection of old educational films.

the scenes are mostly long shots, with the action taking place within the static frame of a nonmoving camera. There is a slave auction and the flogging of Tom, but the white “handler” who manages the slaves does get killed in the end. Uncle Tom dies too. Abraham Lincoln appears briefly at the end and declares “Emancipation,” thus freeing the slaves.88 When the name Edwin S. Porter is invoked, it is almost always in reference to his signature film, “The Great Train Robbery,” an early western and chase film made in 1903. This was one of many “railroad films,” a popular subject at the turn of the century. This film closes with the famous medium close up shot of the lead bandit shooting (blanks, it is assumed) directly into the camera, thus at the audience. There is lots of death by firearm in this film, but it is just a basic chase film, bad guys vs. good guys, while a moving camera follows the chase scenes. Film historians have claimed that the oddly out of context medium shot of an actor looking right into the lens must have given future film makers some idea of how to get beyond the static long shot, but there is no real evidence of why Porter used this technique (Fig. 2.14). Some film writers have repeated the folklore about how the audiences of the day might have felt cheated if the film frame cut off a part of the body, and just showed the person from the waist up, and that for this reason every shot was a long shot. There is no evidence that this is true either. The real significance of this film was that “it opened the door to a new kind of fictional and narrative filmmaking, in which story and plot are as important as location and cinematography. It proved the viability of commercial cinema and set the standard for the next decade of one-reel movies”89 “Train Robbery” was Porter’s greatest commercial success, and in what must have been the first film “sequel,” he followed up in 1905

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with “The Little Train Robbery,” featuring an all-child cast reenacting his hit of 1903. In the latter version 12 year olds rob a miniature train of children and steal their little train and their lunches. These are bad boys.90 It was not all “shoot ‘em up” for the Edison Company. Porter’s 1904 comedy “European Rest Cure,” is a clever 14 minute one-joke story about a man who is told to take a trip for his health and relaxation. By now there are very basic intertitles used to denote scene changes, and stage-like sets for interiors and appropriate exteriors are constructed specifically for this story. In this film exteriors like the Alps and the Great Pyramid are obvious studio sets with mountain drawings used for set backgrounds. The protagonist of the film, an old gentleman who is on the “rest cruise” finds himself not resting, but falling down mountains, off the Great Pyramid, off walls, the subject of an aggressive mud bath, plus he is robbed and beaten. There are no close ups or medium shots, as this film is really a stage play in all long shot. The attraction is the scenery and slapstick. In the “The Ex-Convict,” 1904, Porter makes a social statement. This too is based on a play and shot like a play, with many exteriors and minimal titles. We are asked by Porter to believe that since the subject of the film has returned from serving his sentence, we should treat him as if he were normal and he should be permitted to start over. But the obvious happens: the police and family do not trust him, no one will give him a job, but in the end he saves the life of a neighbor girl and is redeemed. Very complete narrative stories are now being told in a single reel of film of 10–12 minutes, a “one-reeler.” That classification denotes the size of the unexposed reel of film that fits both camera and projector.91 In another common social theme of Porter, rich vs. poor, he directs “The Kleptomaniac” in 1905. In this 10 minute story of class, a wealthy woman steals clothing in a department store out of adventure while a poor woman steals a loaf of bread to feed her starving family. Porter tells this as a parallel story, cutting back and forth between the two woman. In court the judge sets the wealthy woman free, while the poor woman is jailed. To exaggerate the situation the wealthy woman is shown living in high style with her servants, while the poor woman weeps in her obviously shabby home with her ill-clothed children. She is destitute and desperate. From the arrest through the court system the poor woman is treated roughly while the rich one is treated with deference. Most important, the language of story telling using film beyond that of just photographing a stage play is slowly developed by Porter as more intertitles are used, there is minimal editing to cut between the two persons who steal, and effective set design is used to depict the very different home environments of the two. Further development of film’s unique language can be seen in the 1905 Porter travel short,

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“Coney Island at Night.” For this the moving camera pans the park lights from right to left on a stationary tripod, then tilts up and down the buildings. These are camera movements showing a language unique to film, as Porter begins to free film from its stage conventions, and instead of a static camera recording events, he gives them a different presentation using the camera and its mounting device.92 What Edison and Porter filmed was very much influenced by the box office returns of the time. The theaters showing these films would evolve from the use of existing vaudeville houses and stages into dedicated venues, often storefront operations known as “Nickelodeons.” Both films and their audiences were being noticed: “The increased production of fiction films helped make possible the rapid spread of nickelodeons, which in turn increased production pressure on filmmakers. With nickelodeons spreading like mushrooms after an autumn rain, and with the common perception that they appealed to the lower classes, reformers began to be concerned about film content.”93 A belief that the film was becoming a media for the working man likely led to the popular and profitable themes of the early films, the struggle between the social classes, everyday stories of struggle, as well as simple children’s stories for the entire family. Porter must have had a great deal of creative freedom as a director as long as audiences paid to attend his films. In “The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” in 1906, he uses some early special effects like split screen and superimposition attained by printing two films together onto a third negative, and there is animation, stop action, all very early in-camera and optical printer tricks. This film is a fantasy on the dangers of overeating and overdrinking, as the main character staggers out of a restaurant after eating and drinking to excess and goes home into bed where bad dreams happen. Continuing the use of never before seen visual effects, there is Porter’s 1907 “College Chums.” For this he does not use intertitles, but there is an “animated phone call,” a static picture with two people speaking in little circles on opposite sides of the frame, and in between little words are spelled out in animated form, a letter at a time, moving from sender to receiver and back. This animated conversation not only sets up the plot, but shows that pictures could “speak” in a way other than cutting to a title page, and thus away from the action.94 These early films show experimentation, one film at a time, in order to discover a visual language and art for the film media. Between 1901 and 1907 Porter becomes the first real film “director,” as he constructs dramatic narratives and tells simple stories in 10–12 minutes. His films often tackle social problems, primarily the disparity between the rich and poor. He takes the side of the worker over the owner and that of

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the poor over the wealthy. He accomplishes this through gestures, dress, and obvious attitudes of authorities about socioeconomic class. What is fascinating about the Porter era is you can see the dress, the buildings, the transportation, the neighborhoods, and the road being shared with horse and car. You get to see the nature of work, of school, of class, and of manners. You see the environment and the look of the people of the early twentieth century. Porter’s use of titles is spare, mostly only to designate a scene change rather than for dialogue. If you look closely at his titles, they seem to be white plastic letters individually pushed into grooves on a black felt background, as used by the store signs of the day to announce a special sale. This is the evolution of the film as practiced by one director, Edwin S. Porter, who while he worked for Edison, he seemed to have maximum freedom to define the medium. By 1908, Porter’s style and earlier innovations will seem dated and he is retired by Edison as a director. But in 1908 Porter discovered the next important star director, David Wark Griffith.95

Other Directors, Other Companies Among other films from the early silent era, there was the 1910 “The Wonderful World of Oz,” produced by Selig-Polyscope as a 13-minute silent version of the L. Frank Baum children’s book. This film did employ some early mechanical stage-based special effects, as the cyclone moves against the sky background. Dorothy and her little playmates are blown to Oz which with palm trees looks like California, and there the Wizard is fighting the evil witch. Overall, there are too many men in bad animal suits, and at least a half dozen in Dorothy’s ensemble, many more than the 1939 classic. “Oz” has not developed the film language at all, using long and medium shots, like a bad stage play. The claim of this picture is lavish sets and costumes and casts of hundreds, surely a silent film full employment act, and a bad witch which dissolves from the scene. The Wizard returns to Kansas in a hot air balloon. Like films today, there were good, better and best, and while many would like to believe that there was an orderly progression from the early Edison Kinetoscope shorts to the maturation of the silent film and its storytelling art, it really happened in nonconnected little events, films with a close up or an optical effect, or an editing revolution. The language of film is being learned slowly. The audiences are becoming more sophisticated and will demand more from this new media. In one of the early European films to experiment with techniques other than the basic establishing shot is seen in what remains of the 1902 Georges Méliès film, “A Trip to the Moon.” This is a fantasy using multiple exposure and stop action, all in the service of a bizarre film about a group of somewhat aged bearded scientists, obviously professors in an institution.

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They build a rocket ship that is rather tiny and tinny, too small in fact for the large number of passengers that board. Their goal is to go to the moon, and in a great fantasy scene, the rocket ship is crudely animated using stop action, shooting a single frame, moving the ship slightly and shooting another frame, as it is moved toward the moon, a trip of just a few seconds. The ship lands in the right eye of the man in the moon. Once on the surface of the moon, the natives are revealed as nubile women and angry mutants, all of which scare off the scientists-explorers-professors, who promptly jump in the rocket just as it falls off the flat surface of the moon, and in a method reminiscent of modern day space reentries, the ship parachutes to the ocean where it sinks to the floor. This must have been a dream. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were many films being made. Most of these were just the long shots being spliced together in some loose storytelling, some more effective than others, and all of them just one reel, the typical program consisting of two or three of these reels.96 Soon, the movies will move production from New York to Southern California, they will be feature-length, and they will tell more complex stories, all using the newly emerging language and art of the new cinema. It is the popularity of this new media that will give Lee de Forest an idea or two. But first he has two more battles to fight, his new invention of the Audion and his foray into radio broadcasting. At the beginning of the new century de Forest has tried and succeeded, however briefly, in the business of wireless telegraphy. But he cannot remain in one place for long or concentrate on a single invention. While wireless for him was fading to black, he has already begun to create a radiotelephone system to replace the earlier dots and dashes of the Morse Code, and he writes about sending fine music into homes as entertainment, as a way to uplift the masses. He is an inventor who is becoming a cultural promoter, believing his tastes in entertainment should be used as content for the new media he seeks to invent. Lee de Forest has several good acts yet to come.

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Unwittingly then I had discovered an Invisible Empire of the Air, intangible, yet solid as granite, who structure shall persist while man inhabits the planet; a global organism, imponderable yet most substantial, both mundane and empyreal; fading not as the years, the centuries fade away – an electronic fabric influencing all our thinking, making our living more noble.1 The Dawn of Modern Electronics De Forest Creates the Audion Broadcasting’s Pioneers De Forest as an Early Broadcaster De Forest’s Complex Love Lives

As a transmitter for reliable long distance communications, the spark gap was a technology dead end, although no one would realize it for at least another decade. Sure, Marconi had founded a successful company using spark and was competing with the transatlantic cable for communications between London and New York. De Forest himself had success with his similar spark wireless system and had gained and lost several companies because of it. But de Forest was restless. He is tired of the spark message business, and by 1906 he is turning his attention to a wireless replacement for the wired telephone. Reginald Fessenden and other inventors also wanted primacy in this invention, but it was only de Forest who saw both a wireless telephone for two way voice messages and a way to send music into the home. Radio and Broadcasting would grow out of it. Before that could be fully realized, he would have to invent something totally different from the spark gap and its less sophisticated detectors. What de Forest will invent will make the radio and the talkies possible.

M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_3, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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The Dawn of Modern Electronics Lee de Forest has resigned from the company that he helped create, and there is bad news, mixed news, and good news. The bad news is that he is poor again with no real hope for an income to support his continued research. And he is not yet free of the problems caused by Abraham White. There is still a trial ahead involving White and others from past companies, and that means more legal expenses and more time taken from inventing. The mixed news is on the love front. De Forest will begin a series of four marriages, some of very short duration – mistakes – all leading to one last satisfying union. To arrive at that plateau will take another 25 years of trial and error. There is also the good news: Lee de Forest, never a smoker or drinker, is blessed with good health, and this will allow him a long and productive inventing career. The best news is something that every famous inventor has at least one of, and that is a signature invention, without which he might be lost to history. For de Forest, it is the three-element vacuum tube, which he calls his Audion, an invention that others will try unsuccessfully to take away from him. An entire electronics-based entertainment industry will evolve out of the Audion – radio broadcasting, the improved phonograph, the amplifier, talking pictures, television – all these are either developed or enhanced or made possible because of the three-element tube, the Audion: The de Forest Big Invention.

Edison and Fleming The story of the Audion begins with Thomas Edison’s electric lamp. Edison observed that as the light burned, black deposits of carbon formed on the inside of the bulb, and as the lamp aged the black sooty formation would effect the light output. He believed that this process was caused by the burning filament sending electrical charges to the interior glass. In an experiment to correct this blackness buildup, he added a metal “plate” to the inside of the lamp with the idea of diverting or drawing off the “stray” electrons: “Edison found that when this plate was connected to the positive leg of the incandescent filament a current would flow across the vacuous space; no current would flow if it was connected to the negative leg.”2 Electrical current flowed from the burning filament to that plate, and as a result Edison believed that he had discovered some sort of way of measuring electric current. In 1883, he received a patent for this Edison Effect, which he called an Electric Indicator, “This current (across the vacuous space) I have found to be proportional to the degree of incandescence of the conductor (filament) and the candlepower of the lamp.”3 He did not fully understand this effect, and even though he presented his findings to scientific and

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technical groups, he did not take this experiment any further. He lost interest. He put the patent aside and discontinued further exploration. Meanwhile John Ambrose Fleming, who worked for Edison at his London laboratories, became interested in the Edison Effect. Between 1882 and 1896, Fleming experimented with the two element lamp and in one of the major discoveries evolving out of this work, he applied alternating current to the filament and noticed that the electricity flowed only one way, therefore creating a rectifier, the definition of which is the conversion of AC, alternating current, to DC, or direct current.4 Building on Edison’s work Fleming had made a significant discovery, but the rectifier possibilities of the two-element vacuum tube would lie dormant for nearly a decade. During the time between Fleming’s discovery and the beginnings of wireless, experimenters like Karl Braun, Elihu Thomson, and others had tried various modifications of a vacuum tube with a filament and plate, but only for indicating visually the presence of current using cathode rays, the precursor to an oscilloscope, and the television picture tube. In the beginning, these discoveries of the properties of a vacuum tube were also dead ends, interesting but without a practical purpose. All that would change when Fleming returned to his work. In 1904, he was employed as an engineer for Marconi Wireless, and his main assignment was to find a replacement detector for the coherer still used by the Marconi Company. He remembers the rectifying characteristics he had earlier found with the Edison light bulb and its added plate. He now believes that it could somehow be used as a detector, and it would work by converting radio frequencies of the spark transmission into an electrical current that could be detected using an inking device or other visual indicator (Fig. 3.1). The Fleming device, U.S. patent 803,684, was finally submitted in April 1905. Called an “Instrument for Converting Alternating Electric Currents into Continuous Currents,” it was a wireless telegraph detecting device on which de Forest in the next year would model his two-element Audion. In the Fleming patent: “This invention relates to certain new and useful devices for converting alternating electric currents or electrical oscillations, into continuous electric currents for the purpose of making them detectable by and measurable with ordinary direct current instruments, such as a ‘mirror-galvanometer’ of the usual type or any direct current ammeter.”5 Fleming had designed his device specifically for code, and so a visual indicator like the mirror galvanometer made sense. But Fleming was first with the basic idea on which the Audion was originally based. Marconi employed Fleming’s valve beginning in 1904 to detect and trigger a code reading device based on a galvanometer. Marconi’s company was growing quickly, and while de Forest had a habit of moving rapidly

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from one idea to the next, Marconi would stay the course and develop a solid wireless telegraph business. He would build it and nurture it with one important goal – the sending and receiving of messages, using code, from ship to shore, from Europe to New York. It was a wireless telegraph company into which he put all his energies. By the time Fleming had improved his valve detector, Marconi had moved on to the more dependable galena crystal detector and other less-complicated receiver technology. In the end Marconi had briefly used Fleming’s two-element device solely for visual code detection, and because this differed from how de Forest will use his two-element device, it is de Forest who will be most known for it.6

De Forest Creates the Audion So Edison, who invented the light bulb and who noticed a carbon deposit on the inside of the glass as the lamp aged, added a plate to divert the electricity, observed and noted his results, filed a patent and did nothing. Fleming experimented with the two-element lamp, and discovered that it could change radio frequencies into audio frequency pulses for detecting wireless signals. This is where Lee de Forest, who has been on a long quest for a better detector, enters the picture. So, did de Forest just step in and take credit for the work of Edison and Fleming? The answer is complicated but these conclusions can be drawn based on the evidence. First, Edison lost interest in the two element lamp and turned his inventing skills to devices that were practical and potentially profitable. Fleming was a Marconi employee and had he been allowed to perform further research on what he called his valve detector, he may have discovered the third element before Lee de Forest. But he didn’t. One of the life-long characteristics of de Forest, his independence, and his need to be unencumbered by bosses was valuable to his inventing successes. It gave him time to invent. And he, not a boss, would decide the value and purpose of an invention.

Figure 3.1 The American patent on Fleming’s two-element “valve,” pat. 803,684. This was Fleming’s version of the tube based on Edison’s observation of electron movement in his light bulb, called the “Edison Effect.” This is the device that many have accused de Forest of copying, and while he must have been aware of it, the Fleming invention uses the detector-rectifier characteristic of his valve to trigger the presence of a signal using a meter called a galvanometer. Fleming’s device “saw” the signal. De Forest used his with headphones to “hear” the signal as audio. From Google Patents.

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Remember that finding a better detector/receiver of wireless signals had been de Forest’s quest since he became an inventor. Laboratory records from 1900 show how the flame from his Welsbach gas burner seemed to react to, he thought detected, wireless signals in the same room. Those very early experiments with the open flame were tried and abandoned when it was proved that the flame was reacting to the sound wave artifact of the spark, not the wireless signal itself. A later experiment using a flame was more promising, this one using a piece of platinum wire and a spoon of salt in a flame with those electrodes connected in series with a battery and earphone. With the sides of the electrodes connected to an antenna and ground it seemed to work, but gas would never be practical for a ship’s receiver. An arc light was tried next, and again it worked although poorly. He did receive several patents for these under the general description, “self restoring constantly receptive oscillation responsive device comprising in its construction a sensitive gaseous medium.”7 In other words, a flame detector. All were dead ends as inventions. In his half dozen years of trial and error experiments toward a better detector, de Forest had tried and discarded the coherer, then moved to the liquid detector that he called a responder which he modified with a little unwilling help from Fessenden’s laboratory. He called that iteration a spade detector. Although not successful, his work with the open flame did point him in a new direction, the development of a detector based on the work of the two-element bulb of Fleming. De Forest’s 1906 precursor to the Audion was basically a Fleming Valve with one small difference, one that would become a large difference when the third element was added later. Patent 836,070 for the first two-electrode Audion was called an “Oscillation Responsive Device.” In Fleming’s version, there was a single battery for the filament. In the de Forest version of the two-element tube, a separate battery was used for the filament and for the plate, called the “wing” by de Forest. Later in his life, when asked if he had known about the previous work of Edison and Fleming, he said he hadn’t, but in his patent application he writes, “that this incandescent lamp device had been fully described by J.A. Fleming in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, March 16th, 1905.”8 The “Oscillation-Responsive device” is just a two element detector (Fig. 3.2). The patent history shows that the original application was filed on January 18th, 1906, modified on May 19th, and finally granted on November 19th, 1906. This is how de Forest explains his application: “My invention relates to devices for detecting feeble electrical currents or oscillations, and especially such currents in wireless telegraph receiving systems. The object of my invention is to provide an oscillation detector or responder of great simplicity

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Figure 3.2 The first de Forest Audion patent for the two-element tube, 1906, pat. 836,070. This first one is most like the Fleming Valve, but significantly, the de Forest version contains a second battery in the plate circuit, known as a “B” battery, needed to power the earphone. Like Fleming he uses an “A” battery used to light the filament. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

and sensitiveness and one which, inasmuch as it does not depend for its operation upon any variation of resistance of an imperfect electrical contact or any variation of the apparent resistance or counter electromotive of a polarization cell, requires no adjustment when employed for receiving wireless telegraph signals.”9 This very first version of what will become the

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Audion is crude, and it specifies that gas is contained in the bulb in partial vacuum as opposed to the later complete vacuum, and it does still have an eye on the past when it refers to “wireless telegraphy” detection. The patentable differences between this invention and that of Fleming are de Forest’s addition of the second battery between the plate and the earphone, called a “B” battery, and the use of a telephone earphone instead of the galvanometer. These two very significant changes result in the “hearing” of a signal as opposed to Fleming’s “seeing” it using a visual indicator. These differences mean that only the de Forest version will be able to “hear” the audio from the imminent invention of the radiotelephone. If there is any doubt that de Forest considered Fleming’s invention and how patent interference might be prevented if it is used, there is this December 1906 letter from de Forest to his patent attorney Woodworth: “Please get for me copies of the Stone patents covering the ‘loose-coupled and weeding out circuits. Also that on the Singing Arc, Fleming’s U.S. patent, rectifier tube.”10 What he meant by “weeding out” is the way that stations could be separated from each other using a system of inductances or coils and the variable capacitance using in tuning, known at the time as “syntony.” The singing arc will later become the basis of his radiotelephone system. Finally, he is inquiring about Fleming’s rectifier. In this one sentence, he is asking to see patents that will influence how he invents and describes in his patent filings his next contributions to the science of wireless. Among these are an improved Audion, and the radio and the sound film. And in typical de Forest aplomb, he adds this bit of poetry to the attorney letter, perhaps a wry digression on Abraham White and the coming trouble: “We hope, if God is good and Allah permitting, to get those papers signed tomorrow.” What says Omar: The earth hope men get in their hearts upon Turns ashes, or it prospers, and anon Like snow upon the Commons slippery pave White changes his mind again – and lo – he’s gone! The fountain pen attests, and having writ Moves on, nor all his craftiness nor wit Shall lure me back to assign another pat, Nor all their tears wash out my license – nit.

“When will the new case be ready to go in?”11 In this letter and accompanying poem, he alludes to Abe White, who will soon cause the company to be dissolved, leaving de Forest with what White had told others were “worthless” Audion patents (Fig. 3.3). Another patent, filed August, 1906 and granted January, 1907 called “Wireless Telegraphy,” was a modification of his two element Audion, and

Figure 3.3 Patent for a second two-element Audion, this one pat 841,387, January 1907. This is a slight improvement on the previous one. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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while similar to it, like the first one it specified, “the use of a dry battery in the plate circuit that distinguished my new invention from earlier vacuum tube detectors, such as the Fleming Valve.”12 The third patent, 841,387,“Device for Amplifying Feeble Electrical Currents,” was filed on October 6th, 1906, and granted January 15th, 1907. “This application disclosed an incandescent lamp with a carbon or metal filament, which had two metal ‘wings’ parallel to the plane of the filament, one on either side of the filament.”13 It is in this 1906 patent application that the word “amplifying” is used in conjunction with the Audion for the first time: “My invention relates to devices for amplifying feeble electrical currents – such, for example, as telephone currents; and its object is to produce an amplifying device of greater efficiency than those heretofore employed.”14 The significance of these words in the October 1906 application is that de Forest has now clearly separated his Audion work from that of its Edison and Fleming detector origins, plus it potentially puts it beyond just that of a wireless telegraph support device. Now he is talking about amplifying the telephone. But this patent would not prove to be “the one.” It used a complex system of a tube with an external electromagnet, and the tube still contained a gaseous medium that would never work well for amplification. It is one small step of many. It is the necessary process of science and discovery, one patent at a time. In November of 1906 he gave to his lamp maker Henry McCandless new instructions to add the third element, which de Forest named the “grid,” perhaps for the football field (called gridiron) at his beloved Yale, but surely because of its physical appearance. Placed between the filament and plate, a signal electrically impressed upon this grid, say from an antenna, would control the flow of electrons and make the weak detected signals louder. He had learned that such a third element, this grid, would amplify when a positive charge was applied, thus pulling more electrons from the vicinity of the filament. 15 This was de Forest’s own unique addition, the addition of the grid to make the three element vacuum tube. Although this may have temporarily removed him from Edison and Fleming from an infringement point of view, he still owed Fleming as Fleming owed Edison. The difference between the two element tube and the three element version was amplification, the former a detector only, the latter a kind of super-detector. According to Tyne, “The first public disclosure of the triode Audion was made by de Forest at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on March 14th, 1907, in connection with his paper, ‘The Wireless Transmission of Intelligence.’”16 Patent 879,532, applied for in January 1907 and granted February 1908 was called “Space Telegraphy,” and as its futuristic name portended, it will change electronic history. It will make radio broadcasting, the amplified phonograph, and talking pictures possible (Fig. 3.4).

Figure 3.4 The third element, the grid, was added to the version of the Audion submitted in January 1907 and awarded patent 879,532 in February 1908. This addition of the third element is today considered to be de Forest’s major claim to ushering in the electronics age. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Figure 3.5 One version of the three element Audion, circa 1908–1909. From the Joe Knight collection.

But as the future “Conqueror of Space” de Forest had still not completely arrived at what the Audion would mean. That will take several more years and more attorneys and more time in court. In his patent for “Space Telegraphy,” he does not entirely understand how it could work: “I have determined experimentally that the presence of the conducting material member which as before stated may be grid-shaped, increases the sensitiveness of the oscillation detector, and inasmuch as the explanation of this phenomenon is exceedingly complex, I do not deem it necessary herein to enter into a detailed statement of what I believe to be the probable explanation.”17 He seems to be saying that he knows that it does work but he is uncertain as to exactly how it works. It will take 3–5 years of experiments with the device for it to move beyond its use as just a detector. In these important years, at least a half-dozen inventors will make improvements to the de Forest Audion, all leading to 20 years of litigation over those developments (Fig. 3.5). It will be later, working in Palo Alto, that de Forest begins to see his Audion as more than just a detector of wireless code and voice. As a throwback to his original experimentation with a gas flame as a detector, the Audion contained too much gas to be effective as an amplifier. But by 1908, he was manufacturing and selling his three-element tube in several iterations. In the accompanying photographs are several versions of the early Audion. Note the tiny wire coming out of the tube near its base. This is a connection for a second filament. Because of the Audion’s fragile construction and because some users might add too much voltage to the filament, a second one was available when the first one burned out (Fig. 3.6). There was another version of the Audion with two grids and two plates, and if you connected appropriately the output of one plate to the input grid of the second half of the tube you would theoretically have a stronger amplified signal. This “cascading” of Audions was the first method for increasing the level of a signal, before the discovery of feedback or oscillation (Fig. 3.7).

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Figure 3.6 Another version of the Audion, this one spherical, and with the second filament, accessed using the tiny wire coming out of the base. Author photo from the Stewart Oliver collection.

Figure 3.7 An Audion labeled, showing the plate, the grid and the filament. This version, seen in Fig. 3.6, has the double filament. Author photo from the Stewart Oliver collection.

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Contemporary historians mostly agree that the invention of the threeelement Audion was that of de Forest, but says historian Hijiya, “The murkiness surrounding the triode’s origin has not been entirely dispersed by historical investigation in the subsequent decades.” 18 On the contrary, historian Tom Lewis writes: “De Forest did add the grid to the vacuum tube, something no one else had done before. Though his discovery was unwitting, and though he scarcely understood how his tube worked, it was his invention.”19 And while there is surely the Edison and Fleming influence in the science of the Audion, even long-time de Forest enemy Fessenden was not convinced that it was just a copy of the earlier work: “The ‘audion’ of de Forest, a very interesting and sensitive device, which though superficially resembling Professor Fleming’s rectifier, appears to act on an entirely different principle.”20 Nevertheless, the de Forest Audion will prove to be the most important piece yet needed for the successful development of the radio and the talking motion picture.

Broadcasting’s Pioneers There is universal agreement that Lee de Forest was an early if not the first radio broadcaster: “The timing of the actual moment of insight remains uncertain, but sometime during the insecure winter of 1906–1907, de Forest conceived broadcasting. It was an insight fueled less by a compelling technical vision and more by the desires of the social outcast.”21 Most historians agree that the insecure Lee de Forest would surely have wanted to share the music of opera with his unseen audience, and his radio telephone would have been the perfect device with which to accomplish this. Writes historian Susan Douglas: “De Forest envisioned radio as a way to serve the culturally and economically excluded – and as a way to make money.”22 The evidence is not so strong that in the beginning de Forest saw radio entertainment as a money-making venture, but he would surely in future years cash in through the sale of parts for radio construction and home radios themselves. Almost as soon as the possibility of sending voice using the wireless was realized, there was music on the air. But was it broadcasting? Is there a generally-accepted definition of a radio broadcast? De Forest friend and radio historian George Clark attempted to set the definition after KDKA went on the air in November, 1920. This early definition caused a group of pre-war pioneers to begin a 50-year battle based on conflicting stories of “Who was the first broadcaster?”23 Clark specified that it was a radio broadcast if (a) it was the act of sending music and voice, entertainment and

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information, (b) on a regular schedule, (c) advertised in the press, and (d) to a known citizen audience.24 Several early pioneers met these criteria, although Clark himself was wrong about his definition of a citizen audience. Clark believed that only KDKA could qualify as it was the first licensed station. The truth was, and this will be detailed in the chapter on radio’s arrival, the “citizen audience” of Clark did not suddenly appear in 1920 with KDKA. The evidence shows that a combination of citizens and amateurs were the radio audiences beginning in 1910 and continuing until about 1924, when radio was clearly a mass media. But who were the earliest broadcasters? And how has this been determined and verified?

Reginald Fessenden Canadian wireless inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the scientist who may have invented what some believe was the first successful detector of continuous waves or audio, the Liquid Baretter, for which he received a patent in 1904. The significance of this invention is twofold: First, as a detector of wireless code messages, its “dits” and “dahs” can be heard in a telephone earphone, and because it is a rectifier, it can also detect wireless voice messages by rectifying the radio frequencies and recovering the audio frequencies. And it was faster than the coherer and did not have to be reset after every coded letter as the coherer required. This method of detecting and rectifying provided an important beginning for radio broadcasting because it allowed reception of sound or audio. It was this invention that de Forest had allegedly copied without Fessenden’s permission, leading to the patent infringement and litigation detailed in the previous chapter.25 As one of the first radiotelephone experimenters, Fessenden was attempting the transmission of voice using the existing technologies of spark, arc, and alternator used by many experimenters between 1900 and 1916. Some, including Fessenden himself in 1900, had tried to modulate a spark gap with a voice but quickly abandoned it as unsatisfactory and difficult to understand. The technology that Fessenden decided upon as a generator of continuous waves for audio transmission was the highfrequency alternator, the most famous of which was designed by Ernst Alexanderson of General Electric. In Fessenden’s device, gaps in the rotor induced high-frequency oscillations in coils set in the stationary magnets. It was a complex and costly way to generate radio frequencies. The resulting oscillating alternating current was modulated by a microphone and connected to an antenna. It is this technology that Fessenden uses for his radiotelephone.26 Fessenden has long been credited with having presented the “first radio broadcast,” although there is some recent revision to the familiar story

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of the so-called Christmas Eve broadcast of 1906 from Brant Rock Massachusetts. Did it really happen? The question researchers always have to ask is, “How do we know what we know?” This letter in the Clark Radiana Collection has always been used as the evidence of the alleged Christmas Eve transmission: “This broadcast was advertised and notified 3 days in advance of Christmas, the word being telegraphed to the ships of the U.S. Navy and the United Fruit Co., which were equipped with our apparatus that we intended broadcasting speech, music, and singing on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. The program on Christmas Eve was as follows: first a short speech by me saying what we were going to do, then some phonograph music, Handel’s Largo. Then came a violin solo by me, being a composition by Gounod called ‘O, Holy Night,’ and ending up with the words ‘Adore and be Still,’ which I sang one verse of, in addition to playing on the violin, though the singing, of course, was not very good. Then came the bible text, ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will,’ and we finally wound up by wishing them a Merry Christmas and then saying that we proposed to broadcast again New Years Eve.”27 The problem for current researchers James O’Neil, Christopher Sterling, and Donna Halper is that the often-quoted evidence of the Fessenden Christmas Eve broadcast was a letter written more than 25 years after the event, in the year of Fessenden’s death. These researchers looked but found no 1906 primary evidence of this broadcast taking place. In the examples of early broadcasting by de Forest, there is a well-known document trail backed by diary entries and stories in the major newspapers. The press apparently did not carry the 1906 Fessenden story, and there was no testimony of audience members or radio operators on ships, with the result that this event did not get into the record until 1932! Based on a glaring omission of evidence needed to add credibility to a story, there are those who have now recently written that the 1906 broadcast may not have happened.28 Sterling and Halper write that the statement of the Christmas Eve broadcast “is odd because Fessenden had already accomplished several earlier transmissions of voice and music, from a 1900 experiment from the Outer banks in North Carolina, to a 1905 demonstration in Washington, DC – as well as a witnessed experiment in wireless telephony that took place at Brant Rock on December 21st, 1906, just 4 days earlier.”29 These are said to be demonstrations of point-to-point communication rather than broadcasting. And while there is agreement that Fessenden was one of the first to develop a radiotelephone and demonstrate it successfully, it is his later in life use of the term “broadcasting” and the Christmas Eve transmission that is now being questioned. They conclude: “we stress again that

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our research does not in any way seek to diminish the credit that Reginald Fessenden clearly deserves as the first man to send voice and music signals through the air by wireless. There is little question he accomplished that – whether in late 1906 or on several earlier occasions as is well documented.”30 The primary Fessenden researcher, Canadian Professor John Belrose, says the Christmas Eve event did happen. “Concerning the comment that Fessenden was old when the letter was written (implying perhaps a fault in memory or an invention in later years) is a discredit of Fessenden and his family. The letter is very clearly written, and it gives in detail what he did. It was probably typed by Helen who had witnessed the broadcast, and she clearly had very detailed notes in her diary. And, while Ken their son, who also witnessed the broadcast, was young at the time, he certainly knew what his father did. While Ken may not have seen the letter at the time it was written, he certainly helped his mother Helen write her book, in which with reference to the broadcast says what Fessenden himself said he did.”31 According to Belrose, Westinghouse vice-president H. P. Davis in a 1928 address did reference the Fessenden 1906 broadcast as being the first. Nevertheless, there was a December 1906 demonstration of Fessenden’s radiotelephone technology using live and phonograph music, and while not a “program” as the December 24th event was said to be, it was publicized and historians seem to agree that it did happen. More than 100 years after its possible occurrence, the Fessenden “first broadcaster” controversy continues.32 To add more still confusion what these scholars have concluded, in a 1908 presentation before the American Institute of Electric Engineers, Fessenden himself said only this about the 1906 transmissions from Brant Rock: “By the fall of 1906 the high frequency alternator had been brought to a practical shape and was used for telephoning from Brant Rock to Plymouth, a distance of 11 miles, and to a small fishing schooner, this being the first instance in which wireless telephony was put to practical use.”33 He tells the engineering group that on December 11th, 1906, he conducted another transmission test, but in this 1908 presentation he does not mention the Christmas Eve “broadcast” at all. And while some would argue that in 1908 there was no context for the broadcasting of music and voice into homes, Lee de Forest had already written about how it could happen.

Charles Herrold of San Jose Meanwhile, a pre-Silicon Valley story was developing in Northern California. The author’s 2003 book, Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, tells the story of a San Jose inventor who may have started

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the first radio station.34 The significance of Charles Herrold is twofold: First, unlike many of those very early broadcasters of voice and music for an audience, the Herrold claim is well-documented and the proof exists in the form of press and eyewitness accounts. But second, and of most value to historians, Charles Herrold represents the “everyman” of early broadcasting, one of dozens, maybe hundreds, who were experimenting with the nascent radiotelephone technology and discovering their audiences. These audiences were mostly young people who had built radio receivers to listen to the Morse Code of ship-to-shore communications and discovered something new and interesting on their wireless. And while commercial wireless operators believed these strange transmission of voice and music were a nuisance, their children were excited by this new use of radio. Herrold by 1909 had already started a broadcasting service and began to find a small audience of mostly amateurs and their parents, who surely would have been delighted to hear something besides Morse code emanating from their young son’s headphones. Born in the Midwest, Charles Herrold grew up in San Jose and was studying physics and electricity at Stanford University the exact same years de Forest was at Yale. Herrold was revealed to be more of an inventor of mechanical devices than a scientist like de Forest or Fessenden, but what Herrold had going for him was the respect of a group of young wireless acolytes. In 1909, he opened a vocational school in San Jose, the Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering, the purpose of which was to train wireless operators for jobs on ship and shore. Herrold fancied himself as a wireless inventor and while he received patents for the devices he used in broadcasting, his most important role was that of a teacher. As a result, Herrold and his students operated a radio station.35 The photos of the Herrold station, circa 1912, show an ingenious combination of wireless and arc radiotelephone parts, plus pieces of a phonograph and a telephone. As an inventor Herrold was more of an aggregator who, like Marconi, put together disparate existing pieces of other inventions into a useful system, in this instance a radio broadcasting station (Fig. 3.8). It is known from his papers and from the eyewitness accounts of his former students as told to researcher Greb in the 1950s that there were regular broadcasts and there were audiences.36 The proof of this first appeared in the January 1910 catalog of the Electro-Importing Company of New York, a mail order store that sold wireless parts to experimenters who could not afford pre-made commercial sets. For advertising purposes, Herrold was asked to submit for publication a testimonial about how he was using the Electro-Importing Company parts. Because of his connection to young amateurs, he was considered a leader, a spokesperson, and

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Figure 3.8 An unknown student operates a version of the Charles Herrold arcbased radiotelephone broadcasting station. Like de Forest, Herrold used his own version of the Poulsen arc as a transmitter of audio. The significance of Herrold was that his students starting in 1909 sent out music and talk to their friends, similar to modern-day College Radio. From the Perham collection, History San Jose.

his testimonial was notarized which in those days made it “real.” To the list of parts he used from the company he gave this statement: “We have been giving radio concerts to amateur men in the Santa Clara Valley.” This was perhaps the first use of the new radio lexicon, and it demonstrated programming for a known audience of more than one, and it proved this had occurred more than once, the definition of a radio station.37 In 1912, there is a story in the San Jose paper reporting from the scene of the Herrold broadcasts, and the reporter describes it just like it was a radio station of today: “For more than 2 hours they conducted a concert in Mr. Herrold’s office in the Garden City Bank Building, which was heard for many miles around. The music was played on a phonograph furnished by the Wiley B. Allen company. Immediately after the first record was played, numerous amateurs from various points in the valley notified

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(Herrold assistant) Mr. Portal that they had heard the music distinctly. Mr. Portal gave the names of the records he had on hand and asked those listening to signify their choice. One asked for ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ which was furnished.”38 Like de Forest and Fessenden, Charles Herrold was early as a radio broadcaster. In 1912 a number of radiotelephone stories appeared in the public press, and many of them used the same theme as this editorial in the San Jose Mercury Herald headlined, “Is Wireless Telephony a Fact?” The writer seems to have retained a narrow focus on how it might only be a replacement for the telegraph or telephone: “Wireless operators at telegraph instruments all along the coast reported hearing plainly-spoken words coming apparently from nowhere. Years ago it would probably have been looked upon as a voice from heaven, but in this materialistic age, it was but another knot in nature to be unraveled.”39 A voice from heaven? There was no mention of radio or music broadcasting for an audience, even though 2 weeks later this same newspaper would report on the Charles Herrold station and its music broadcasting activity by the students of his wireless school. That story would talk about listeners requesting phonograph records, of music programming for an audience, but in the end it too would describe the work as “Mr. Herrold is developing the wireless telephone into a practical means of communication.”40, 41 Herrold used the third of the prevacuum tube transmitting technologies, his patented version of the Poulsen Arc. Of the three choices available pre-Audion, spark was quickly discarded as unlistenable while the alternator was cumbersome and costly, but the arc continued to be used by many of the wireless telephone experimenters, de Forest included. Put these early radio broadcasting experiments into the context of the times: Inventors were looking for a wireless replacement for the wired telephone just as Marconi and others had earlier replaced the wired telegraph. Reginald Fessenden claimed he used phonograph music so that his voice would not get tired during testing. Charles Herrold involved his students in broadcasting to give them something fun to do, and most others were really just trying to invent the winning system in a race for the radiotelephone.42 But all this seemingly exciting progress was not without its detractors. This proliferation of unlicensed radiotelephone experimenters and amateur broadcasters were continuously under attack for causing interference to what were considered “legitimate uses of wireless,” mostly those of commerce and defense and the safety of passenger ships at sea. As it would a second time in 1919, the Navy in 1912 wanted to take over control of all radio transmissions: “The amateurs, on the contrary, asserted that they had as much, if not more, right to explore the ether because they had

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worked and experimented to earn that right. The ether was a national resource, they argued, a newly-discovered environment, and the amateurs considered that their enthusiasm and technical spadework entitled them to a portion of the territory.”43 The hams and experimenters wanted nothing less than a democratization of the airwaves, and after the conclusion of the Great War amateurs would lobby for a system of licensing that would separate the amateur from the commercial operator by assignment of wavelengths.

De Forest as an Early Broadcaster With the Audion patents seemingly secure, and with no wireless telegraph company, de Forest did what would seem to be a future pattern in his life: he changed course, this time away from coded wireless signals and toward the voice wireless popularly called the radiotelephone. Like other inventors of that period, he began his wireless telephone experiments with the familiar spark and carbon telephone microphone. This platform was quickly discarded in favor of the so-called “singing arc” of Danish Inventor Valdemar Poulsen and others. The arc was superior to the spark as an oscillator/transmitter because it generated continuous waves with less noise. Remember that in his final years of graduate education, de Forest became interested in the arc, what he called the “speaking flame,” about which articles appeared in the electrical and science periodicals of the day. The published device was an arc burning in hydrogen so de Forest burned his arc in an alcohol lamp with the expressed purpose of getting around the popular Poulsen patents.44 What the evidence shows is that earlier than most, Lee de Forest saw the wireless in a way that was different from Marconi. Like Fessenden, De Forest saw wireless voice communication early. The beginnings of de Forest’s awareness of the arc-based radiotelephone is seen in his papers through the comments he wrote in the margins of pertinent articles relating to this interest. In an editorial in the November 7th, 1902 Western Electrician, the writer commented on the recent progress in wireless telephony. The technology was based on the experiments of Ruhmer, whose theories became the basis of Simon’s wireless telephony system, which was an improvement on the much earlier Bell Photophone. These were not wireless-through-the-air systems, but rather modulated and demodulated light waves, “The light from the arc is regulated in a parallel beam by means of a parabolic reflector and directed on to the selenium cell at a distant point.”45 This was not radio but voice communication,

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weather permitting, over short distances using light modulated by a telephone microphone and a battery. Another article saved by and commented on by de Forest appeared in this same 1902 issue called, “The Speaking Arc and Wireless Telephony,” gives early credit to Preece and his 1880 “ThermoTelephone,” and Duddell’s speaking arc in 1898. In the latter, it was the sound of the arc itself that was made to “speak” using a carbon telephone microphone with small DC voltage coupled to an arc and its voltage through a transformer, which isolates the small current telephone from the high current arc. Its application was to amplify, prevacuum tube, but not to transmit: “The experiments consisted in the reproduction of ordinary conversation, various songs, whistling and violin playing, all being heard distinctly by everyone in the large lecture room seating 160 people.”46 This is how the arc began, modulated, and influenced by sound waves and a microphone. It was a prewireless public address system. The next step will be to connect an antenna to the “speaking arc” to oscillate at radio frequencies and put it into the ether. More important is that these previous experiments by Bell and others are also a predictor of future inventions by de Forest. As evidenced in his papers, it is this initial research and awareness that becomes the science behind sound-on-film when de Forest first uses a modulated arc light to expose photographic film with a light pattern analogous with the sound waves. The thought processes he uses to develop the arc for a radiotelephone will also be used for Phonofilm. In this work, he will prove to be the consummate scientist (Fig. 3.9). In 1907, the De Forest Radio Telephone Company was formed to develop a wireless telephone to replace the wired telephone. It was not originally conceived for radio entertainment broadcasting. It was to be a communication device for ship to shore, defense and commerce, and it had to be designed to appeal to the major buyer of such technology, the U. S. Navy. His transmitter used an arc while the receiver placed the new Audion in the role of a detector. The idea of an income that the Navy could provide was much of the impetus for starting this company, but early in the radiotelephone invention process de Forest began to fantasize about another use of this device, the sending of music through the air: “The ether waves, which receive the sound vibrations, may have passed over miles of city or wastes of sea, through the walls of hundreds of buildings or over the roofs of the tallest towers. Nothing will retard or obstruct them, and those who stand between are unaware of the silent voices or spirit music, which may be passing them on every side. They are dumb to all save him who listens with the proper ‘responder’ correctly attuned to the electric waves. He alone hears the etheric ‘call of the wild,’ and when it speaks to him in the well-known accents of a distant friend, or when music of silent spirits,

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Figure 3.9 De Forest operates an early radiotelephone. Notice in the lower foreground a record player. The long arm of this phonograph seems to have attached to it some sort of acoustic coupling device, perhaps an additional carbon microphone to modulate the arc for broadcast of music. According to de Forest assistant Frank Butler, the “William Tell Overture” was one of the first records sent by wireless telephone. This would have been in 1907–1908. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

coming in from nowhere, sings to him the strains of some well loved earthly melody, his wonder grows, and he trembles at the weirdness of it all.”47 Part poetry, part prediction, and part physics, this decidedly esoteric view of the wireless was undoubtedly because of his overriding penchant for the beauty of classical music, an entertainment form that de Forest had always wanted to share with all. How can one who sees his invention in such a bizarre way ever hope to make a profit selling to the United States Navy and United Fruit? Was Lee

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de Forest a poet locked in the body of a physicist? This is why before Fessenden and before Herrold, de Forest alone saw radio broadcasting as it would become. He will never profit greatly from it, but money alone is not what he wanted. He wanted, no, he needed to be called the “Father of Radio.” In the de Forest papers, he has added this note to the newspaper reports and his own writings: “From the above excerpts taken from newspaper interviews or articles from 1907 to 1910 it should be convincingly evident that from the beginning of my wireless telephone work I had clearly in mind its great usefulness as a means for broadcasting news and music entirely in addition to the use of the wireless telephone as a means of two way communication by voice. From the beginning, a great lover of opera and fine music, I was intent on developing means and methods for broadcast distribution of these elements of culture to widely scattered audiences.”48 The voluminous newspaper record does add veracity to his comments. A similar comment would be attributed to RCA founder David Sarnoff, who in 1916 or later described his vision, remarkably similar to that of de Forest: “I have in mind a plan of development which would make radio a ‘household utility’ in the same sense as the piano or phonograph. The idea is to bring music into the house by wireless.”49 Not as poetic as de Forest, but perhaps just as prescient.

The Wireless Telephone and the U.S. Navy in 1907 Using technology designed for the Navy, “The first actual transmission of phonograph music was the result of experimental tests by Dr. Lee de Forest in 1907 on some 20 small telephone transmitters planned for installation on Admiral Evans’ battleships and destroyers prior to their historic roundthe-world cruise.”50 Again, as with all those to whom we apply the label of “broadcast pioneer,” the truth was somewhat more complicated. The primary goal was clearly to invent, patent, and sell a wireless replacement for the telephone, to be used as the wireless telegraph was used, for communications between ships and shore and city to city. The idea of broadcasting music to a home audience using these devices was always secondary to the serious business of messaging. But always in the background of the use of the radiotelephone for two-way conversation, there are accompanying stories of how de Forest uses music from a phonograph as part of an aroundthe-world demonstration of his radiotelephone for the Navy. When the fleet sailed into San Francisco Harbor in 1908, it was accompanied by radiotelephone music broadcasting from an on-board phonograph, thus announcing the arrival of the ships (Fig. 3.10). De Forest installed the radiotelephone personally on the USS Ohio. According to Clark, of the “20 or so sets installed, only the one on the Ohio

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Figure 3.10 A de Forest radiotelephone similar to that used by the Navy, From the Seaver Center of Western History de Forest papers, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

worked. This was because, on most of the ships, no one bothered with the sets.”51 According to Clark, “At first, Meneratti on the Ohio played records into the microphone. On December 23rd, 1907, one of the bandsmen, a cornetists, played selections to the microphone several times, while the Fleet was at the Port of Spain. Almost all the ships of the Fleet heard him.”52 The men who served aboard the Ohio and understood the wireless telephone did stand up for de Forest: “When de Forest was indicted in the second District of NY Court in 1914 for fraudulent use of the mails, both Pohl and Meneratti gave testimony as to the value of the wireless telephone.”53 The USS Ohio wireless telephone communicated with many stations on both coasts. When the Ohio entered the San Francisco Bay, there was a shore station set up to receive the Ohio’s wireless telephone, “De Forest at that time had the idea of putting up a chain of coast stations and using these for

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wireless telephony to ships, a perfectly possible idea, but rather in advance of the times.”54 The de Forest shore station failed to hear the Ohio wireless telephone because its signal was jammed by a rival company, either Pacific Wireless, Marconi, or Massie. The Ohio did successfully use its wireless telephone from Seattle to San Francisco to San Diego, both phonograph and voice and a special record was made for this trip and played on the phonograph, the words to which were: Oil and water will not mix, Neither will the yellow and white. Peace we’ll have at any price, And if we’re forced we’ll surely fight.55

This record was played many times on the Ohio’s phonograph into the microphone of the wireless telephone. This was also played for the British Fleet in Australia and, “this was the first time the British sailors had ever heard a radiophone.”56 In this recounting by Meneratti to Clark, he tells that the Ohio only had one record when they sailed from San Diego to Sydney, but when they returned they had 250 records. These concerts were apparently heard by King Constantine of Greece when they sailed into Athens. The radio equipment on the Ohio was popular. As a technical aside, “In these installations the mike was in series with the arc. The microphones got very hot in use. The operators had to pound them to get the granules to loosen up.”57 For his radiotelephone experiments, he uses whatever music is available to test out his new device. In this he was not unique. Fessenden and others trying to invent a wireless telephone system also used music in their experiments. But the March 5th, 1907 entry in the de Forest diary begins to separate him from the others and define one of his legitimate claims – the first to promote the use of radio as entertainment media for an audience: “My present task (happy one) is to distribute sweet melody broadcast over the city and sea, so that in time even the mariner far out in the silent waves may hear the music of his homeland, sung from unseen sources.”58 This was perhaps the earliest description of what radio would become 13 years into the future, and Lee de Forest would always have a hand in the direction of it, whether technical or artistic. In May of that year the magazine Talking Machine World quoted him, “The inventor has in mind one use for wireless telephony in New York that will appeal to music lovers. With the permission of the management of an opera house he could carry an opera performance up through the roof, he said, and send it hot off the griddle to people with various wireless receivers in their homes.”59 De Forest was possibly the only individual correctly imagining radio broadcasting as early as 1907 (Fig. 3.11).

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Figure 3.11 A dressed up de Forest at the microphone of an early radiotelephone. The microphone is a double carbon with the mouthpiece connected to a telephone-like transmitter on each side of the mouthpiece. Attached to the right side of the large box is the arc, and next to that is a partial view of the Audion receiver. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Then there were the strange broadcasts of electronically-generated music in 1907. This is concurrent with the development of the Audion, but 6 years before the de Forest “Audion Piano” experiments, his early version of the “electronic organ.” Writing in 1922, a reporter claims that the very first de Forest music broadcast was not the phonograph or the live opera singer: “The Spring of 1907 saw the radio distribution of synthetic electrical music, generated and played in a building at the corner of Broadway and 37th street, New York. The plant itself consisted of many inductor alternators whose frequencies were those of the entire musical scale.”60 You may not have realized this but if you look inside the electronic organ designed by Laurens Hammond in the 1930s, what you will find as the basis of the organ are a series of so-called “tone generators,” and like the de Forest organ described above, are really little tiny inductor-alternators that revolve in front of a magnet and coil arrangement. When the sounds of individual coils are combined by pulling out drawbars representing fundamental notes and their harmonics, the Hammond Organ sound is produced. This experiment was decades before the Hammond device: “To connect this musical current into radio frequency and impress on the

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antenna, which was erected for this purpose on the roof of the building by Doctor de Forest was comparatively simple, and thereupon demonstrations were made for receiving stations in New York City.”61 The de Forest foray into electronic music is a minimally-documented but interesting digression in the story of a music lover who will be a radio broadcaster and filmmaker. Most of the publicity surrounding his radiotelephone was about opera. The New York press speculated in 1908 about how an ordinary person might be able to eventually receive the opera broadcasts of de Forest: “The apparatus will be so cheap that it will be in the reach of everyone,” de Forest said. “The receiving mechanism is very simple and so responsive that it can be installed at a cost of not more than a few dollars. All the subscriber will have to do is to put up a flag pole on his dwelling.”62 It is an unintended harbinger of current practice that he uses the word “subscriber” to refer to the listener of the proposed opera music. One hundred and two years later to get opera from the Metropolitan Opera you have to subscribe to the satellite radio service Sirius/XM. The next year, while still calling it the wireless telephone, “Dr. Lee de Forest’s predictions regarding the development of the wireless telephone are bolder than the dreams of fiction, yet enough has already been accomplished to justify its prophecy. He foresees the time when news and even advertising will be sent out to the public over wireless ‘phones and when the opera will be brought into every home by the same means.”63 This prediction will come true and in a few decades advertising will become the major complaint of radio by de Forest. Perhaps one reason that it was still called a wireless “telephone” can be seen in the various photos of the 1909 technology. The microphone clearly is the one identical to the one used in the telephone, the same carbon microphone of the wired device found in most homes and offices. It was simply coupled to the arc transmitter to send “telephonic” messages and later music but wirelessly (Fig. 3.12). De Forest continued to develop a device that would interest the Navy, but as usual he was more interested in the non-two-way communication content that could be used for his new wireless telephone invention, and he often told the press about what he believed would be the future entertainment possibilities of radio.”64 It could not be clearer. In his autobiography, de Forest describes his 1909 arc radiotelephone: “The transmitter consisted of a handsome mahogany box containing two pancakes, primary and secondary, mounted so that the coupling between the two could be varied. His little carbon arc with the alcohol lamp was mounted on a bracket at the right-hand side of the cabinet. The microphones and mouthpiece

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Figure 3.12 A later, perhaps 1920s, retrospective story about an early 1908 broadcast of opera by the famous Mariette Mazarin. There were others, including the famous Enrico Caruso. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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were mounted on a standard telephone arm projecting from the front of the cabinet. Two special carbon microphones, one on either side of the tapered end of the mouthpiece, were mounted on an arm in such a manner that the voice waves acted on both diaphragms. The two carbon buttons were connected in series, in the earth connection between the transmitter secondary pancake and the ground.”65 News reports continue to amplify his interest in bringing serious music to the people, like this promotion for a promised de Forest experiment, a performance of Tosca from the Metropolitan Opera: “Mr. de Forest has been installing his latest type of long-distance radio telephone transmitter, combined with a secret device whereby the music as brought from the stage dictograph can be retransmitted and sent out from the antenna wires.”66 The secret device was a microphone he had been working on with Kelly Turner, the inventor of the dictograph. It might have been just another carbon microphone, or it could have been a large funnel to which a long hose was attached, running to another smaller funnel that when placed in front of the carbon microphone of the transmitter would allow music to be broadcast remotely. Its reproduction would have been crude, lacking bass and treble, as with any sound sent through a rubber tube. The reason it may have been this way is because the office dictograph, similar to the early Edison office machine, used a funnel and tube arrangement connected to a vibrating diaphragm connected to a needle recording on a cylinder. By 1910 the de Forest radio station is given space in the offices of the New York World newspaper and a January pictorial story attempts to describe the strange device in their midst: “Apparatus by which Opera will be Sent through Air; Experimenter in World Office.”67 In this profile he is accorded celebrity status. De forest was their in-house scientist and both obviously loved the ongoing publicity received in numerous press accounts: “by the simplest of inventions you may listen now to the greatest singers in your distant homes.”68 Just 3 years after the phonograph was used as an audio source to demonstrate his radiotelephone for the Navy, de Forest has moved to a higher level and there are many stories in the public press about listening to music in the home. This begins the slow and early transition of radio as solely a two-way communication device into its parallel use as a public entertainment media. While his transmitter remained an arc, there was another technology beginning to be used that barely existed in 1907 – that of his Audion detector as a radio receiver. Lee de Forest was the earliest and most accomplished of those inventors who saw a future for radio broadcasting as entertainment mass media. When you understand the early work of Fessenden the inventor you get a

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picture of a shy man who would never become a radio broadcaster. Of the recently disputed 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast, Fessenden biographer Belrose believed: “We have to remember the view of the press at that time (in 1906/1907), and have an appreciation of Fessenden the man. He would have been laughed at by the press if he had said he had transmitted a Christmas Eve program of voice, music, and singing, to ships at sea – another ‘fishy-fish-story.’”69 The press did not laugh at de Forest, rather they seemed to dote on him, but unlike Fessenden, he courted the press, invited them to his demonstrations, something Fessenden clearly derided. Charles Herrold did involve the press, but unlike de Forest who developed his device in New York using the Metropolitan Opera, Herrold was in the small agricultural town that was San Jose in 1910. What is not known is how any of these men influenced the other. Either they had no contact with and did not read the press accounts of the other, or they were too vainglorious to admit that their ideas were not totally original. Did de Forest read about Fessenden and his 1906 voice and music transmissions? He surely knew Fessenden and considered him an enemy. Did Herrold read any of the many early stories about de Forest and music by radiotelephone? No one is admitting it.

The Practical Audion It would be several years after the 1907 patent for the three-element Audion before a radio using the device as a detector would be built and sold to the public. The current company was called the De Forest Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company and at the time de Forest seemed to be most interested in family life and the broadcast of music and talk using his radiotelephone. If a public buyer wanted one of the new de Forest Audionequipped receivers, they could order it directly from his company in New York. It was being advertised to radio amateurs through the Gernsback publication, Modern Electrics. Prior to America’s entry into the World War in April 1917, there were isolated opportunities for amateurs to hear music on their new de Forest sets, but mostly the young men of this era were learning the Morse Code, listening to ship to shore and other commercial messages, with the goal of someday getting a good job in the wireless business. Most of the focus on the radiotelephone remained on its practical and commercial uses as the reality of broadcasting into radio-equipped homes was more than a decade away. The U.S. Navy ordered several dozen of the de Forest arc transmitter/Audion receiver systems installed on ships in

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their fleet, as did the Signal Corps, both past wireless telegraph customers. Within the next year he traveled to France, Italy, and Germany where he demonstrated, sold, and installed his arc-based radiotelephone systems. By the end of 1908, there were a number of articles about the long-held idea by de Forest for an opera music service that could be transmitted from a single location into nearby homes. A similar passion would be realized 15 years later using filmed opera to accompany his sound-on-film system. The stock answer given by de Forest to any content question about the new entertainment media technologies was that it should be “good music to uplift the wretched masses.”70 In 1909 the business affairs of the de Forest radiotelephone company may have looked good on the surface, with money in the bank and few debts. This was an illusion. When company president J.D. Smith resigned telling the board that the money was gone and the debt increased, de Forest again chided himself for not paying more attention to the business details of his companies, a theme he would invoke the remainder of his life: “Too late did I realize that my associates were not as clear-sighted, as honest, or as self-sacrificing as myself. Too long I believed the much-repeated heresy – Stick to your laboratory. Inventors are not businessmen. Let others manage the finances for you.”71 The point-counterpoint of the life of Lee de Forest will continue to be the “ethics” issue, the “dishonesty” issue, and the “enemies who would destroy him” issue. The question that must be asked is this: “How can one person who is so brilliant be so ill-used and duped so often by so many enemies?” Certainly there were unscrupulous business types who did take advantage of inventors and the public trust, and it is true that de Forest was never convicted of a single crime. Nevertheless, he must assume posthumous responsibility for some of his recurring legal problems. Whatever the circumstances, the buck must stop at his door.

De Forest’s Complex Love Lives For Lee de Forest, 1906 is a busy year. He marries for the first time followed by an immediate divorce. He experiences betrayal by his business associates, and he is the subject of a pending arrest warrant, all the while spending time in the laboratory on the important invention of the Audion. All this and the resignation from his wireless telegraph company make 1906 a very crowded year. It almost makes you breathless when you consider how many life-changing events happened in this single year. In the future, the de Forest life will have more such years – 1920 and 1925 will also be mixed with manic highs and depressive lows.

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The Wife that Wasn’t a Wife De Forest hid his first wife by not mentioning her in his autobiography and by ignoring requests to talk about her. Lucille Sheardown was an enigma, and because of the reluctance of de Forest and his earlier biographers to raise the issue, there is not a great deal known about her. It was a marriage that may have not been consummated, and may have only lasted for a few weeks to a few months. The courtship leading to marriage to Lucille was apparently conducted over a two-way radiotelephone hookup. A 1906 news story describes how he makes love by wireless: “He placed an instrument in her home and sent wireless messages teeming with love, which resulted in their wedding.”72 They were married in February 1906 but separated the next month. The divorce is not official until December 1907 when de Forest has already spent considerable time with the woman who will be his next wife, Nora. But to add to the mystery of whether or not Lucille was really a wife other than in name only, there is this fascinating letter in the de Forest papers from June 1906 written on stationary of the Canadian Dominion De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company to a Mignon, and when you read it, it indicates that de Forest is no longer attached to Lucille and that he is still smarting from the collapse of his business and his possible arrest: “All my girl friends seem to have quite abandoned me since those terrible newspaper articles appeared.”73 On what may be the occasion of her wedding, he tells her that he is happy for her and wishes her all the “good fortune, all the happiness, all the love, which in earlier days I had finally dared to hope we might find together. I cannot say more!”74 He continues: “Oh Yes, there was a time, away back in’04 perhaps, when I was in love with you, although I didn’t just tell you so, and would not admit it. For I always was a dreamer, a romancer, that for years have been silently on the Quest of the Golden Girl.”75 He is writing about a theme in his earlier life, his belief that a “golden Girl” awaits as his mate: “I actually wrote more poetry about you, but I never told you so, because I wanted you to feel kindly towards me!” He continues that he found a romantic letter that he had sent to her, “all torn up and scattered on the stateroom floor.”76 This would have been more than a clue of unrequited love. He continues: “We mortals are all of one family, and our hearts beat pretty much to the same pulse; we are little motes floating near together, some just now in a shaft of dazzling sunshine. Some have drifted into darker places. But our drifting is short at best, and there is no reason why we should all be so secretive, seeking to conceal so much from the other (who feels and conceals the same). So just because I took the fatal step first, and you are soon (alas, so soon) to take it; and because we are doubly lost to each other, is no reason why we should not speak as clearly as before.”77

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De Forest, writing this in June 1906, has apparently been married to Lucille for just a few months, but now separated: “It’s all in a lifetime, Mignon, but the pity, the cruel pity of it all is that this is but one life time, only one to each of us; and in no future existence shines for me even the faintest shadow of deceptive hope, for some happiness I have lost hold of here. So we can smile and bravely congratulate and heartily wish each other all the happiness we have foolishly hoped to know, or hope to know.”78 He tells her he admires her for insisting that she will marry only for love and he respects that: “To do anything else, under any circumstances, is crime, the height of folly, and will curse the life beyond all repair.”79 He tells her that “Lucille, my wife, is in New York” while he travels, so he is writing a sort of love letter to the “one who got away,” but he is apparently separated but still married to first wife Lucille, a marriage that judging by the tone of this letter could not be successful, and it was not. “We (he and Lucille) were in St Louis about 3 weeks since, but I dared not call you on the telephone then!”80 He writes about her pending wedding, “I know yours will be a grand wedding. Mine was short and to the point, a suitable ‘wireless wedding,’ just as I wanted it to be and so did she.” He does not say the name of his wife here, only she. It is obvious that he already has written off wife Lucille. He obviously has regrets about losing Mignon, and referring to her upcoming wedding he writes, “Were I there I might forget myself, and I would surely choke up, and possible weep, and Mrs. La Force (her mother?) and I together might cry ‘I do’ when the rector asks if any person objects.” But he is resigned to her marriage to another, “I know you will be beautiful beyond belief, radiant beyond all mortal dreams, for this I have seen you; and you loved not me, nor any man, then.” He will not attend her wedding, of course, “What’s the good of awakening old aches and resurrecting dreams and ideals long dead and decently buried?”81 He tells her,“Someday I am going into Literature, and eschew Aerograms; and then we both being staid old married people, can collaborate on a book, snatches of verse, prose–poetry, fragments of old dreams half-forgotten, perfumed with faded and long-lost blossoms, pretty idealizations of impossible ideals; such as a little tea table romance in the Japanese Village in St. Louis; and a jaunt down the great avenue by the lagoon, where all the glory of the setting sun clustered in your hair like a golden halo, transforming you to a deity on earth.”82 He asks if they might keep in touch, just a little and still be “decently loyal” to their respective mates. He is not going to get over this easily: “You have made me feel that life was good and well worth while, while you smiled.”83 Notice that he wrote life WAS good,

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Figure 3.13 De Forest second wife Nora was an engineer and she was also from a famous family. She received a great deal of publicity for these reasons. This Sunday feature story is from the November 1st, 1908 New York World. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

not that it is going to be all that good in the future with the wrong wife. Sadly the Golden Girl did get away.84 Many regrets and much drama, a de Forest staple in all his writings as in life. This was 1906. During this time of brief marriage, sad flirtation, and legal uncertainty, he manages to invent the Audion and improve upon it, demonstrate it, and patent four versions of it. And while all this was going on, in January 1907 de Forrest found his next new love – the girl next door! Her name was Nora Stanton Blatch and from the very start he was attracted by her piano and singing coming through the thin walls of his apartment. Nora was a liberated and educated woman who lived with her mother, the famous Elizabeth Cady Stanton of suffragette fame. Nora had recently graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from Cornell University and was working as a civil engineer while marching for woman’s rights in her free time (Fig. 3.13). He calls Nora his first wife in his autobiography, and never again refers to Lucille Sheardown as his actual first wife. Because of the time it took to get the official divorce from Lucille, he was not in a position to marry Nora

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until February 1908. But their courtship year, 1907, was a good one for de Forest, with the twin benefits of a new love interest and a new inventing interest, along with experiments toward improving his radiotelephone. Nora was employed as an engineer at the New York City Board of Works, but soon after she met de Forest she switched to Electrical Engineering studying under Michael Pupin at Columbia. She then wanted to work on her husband’s inventions, side by his side as his equal in the laboratory. In the beginning, de Forest was impressed by both her engineering acumen and her independence. Unfortunately, after a year of marriage and close lab work problems developed. De Forest saw only the traditional role of a woman in a marriage, and while he was impressed by her technical skills he really wanted the Nora who plays music and reads his poetry rather than Nora the engineer. She was obviously an exceptional and independent-minded woman.85 Nora did work for de Forest in 1907 and she was profiled in an unattributed newspaper story in the de Forest papers as having been selected to run a factory in Newark, New Jersey, where wireless equipment was manufactured. Previous to this assignment, when she and Lee traveled abroad, she spent her time at a Swiss plant learning about the manufacture of a new type of condenser. She had told Lee how when she tried to get hired for an advanced position at the New York City Board of Works, she was denied because she was not a naturalized citizen. She finally did obtain the proper papers, and she was able to head the de Forest factory: “She is a graduate engineer and she has received additional training by the de Forest company in the manufacture of wireless and electrical equipment.”86 In 1909, Nora was involved in a publicized radiotelephone lecture on woman’s suffrage to students at Barnard College. This was supposed to be a talk for the women of the college, but men from nearby Columbia College were in attendance to watch the radiotelephone in action. When the device was set up to receive the lecture the wife of Lee de Forest told this small radio audience: “I stand for the achievements of the Twentieth Century. I believe in scientific developments, in its political developments. I will not refuse to use the tools which progress places at my command. I will make use of the telegraph with or without wires, the telephone with or without wires, anything and everything which today’s civilization places at my command.”87 This was radio broadcasting, with a single transmitter at Nora’s end and a receiver to broadcast the talk to the large student assembly at the other. This was not a two way conversation, it was a broadcast. As to the teacher at the receiving set, a man named Maltby, the Times reporter wrote, “It was really not quite fair of Mrs. Blatch, because she had a strong desire to convert Prof Maltby to woman’s suffrage.”88

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Nora was more than just a wife. Because of her unique business connection with the de Forest companies, there is evidence that she tried unsuccessfully to warn husband Lee about the possibility of crooked goings on in his new radiotelephone company. De Forest later admits that he should have listened to his now-estranged wife Nora, who had tried to get him to understand that the financial underpinnings of the company were weak and the directors were not serving the greater cause. In this warning she was correct. In June 1909, the first de Forest child Harriett was born to Lee and Nora, but by then the two had separated. De Forest did try to maintain contact with his daughter, seeing her as often as possible in the beginning. Nora and Lee were officially divorced in 1911. That year the headline reads, “De Forest Blames Suffrage.”89 In a custody battle for the de Forest-Blatch child, Harriet, de Forest maintains that Nora was unfit as a mother, an allegation he blames on her “aggressive, militant and violent suffrage.”90 He told the court that Nora is so involved in the suffrage movement that she has neglected her daughter both physically and emotionally. She is said to have taught the child to say, “Vote for woman and Hurrah for woman suffrage.”91 He did not win this battle as Nora continued to have custody of Harriett and Lee saw her less and less, finally only a few days a year. For the rest of his long life de Forest will have very little contact with his three daughters, one from wife Harriet and two from wife number three now waiting in the wings.

What It all Means Win some, Lose some. The period of 1906–1911 has been an extraordinary time in the life of Lee de Forest. The period began with the residue of the fight with Marconi over their respective wireless telegraph systems, a battle played out in a press that was fascinated by the two personalities. In this battle the main prize was the opportunity to sell communications systems to the Navy and other commercial operators. It is astonishing how quickly de Forest seemed to have tired of the wireless telegraph and its monotonous succession of dots and dashes. Of course because of the Fessenden suit and the sale of overvalued stock he was forced to leave that business to Marconi. During this period, he was made to feel the ramifications of his connection to Abraham White and others from that company. When he resigned from the De Forest Wireless Telegraph company, calling it “the death of his firstborn,” he did not immediately realize how fortunate he was to have severed those ties the way he did. For in the agreement, while he did not receive more than a few hundred dollars, he was allowed to keep what White and the lawyers called “worthless,” and that was his Audion work and patents to date.

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Now de Forest is thinking about the Audion, music by radiotelephone, and women, but not necessarily in that order. He did find time to send radio messages by code to his first wife, Lucille. This might be compared to the text messaging of today as Lee and Lucille exchanged wireless messages, and just like today, missing the nuances of a face-to-face or voice-tovoice relationship. Absent the corporeal, messages get mixed up, and with only coded messages or text, you fail to see pieces of the whole person, the body language, and the facial expressions needed for complete communication. The result of this de Forest diversion was a little-understood marriage lasting 2 months. Then he met Nora Blatch and she would become his first real wife. This marriage too was short-lived. But the big news of this period in the de Forest story is inventing and radio. The Audion quickly proved to be a better detector of both coded and voice messages, but the real value of this invention has yet to be discovered. Without this “link,” the three-element vacuum tube, the story in which Lee de Forest is a major player, would not have happened when it did. It is his early work on the three-element vacuum tube that will make the entertainment media that will come to full fruition in the 1920s, radio broadcasting and the talking picture, possible. De Forest always played a dual role in life: He was the scientist, fiercely independent, demanding time alone in his laboratory. But he also was a man of creative ideas for what his inventions might become, and in this duality of personality he was unique among inventors. While the scientist de Forest fights his patent battles, the artist de Forest promotes his version of mediated art and culture in the form of radio broadcasting and sound films. For de Forest, it was always technology leading to content, and content leading to a mass audience. This method of de Forest’s has both a positive and negative, to use electronic terms. Like all inventors, his first examples were never perfect. And because he liked to get out in front of his inventions with content examples, he may have not served himself well. Certainly his very early 1907 radio “broadcasts” were not good enough technically or programmatically for the public to embrace, but he certainly seems to have sparked interest by the extensive press coverage and in speeches to engineering groups. His real contribution may turn out to be this: by supplying his discoveries with possible content he may have shown the way for others better equipped in media production and distribution. Conversely, without his invention of the amplifying triode the crystal radio with earphones only would not have succeeded as early as it did. And without a loud speaking device for the audio, the talkies would not have happened either. Back to the nineteenth century and Edison and Hertz. One is a selftaught lion of invention, trained as a telegraph operator and a solid believer

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in the collaborative nature of innovation and the business behind it. The other was an academic who did show by practical laboratory demonstration how the writings and teachings of fellow academics could lead the way. Both influenced the young Lee de Forest in mostly positive ways. From them he would learn to do his homework and always know and understand the existing technology, and apply the known in the service of new knowledge. Unlike Edison he will never profit greatly from his work, in money, or reputation. Unlike Hertz, he will not remain a universallyrespected Doctor of Science for his methods of discovery. But he will discover, invent, and implement the important science of the entertainment media and for that he will be studied forever for his influence over radio broadcasting and the movies, for which he will earn the respect of the Hollywood creative community. Next, for very different reasons, both Lee de Forest and film production move west to California.

California Days

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All my life I have been coining money for lawyers. I am a gold mine for them – like all good inventors.1 The Film Industry Finds Language and Locations De Forest and the Law The Audion Amplifies The High Bridge Broadcasts 1920: A Watershed Year

Born in the Midwest and educated on the East Coast, Lee de Forest had spent most of his early inventive years in Chicago and New York City. In 1911, he moved west to California, living for a time in what would be later known as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, and Stanford University. Less than 25 miles south of San Francisco, he will find in this tiny town a research and development environment where he can improve upon his basic Audion. Working with other progressive engineers and Stanford professors, he is allowed some freedom and the support to discover new uses for his three-element vacuum tube. And there will be the usual de Forest drama. He’ll write poetry about his love for the natural beauty of California, and for a brief time he will live an idyllic inventor’s life, but that will soon be interrupted by a warrant for his arrest, a return to a life of poverty, and embarrassment at the San Francisco World’s Fair. On the bright side he will travel to New York and meet and marry his third temporary wife. The film industry was born in a laboratory on the East Coast, with Edison and Dickson working with Eastman’s roll film, first in their Kinetoscope personal viewer, and later projected on a screen. By 1900, the technology of the camera and projector was good enough to qualify as a curiosity, but there was no real industry to take advantage of its undiscovered potential. Soon the scientists will move aside and allow the producers, writers, directors, talent and technicians to make something out of the moving picture. What ideas would become the content for this technology? That is always the question. Their early answers were to film existing events M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_4, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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and show them to audiences who were interested at first in the novelty, but it was obvious that these simple films would have to improve for the maturation of a major industry. Between 1900 and 1915, the film as entertainment would slowly be developed in New York as the money people and the creative forces came together in a grand experiment. And like Lee de Forest, the making of films eventually moved West to California. This is a parallel story: Both Lee de Forest and the new film pioneers were each trying something new, one small step at a time. De Forest was improving his Audion so it would support amplified sound for radio and the movies. The film makers were improving the silent film from a technical curiosity into a mass entertainment media. Both de Forest and the early film directors will come together for a common purpose, that of serving a yet-to-be-discovered audience. The expected applause will inspire and drive both to improve and complete their media.

The Film Industry Finds Language and Locations Early films were simple recordings of everyday life, from the 30 second film of Sandow the Strongman flexing his muscles for the coin-operated Kinetoscope to the 10 minute one-reel film of trains arriving that were projected in a theater. These were simple stories or filmed events occurring in real life, really the first documentary films. Was there a group about to embark on a ship from New York to Europe? Why not film the crowds at the terminal, showing people hurrying with their luggage, friends, and relatives waiting for the big ship to leave the harbor, people on board waving goodbye, finally the ship sailing away? Why not make a 10 minute film out this common event? Someone did and audiences paid to see it. But this was not the movies as they came to be. This was an existing event that was captured on a new, yet to be exploited technology of a roll of film being cranked through a camera, developed, and projected. It was the simple recording of real life that enabled the first film makers to learn about the camera, the lens, and the use of light. In the beginning, this experience was based on the techniques of still photography, with the difference being that instead of one photograph, it was series of photographs that moved to show real life. The language and the look of the early moving picture was part like that of the photograph and part like that of the street or stage. How will the movies become a media different from what the early cameras were recording? When you watch a film, you are seeing a communication process that is often referred to as the “language of film.” Consider the stage play. When you sit in the audience of the theater, there are visual and audio

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cues that tell you where to look on the stage. Imagine a home living room set on a stage. If there is a couple seated on one side of the room and a group of children playing quietly on the other side, how does the audience member know where to look? One way is to use lighting. If you want the audience to view the action of the children but not the couple, you light only the children and leave the couple in shadows. As an audience member your eyes will unconsciously focus on the children because of the light. Another obvious method might be the use of dialogue. Of the two areas on this stage, only the couple is talking to one another, and even if both they and the children are in equal light, you will still focus your attention on the couple because they are the ones moving the story forward with their conversation. Now suppose the couple rise from their chairs and move across the stage to where the children are quietly playing. In this case you will follow the couple with your head and eyes as they move from one side of the stage to the other. The act of focusing on what is important in your field of vision is an involuntary one, and it is based on experience with visual and auditory stimuli in real life. Early film began this way. Using this same stage setting as an example, a camera was placed at the audience position and the film recorded the entire stage play in so-called long shot. As a silent film audience member you had to use the visual-only clues to know where to look on the screen, just as you did as an audience member at the play. This is not film but the use of the film camera to record an event. It would do nothing to advance the art or language of film. For the film to become its own art form, it needed to develop unique characteristics that move it beyond the technical and into the realm of narrative storytelling, using as content either fiction or compelling documentary. So once the technical limitations and advantages of the camera and its film were understood, a new language of film began to slowly evolve out of the stationary camera. If the simple home scene of the couple and the children playing on the stage were to move beyond just a recording, a new way would have to be found.

What the Film Director Knows The basic building block of the language of film is the shot, used to tell the movie audience what the director wants you to see. A long shot, abbreviated LS, sometimes called an establishing shot, ES, or wide shot, WS, is used at the beginning of a film to show the location and thus orient the viewer to the larger context of the story. In the example above, it is a living room in a home where a couple is seated on one side and children are playing on the other side. Using film language, the next shot might be a medium shot, or MS, to show on the screen only the couple interacting with each other. If the conversation lasts for a minute or more, the camera could be moved even closer, positioned to get an individual shot of each person,

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perhaps their head and shoulders only, known as a close up, or CU. If their lips were moving, because the film is “silent,” you will need title cards to further inform the audience about what they are saying. The shot is the starting point of the basic grammar of the film, and it is used to tell the viewer what is important by showing only that on the screen, while excluding all else in the scene.2 Camera movement is also a part of the language. When the couple stands up to move across the stage to the children on the opposite side, the playgoer follows them with their eyes and heads, the normal way to view reality. The language of film would call for a medium shot of the couple, and the movement of the camera on a stationary tripod to follow the couple to the children. This is called a pan, left or right, but always done for the purpose of directing the film viewer to what is important. There is also the tilt up or down using a moving camera on a stationary mount, usually the same tripod used for the pan. Another way is to move the camera and its mounting from right to left, or from backward to forward. This is called a dolly right or left or in or out, with the dolly a large platform with wheels on which the camera is mounted. The entire camera and the mounting moves, hence the visual perspective from this move is different from that of a pan. This part of the film language, camera movement, is used with the shot to tell the visual story by putting on the screen only what is important to the understanding of the story. The use of the shot and the moving camera to tell the story begins to move the film beyond that of just replicating existing media formats. Something new is being created. Another piece of the language of the film is editing, or cutting the film into individual shots and assembling them in the service of a story. Editing is the art of selecting which shot is to be used, how much time it is shown on the screen, and to which shot it is connected for the understanding of the story. Sometimes called the montage, the pace of a filmed story is often determined by this form of filmic shorthand. If the couple having the conversation in the example were just seen in a medium shot, it would likely be boring, especially without sound. On the contrary, if there are shorter shots edited together – a close up of him, then a reaction from her, then a bit of the medium shot showing both – it would move faster and be more interesting. Certainly in action films, elements like a chase on horseback between the stage coach robbers and the sheriff ’s posse would not work as a film without editing. First, you see the deed done in an establishing shot showing the masked bandits accosting the stagecoach. This long shot also shows the frightened passengers at the window and the driver on the top of the coach. This is followed by a close up of the lead bandit gesturing with his gun in silent film style to “give me all your money,” and maybe a title card is added for clarity. This is edited to a shot of the driver who

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tosses the money to the ground. Here would be a good place for a dissolve where one shot fades out while the next one fades in, sometimes done to show a transition to a new location. Use this dissolve to a medium shot of the sheriff and posse as they ride a mile behind on horseback, with the camera panning as they move left to right on the screen, heading for the scene of the crime. Next is a medium shot of the bandits as they ride away, also shown in a pan from left to right. This continues, cutting between the sheriff and the bandits, always one following the other, the action moving in the same direction. Slowly, these elements begin to define the film and separate it from previous media. Now the film is a group of shots edited together into a whole with a beginning, middle, and end. This grouping is known as the scene, because it ties together a part of the story that typically takes place in a single location during a defined period of time. While in the theater a scene might be designated by the lights coming on to show a part of the stage, in film it is told by a logical grouping or editing together of shots. Like theater, a group of scenes are connected to form an act, and while for film it is not obvious like a curtain going up and down, there are usually three acts in a film. The first act establishes the characters, the place, and the conflict to come. A significant dramatic moment ends the act, followed by a fade to black. The next act may have characters attempting resolution, and the final act is the resolution of the conflict leading to punishment, reward, death, or happily-ever-after. The visual language of the silent film was supplemented by sound. It may have been an orchestra performing a specifically written musical score that both complemented and reinforced the story using dramatic music to mirror drama on the screen. In the small town movie theater, it is the lone piano player improvising on what he sees on the screen, therefore adding his own interpretation. It must be noted that except for the very early experimental films, there was almost always music to accompany the film. Later in the talkies, sound would begin to develop its own language with dialogue and effects other than music. This would include sound effects synchronized to gunshots and door slams, or natural sounds like wind and rain, and man made sounds like cars and trains, horns and whistles, a radio playing in the background.

The Photoplay Writer Along with the filmic language, the script of the movie was evolving under the name of the “photoplay.” In his unpublished thesis, Barnaby Dallas maintains that in the development of the silent film, in differentiating it from the early experimental documentary record or photographed event, there began to appear a series of instruction manuals for photoplay writers. Although these are based on principles of Aristotelian story telling and

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evolved out of theater, there was a new language of the narrative developed for the film between 1913 and 1920. Dallas surveyed a number of early twentieth century manuals on “writing the Photoplay,” and concluded that it is a skill that can be taught, based on an organized system using traditional dramatic principles and three-act structure. The difference in these “how-to” manuals was the amount of reliance on the previous medium of the stage. Some warned that it denigrated the emerging art of the cinema to tie it too closely to the stage. Some were urging photoplay writers to take the long view and let the new art evolve based on experience, trial and error, and audience reaction. Others suggested that the writer develop a “picture eye,” the seeing of action before it is turned into words.3 Dallas makes the case that Aristotle was somewhat prescient when he suggested that poets needed to imagine their material visually before converting these ideas into language. Among the would-be trainers of writers for the cinema, there were schools of thought about where the action should take place. Some believed that because of higher costs, outdoor locations should be minimized, while others believed that the cinema was unique among mediums in showing action and story in a natural setting. But overall, what the photoplay writer presents must ultimately meet the standard of success that is profit at the box office, and this means that it is the producer rather than the writer who has the final approval. The balance of this analysis is about the mostly universal agreement of what defines good drama: the struggle between combative and competitive characters, one good, one not, both wanting the same outcome but only one realizing it in the end; that dialogue is subservient to the action, that the action should advance the plot, that the visuals should not interfere with the telling of the story, and that the story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. What was proposed in 1915 mostly remains true today.4 All the technical and creative elements of the film are in place as the language of film, the role of the director, and the process of writing the script developed rapidly between 1900 and 1912. The original Edison directors like Dickson and Porter will be replaced by the new artists like D.W. Griffith. The Edison Company is now one of many film companies still based in New York. In 1912 the company makes an effective film about the social issue of child labor, “Children who Labor,” a 13 minute film for the National Child Labor Committee. This was an advocacy film, with intertitles for setting place and for dialogue. It is a story about a wealthy factory owner who will only hire young boys and girls because they are cheap labor, and this has caused the men of the town to be out of work. We see them as shabbily dressed and their manner indicates they are depressed.

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In a cruel and largely unbelievable twist of fate, the factory owner’s young daughter gets left by a train, and is adopted by one of the poor but kind families of the town. Because she is a child and grateful for her rescue, she volunteers to work to support her new family. Naturally, she gets a job at her father’s factory, she is discovered, and of course the father agrees to no longer hire children, but to give jobs to the men of the town. This does work and it does tell a solid narrative story in a mere 13 minutes. It uses a maturing language of the cinema.5

A Mature Film Industry Moves West Starting in 1912 films begin to be shot in California while their companies’ business and financial operations remain in New York City. One of the earliest of these is “The Invaders,” which was made in 1912 by the New York Motion Picture Company. Shot in California, this is a four-reel 41 minute feature that takes place after the Civil War. It is a story about a treaty with the Souix Indians and how the United States broke that treaty. As an example of an early Western made near Santa Monica, the claim of this film is that the Indians are real and were filmed in their actual habitat. Even though this film was all in long to medium shot with no real sense of montage, there was a lot of the use of background and foreground in the same shot, and purposeful movement within the frame as opposed to only the static shot. There is a single close up in this 40 minute film, which stands out as an anomaly, a shot is of a six-shooter being loaded. In contrast to this more serious film, there was also the serialized comedy, “The Hazards of Helen,” made in 1915 by the Kalen Company. In episode 26, Helen saves a runaway train, and there are some close ups, and there are good sequences of parallel editing between a runaway train and Helen on a motorcycle trying to stop it from hitting the excursion train full of tourists. This film works without intertitles, using instead just few notes that the heroine reads and we see in close up.6 According to Turner Classic Movies, the first feature-length film to be shot in California was the 1914 picture “Squaw Man.” This picture could have changed the entire production of film as the company left their New York headquarters and traveled West: “Their original destination was Flagstaff, Arizona, but when they got off the train the filmmakers were disappointed by the terrain.”7 It was then suggested that they continue on to Los Angeles. What might have happened if they had stayed? Produced by Lasky Pictures and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, this Cowboy and Indian picture starred Dustin Farnum and Winifred Kingston. The heroine of “Squaw Man” was a well-known Indian actress of the era, Red Wing. This film plays to racial stereotypes, with the cowboys big and heroic while the

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Indians drink, fight, and in general stay on the warpath. Writes film historian Kobel, “The American Indian was routinely portrayed as a tragic hero largely misunderstood by the white man.”8 By 1915 it was estimated that 60% of American films were shot in Southern California, of which the Hollywood area of Los Angeles is a small part: “The area offered myriad attractions: sunshine, a huge variety of natural settings, and cheap real estate and labor.”9 “Squaw Man” takes full advantage of the geography and geology of California, with scenes shot on mountains, near water, in snow and on the desert. The white hero marries the squaw of the title, they have a baby, the baby dies, but in the end this early inter-racial marriage was not to be. The wife/squaw, despondent over the death of her child, takes a gun out into the woods and ends it all. In “Squaw Man” there are new uses of the shot. While most of the film is in wider shots edited together, there are several tight close-ups, which jar the viewer as they seem to come out of nowhere, but they are effective. These shots include a gun and a purse to facilitate the understanding of the story. The film also used an early optical printing effect, a split screen showing the lead actor thinking about locations and actions on half the screen and on the other half the action was shown. This is not sophisticated film making as it would become in the 1920s, but it was the beginning of the new and developing language of film. In a 1980 Thames Television documentary on the silent film, Agnes DeMille, daughter of “Squaw Man” Director Cecil B. DeMille, summed up the evolution of film language and technique in early silent film production nicely: “Every picture broke boundaries, some one new thing would be done, a new way of handling the camera, a new way of cutting, a new way of lighting – and they would be so exited by it.”10

Director D. W. Griffith Many of the films that have survived from the early twentieth century are from two studios, the Edison and the Biograph Companies. The two directors of prominence from these two are Edwin Porter and D.W. Griffith. It was believed that the Edison Porter films were more of an assembly-line process, “devoid of dramatic highs and lows, and with little or no direction. An Edison ‘script’ – and they were all uniform – consisted of two or three letter-size sheets of paper, broken down into shots, each of which was given a line or two of description.”11 It would be Griffith and others who would advance the language of film and the role of the director. After Porter retired in 1908, Griffith ascended and greatly improved the art of the film while at Biograph: “Actually, until the advent of D.W. Griffith, the ‘art’ of direction was hardly an art at all, but merely an adjunct to camerawork.

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‘Director’ and ‘cameraman,’ as in Porter’s case, were usually one and the same, with the main attention being given to the photographic image.”12 David Wark Griffith was perhaps the first real director of the new media of cinema. According to historian William Everson: “Between 1908 and 1913 he directed more than 40 films, primarily one-reelers, though with increasingly elaborate two-reelers taking over toward the end. Within those five years, Griffith, helped immeasurably by cameraman Billy Bitzer, created the whole language of film – taking the discarded or unexploited devices invented by others, creating new ones, experimenting with lighting, using the frame to its fullest – and suggesting action in off-screen space – creating a subtler, more underplayed form of acting.”13 According to silent film historian Kevin Browlow, “For students of the motion picture, Griffith’s is the most familiar name in film history. Here, they are told, is the great master, the great innovator, the man who did everything first – apparently the only director in America creative enough to be called a genius.”14 One of the first Griffith films, “The Country Doctor,” 1909, was made by Edison competitor Biograph. The very first shot is a long and languid pan of the pastoral countryside, followed by an interior home introducing the doctor’s happy family. The story is this: The doctor’s little girl falls ill, as does a poor neighbor girl. Griffith introduces a parallel cutting between the wealthy doctor’s family and the poor family, both with similarly ill children shown in their beds surrounded by the worried mother. The doctor moves back and forth between his home and daughter and the poor girl, and you can see how Griffith is developing a language of film editing for story telling, cutting between the two houses, comparing and contrasting two locations. “More than any other film, D. W. Griffith’s ‘The Country Doctor’ shows what had become possible in moviemaking by 1909. In the years before 1908, films generally entertained through documentary views, special effects illusions, broad stereotypes, and other novelties and attractions. Then, with relative suddenness, films began to attempt something very different, and much more familiar to us – to tell realistic stories about daily life.”15 In the end, the Doctor has saved the poor family’s child but his own dies. Compared with earlier films, this one resonates in a greater way, adding an emotional connection not present in the Porter films. Coincident with the move of film production from New York to Los Angeles, the length of the film gradually increased from the one or two reel short to feature length, thus enabling a more complex form of narrative: “The new feature-length films gave directors the opportunity to develop characters, weave more complex plots, and offer the nuance and depth of literature and theater (indeed, many of the films were based on stage dramas, and moviemakers like to call their productions photoplays because

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the term lent moving pictures the legitimacy of theater).”16 And as the film looked more like an art, the educated classes were now beginning to extol its virtues in a way they had not during its early days. The feature film expanded the audience for the cinema.

“Birth of a Nation” D.W. Griffith became famous for his feature, “Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 film based on a Civil War novel about the alleged triumph of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. The film was originally released under the title of the book on which it was based, Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman. Was “Birth of a Nation” really the groundbreaking film that historians have long believed? Did it overnight change the focus of the industry while firmly defining the language of film? Or was its racist content too controversial to allow Griffith to be taken seriously? What is the real significance of this film? Mostly, it was ambitious in its very lavish production, a very long film with casts of thousands. The “problem” with this film is that Dixon and Griffith got the story of Reconstruction wrong. The opening title is a disclaimer: “A Plea for the Art of the Motion Picture. We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue – the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word – the art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.”17 As this large and sweeping production unfolds, two boys from the north visit their relatives in the south in 1860, a few years before the Civil War. Unlike the North, the South is a dual society, with wealthy whites served by black slaves who do all their farm and servant work, as an intertitle explains, “6 am to 6 pm with a 2 hour break for a meal.”18 We are told that slavery exists in Southern States because the state sovereignty allows each state to decide on its laws. President Abraham Lincoln signs a proclamation to enforce the rule of one nation over individual states under which he will outlaw slavery. There is talk of succession by the South. The Civil War begins. This picture depicts up close the horror of war as hand to hand combat using rifles and swords. The cousins from the North and South that were shown at the beginning of the film meet on the battlefield and die together. The suffering of this war is told primarily from the Southern point of view. The staging of the war is a directorial triumph for Griffith. But the South loses to the North. The sovereignty of the individual states ends, and Daniel Webster is quoted in a title: “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever.”19 On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders to U.S. Grant. The North has won.

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Reconstruction begins and Griffith adds another disclaimer: “This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction period, and is not mean to reflect on any race or people of today.”20 Of course it does. The slaves have been freed by Government decree, and in this portrayal they are shown as “taking over” the south by election to all the public offices. The Klan is formed, and the point of view of Griffith is in a title that reads: “The Klan saved the South from the anarchy of Black rule.”21 The Klan are cowards, killing and hanging behind their masks. Crosses are burned, blacks are routed, fear divides the South. A title reads: “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright.”22 In this version of post-Reconstruction, Black citizens are now portrayed as the aristocrats, sipping fine champagne in the big houses of their former masters. In this version of history, the blacks take over the towns, and they want to marry the white women, so the Klan marches in and disarms them and saves the town. They are feted in a parade as the heroes of the day. This version of history did not happen. Following the release of “Birth of a Nation,” there were protests both in the streets and in the courtroom: “The civil rights organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) mounted protests, fighting the film in courtrooms and before the National Board of Censorship. In a succession of legal battles, the NAACP succeeded in getting only a few cuts.”23 Songwriter Neil Young’s 1968 classic hit “Southern Man” offers a counterpoint to the Dixon/Griffith take on the South during the mid-1860s: “I saw cotton and I saw black, Tall white mansions and little shacks. Southern Man when will you pay them back? I heard screamin’ and bullwhips crackin.’ How long? How long?”24 Young’s version was more correct (Fig. 4.1). There were other much less complex films made during this era. In 1916, “Gretchen the Greenhorn,” is a story of immigration at the turn of the century. This film is made by D.W. Griffith’s Film Arts Studio in Los Angeles, and Griffith was involved in this film as an executive producer. Dorothy Gish, sister of the more famous Lillian Gish, is the star. “Gretchen” shows an increasing use of the film language and editing, including the use of optical masks to emphasize parts of the frame. This technique is like a close up but without a close up lens. The film is hand tinted, a popular effect using visual cues like yellow for indoors, blue for night, and red for romance. There are minimal titles, some for dialogue but for mostly explanations or transitions. Scenes are denoted by fade ins and fade outs, or the iris in and out. The story is about counterfeiters who operate on a ship moored in the harbor, and unknowingly the bad guys have fooled Gretchen into passing their fake bills. Gretchen’s father investigates and is taken

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Figure 4.1 A frame from “Birth of a Nation” showing a Ku Klux Clan member “protecting” the white citizens of the post-Reconstruction South. The original title of this film was “The Clansman,” based on a novel by Thomas Dixon. From the film “Birth of a Nation”.

prisoner on the ship, but the police come to the rescue. One interesting element about this film is the use of natural lighting, and its solid cinematography. The language of the film is rather mature here, and its basic storytelling is very understandable without excessive titles.25 The Edison Company and Edwin Porter had a major influence on the science of film beginning in the early twentieth century, but 15 years into the decade, new and more discerning audiences discovered the cinema and what they really wanted from the film. No longer satisfied just to watch poorly filmed stage plays and documentary footage of ordinary life in a 10 minute short film, they wanted to feel the story, to be excited by the action, to fall in love with the characters and the actors who played them. Appealing to a broader audience, the now mature language of the film was associated with names like Griffith, Chaplin and Sennett, and von Sternberg as directors, and Pickford, Fairbanks, Gish and Lloyd as the talent that drove the popularity of the movies. “The films of the late teens were, in film-making parlance, rather like the establishing shots used functionally to get movies underway. They established the art and industry that took off in the twenties.”26 Was Lee de Forest a film-goer in the early days? Probably not given

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his belief that the only worthy mass entertainment was the symphony or opera or serious theater. He would not have embraced the films of Porter other than for their technical merits. Later, as the film matured, he may have been in an audience or two, and he may have fallen in love briefly with Lillian Gish or Eleanor Boardman. As he sits in the darkened cinema, was he imagining the actual voice of Ms. Gish synchronized with her moving lips, her sound coming from behind the screen?

Art Meets Business As the business of the film as entertainment was solidified and audiences grew dramatically, thousands of movie theaters opened in the United States. Served by several dozen companies producing and distributing films, the increased competition was about to cause problems. There is Edison and his film studios along with Biograph and Vitagraph, all based in New York. There are patents to sort out and Edison owns most of the important ones. As the radio interests will do in 1920, the major players in the film production and distribution business pool their patents for a stronger and more unified position. George Eastman as the only supplier of film stock agreed to provide his film only to those in the so-called film trust. Prior to its formation Edison had warned distributors and exhibitors that if they did not use Edison machines and films exclusively, they would find themselves in court for infringement of Edison’s patents: “To end this expensive war over patent rights and business practices, Edison joined in 1908 with several competitors – Biograph, Vitagraph, Lubin, Essanay, Kalem, Selig Polyscope, the American branches of French Star Film and Pathe-Freres, and Kline Optical, the largest distributor of foreign films in the United States – to form the Motion Picture Patents Company.”27 This was the first film trust and patents were pooled and peace was achieved temporarily. The American Biograph and Mutoscope Company had opened in Los Angeles in 1907, but it was not until 1911 that the first studio called Centaur was established in Hollywood. Its location is where the present-day CBS West Coast headquarters is located. It was said that the good weather was one reason for the film companies’ migration West, but patent infringement was a larger reason: “An immediate cause of the dispute was the ‘Latham loop,’ a patented mechanism incorporated in the camera. Hollywood offered an ideal sanctuary for refugees of the Patents War, for should trouble appear, the Mexican border was a mere hundred-mile drive away.”28 After 1913, most films were made in California, partly to get away from the lawsuits brought under the Edison patents, but also because of the climate of Southern California and Los Angeles. Film production in

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California was now primarily feature length and stories were more complex. Finally artistically-acclaimed, controversial, and successful, the film had found its language and its audiences and its first business model. The moving picture had taken nearly three quarters of a century to move from the technical curiosity of Marey and Muybridge, to the manufacture of a flexible film base, to the technology of intermittent motion. Thomas Edison’s light bulb was needed for adequate projection, and his patents were needed so that the technology of the camera and projector could finally be used to create an art form. This transformation of science into art is another necessary piece for the de Forest sound-on-film story to continue. Now there is the motivation to invent improvements to the silent film. Lee de Forest will be one of these inventors.

What the Boys and Girls Knew The juvenile fiction series of the first third of the twentieth century was fertile reading for kids interested in the excitement and “gee whiz” glamor of the movies.29 One of the motion picture themed juvenile series of the pre-sound era was The Moving Picture Boys. The first volume in the series was published in 1913 under a well-known Stratemeyer Syndicate author name, Victor Appleton, the house name credited for the Tom Swift series. In this story, the “moving picture man” is coming to town, and this excites the boys in this series who at the start of the story are portrayed as working on the family farm. The boys are discussing a recent silent film, “I saw an exhibition once, down in Paddington, and it sure was slick. Why, one man was run over by an auto, and his legs were taken off, and a minute later a doctor stuck them on, and the man got up and danced as well as ever.”30 They discuss the news that a movie company is rumored to be coming to their small town and it becomes clear that they do not understand the film at all. The boys meet the camera operator and he recruits our two young heroes saying, “The moving picture business has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past few years and it is still going. Some men have made fortunes out of it, and thousands in it are making a good comfortable living. The amusement end isn’t all there is to it, though that’s the end most persons see. It will not be long before the educational features will be made more than they are today. Schools and colleges are going to use motion picture machines in place of textbooks soon.”31 This is what the youth of 1913 are being told about the film business. So the boys go to New York and work in film; A happy ending. A companion story called The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm, written in 1914 under the name of Laura Lee Hope, is the same sort of adventure story but for girls. Unlike the poor young farm lads of the Boys’ series,

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the two sisters in this story are the daughters of film people who live in luxury in New York City. Rather than the country bumpkins of the boys film stories who end up in the Big City, these young sophisticates travel to the country to film “rural dramas,” and while they are making a film the girls save people, save a family farm from repossession, and are attacked by but escape a raging bull along with many other adventures. The moral of this story is that being in film is exciting and you are often in a position to perform good community service. These books needed to be stories of wholesome young people who always made the right moral choices and were rewarded for it in the end. In 1912, Tom Swift best captured the excitement of the technology of movies with a volume titled, Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera. This science-fantasy story features a myriad of flying balloons, bad guys, good and bad motion picture operators, all seemingly interested in a new type of “wizard” camera that Tom is inventing: “The storage battery, which would be inside the camera, would operate it automatically. That is, the camera could be set up in any place, in the jungle, or on the desert, it could be left alone, and it would take pictures without anyone being near it. Tom planned to have it operate at a certain set time, and stop at a certain time, and he could set the dials to make this time any moment of the day or night”32 It seems that nefarious forces want this camera and threaten Tom with unspoken evil if he does not sell it to them. Of course he won’t and he sets the camera up in his workshop to capture on film anyone who trespasses there, and of course on the developed film were the same bad guys in the act of camera theft. Tom’s camera is improved and sold to the owner of a large motion picture chain to be used for travel pictures. There is discussion of shooting an elephant stampede in India, and because the camera is automatic, no camera operator will be hurt and, “you can get films with that machine that will be better than any pictures ever thrown on the screen.”33 The science behind this story may have been appealing as the cameras of that era were mostly hand-cranked and a battery-operated device as in the story would soon be the norm. Perhaps a young reader would grow up and invent it! The 1914 story called Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone was about the invention of a device that had been speculated upon for many years, a telephone with a camera and screen so that you could see a still image, a photo, as well as hear your party on the other end, a pre-2011 iPhone 4. This was 1914 and it is humorous to see the artists conception of the device using a very old fashioned looking telephone of the period but with a small film screen attached to the top. Where did they get the idea? Perhaps from a Popular Science story, as the technology mentioned in the story, a selenium

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cell, was known to react to light and convert that light into electrical impulses. But as young inventor Tom admits,“My apparatus works! I can send a picture by telephone!” Tom Swift has done it again: “The photo-telephone is a fact and now persons using the wire can be sure of the person they are conversing with.” Tom continued “it’s like the first motion picture, they moved but that was about all they did.”34 This Tom Swift invention was a hybrid of a moving picture with sound using the past and future original sound-on-film technology of the selenium cell.

De Forest and the Law Another participant in the patent wars who also migrated to California in the second decade of the twentieth century was Lee de Forest. It’s 1911, and he is broke again. He is also worried about the final resolution of his New York wireless company. It is perfect timing that he is offered a job in California by Cyril Elwell at the newly formed Federal Telegraph Company in Palo Alto. Elwell wanted de Forest. The indications are that Elwell was an astute businessman as well as a scientist who believed in the value of research, and he may have been one of the few who understood that the Audion had greater possibilities in electronics beyond that of a detector of wireless. Prior to forming his company Elwell had been asked by his Stanford professor partners to investigate several promising technologies for their proposed wireless business, both telegraph and radiotelephone. First, he was sent to San Francisco to study a new transmitting technology that was receiving local press attention as a new voice transmitter. Invented by a Francis McCarty, it turned out that it was really just another modification of the old Marconi spark gap, so Elwell recommended that no further study was merited. In his opinion this was a dead-end technology for voice transmission. But after reading about the arc experiments of the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen, he obtained the American rights to the Poulsen arc patents and formed a company to develop “high power arc transmitters for worldwide code communication.”35 So by invitation de Forest moves to California and goes to work in the Federal Telegraph laboratory, where he is given respect and afforded all investigative freedom (Fig. 4.2). California for Lee de Forest is a time to relax and take stock of his life. With two unsuccessful marriages behind him, the chance to leave New York City thousands of miles to the east was one he eagerly sought. He also needed money. The wireless company that bore his name, “his first child,” was but a shell and court action was ongoing, so the chance to reinvent himself must have been a positive next step. What will he do in California?

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Figure 4.2 A rare look inside of the Federal Telegraph Company in Palo Alto. The dark round object in the lower left-hand corner is a small Federal arc transmitter. Federal was the American licensee of the Poulsen arc and they developed it for high-speed, long-distance wireless telegraphy. A young Douglas Perham, who may be one of the men in this photo, worked at Federal, met de Forest there, and thus the connection of the Perham San Jose de Forest papers. From the Perham collection, History San Jose.

First, he finds ample time to return to a theme he embraced throughout his life, that of his love of nature and hiking in the woods. Palo Alto and Northern California, the so-called San Francisco Bay area, has it all – the ocean, the mountains, the unspoiled wilderness. Even today the thousands of acres of hills and woods, some owned and protected by Stanford University, remain a giant oasis in the middle of Silicon Valley. De Forest also begins to write poetry again, much of it about the beauty of California. He will have to enjoy this new peaceful life while he can, because soon there will be the bad turmoil of arrest followed by the good turmoil of another marriage.

A Warrant for Your Arrest His Palo Alto reverie was soon to be short-circuited. A year later in March 1912, legal problems surrounding the stock offerings of his radiotelephone company arrive on the West Coast. Two U.S. marshals appear in Palo Alto

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to arrest him on the charge of using the federal mails to solicit stock purchasers. According to the court, the “defendants made false statements concerning the commercial value of the radiotelephone.”36 De Forest admitted to the reporter that “he was convinced improper methods had been used in disposing of stock in the Radio Telephone Company but asserted that he personally was blameless.”37 He also insisted that his patent attorney Samuel Darby was innocent. The issues are twofold: one that the stock was improperly disposed of and second, that said stock was sold based on claims that the Audion was an important invention worth the amount of stock offered. So he is arrested in Palo Alto but he avoids going to jail as Elwell and others at Federal post a $10,000 bond. He writes in his diary, “Being guiltless, I fear not the outcome – only this heavy and renewed expense and the sense of the rank injustice of it all.”38 He also bares his soul in a letter to an unknown recipient, telling about his past divorce problems with Nora and writing, “Of course you have heard the news. They are saying ‘Poor Old Doc’ – damned shame it. So it is, my old pal; you can help by telling whom you know or meet that I’m not a crook”39 (Fig. 4.3). During the trial, it was alleged that the three indicted company officers Smith, Thompkins, and Burlingame, had illegally pocketed more than half of the $1,500,000 collected from the sale of stock. Of that amount de Forest was said to have received less than $100,000. The evidence suggests that Lee de Forest did not profit like his business colleagues in the company. According to him his only issue in the case is that he believed enough in the Audion and radiotelephone to promote it with such hyperbole that the prosecutor refused to believe it possible. De Forest lab assistant Frank Butler testified that as de Forest’s assistant from 1904 to 1909, he had “never heard him (de Forest) speak of the profits he would derive from the wireless telephone when it was perfected.”40 He told the court that the inventor worked 18 hours a day, without eating, and that he was totally involved in his work. This is another example that demonstrates what de Forest has always said, that he was not well-served by those in charge of his businesses. Whether or not trusting such men is his fault is another question. Some say to this day that the appeal of big money and fame for his inventions caused him to cast a blind eye toward stock promoters of known dubious reputation. Part of the government case must have seemed unfair to Lee de Forest: “All of the defendants were charged with ‘use of the mails to defraud, by selling stock to the public, in a company incorporated for $2,000,000 whose only assets were de Forest patents directed chiefly to a queer little bulb like an incandescent lamp which he called the Audion and which device had proved to be worthless – it was not even a good lamp.”41 The prosecutor implied that de Forest and his colleagues used the value of the Audion to

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Figure 4.3 A portion of a de Forest letter discussing his impending arrest to an unknown friend, “Since Wednesday I have worried more over what my ‘arrest’ will cause my dear ones than about its outcome to me. Being guiltless, I fear not the outcome …” And in typical de Forest thinking, in the same sentence he worries that this legal issue will delay his research. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

sell several million dollars worth of stock and therefore defrauded the public because it was a worthless device. Testifying in de Forest’s favor was a Marconi Wireless representative who told the court how useful the device was in their business. The trial ended on New Years’ Eve, 1913. For their promotion of the Audion, de Forest and Darby were found not guilty. For their stock sale antics Smith, Thompkins and Burlingame were judged guilty and sentenced to prison. The actual handling of the stock sold by his company was judged to be a criminal act. The only trial issue for de Forest was the worth of the Audion used in the wireless telephone, and his acquittal proved that it was legally a useful device (Fig. 4.4). Some de Forest friends had come forward during this legal ordeal. The members of the Yale Sheffield Class of 1896 were asked to donate to a “de Forest Defense Fund,” and a small sum of $1,030 was given by classmates, most of whom did not know him. Said fellow Yale student George Parmly in a November 1914 follow-up letter to the class secretary, “You will no doubt recall my letter of November 15, 1913, in regard to the indictment of Lee de Forest, ’96, with three others by the United States Government, for fraudulent use of the mails, etc., and setting forth the necessity of prompt

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Figure 4.4 De Forest with the Audion exhibit used for this 1913 trial. There were two issues, one of stock fraud and the other the value of the Audion. De Forest was acquitted but several of his business colleagues were convicted. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

action to avert the possibility of his being ‘railroaded to jail’ even though he might be innocent.”42 This proves to be a sound investment for his fellow Yale Alums: “The result of the trial justified the efforts made on behalf of de Forest, as the Government failed to prove its case against him. Upon the conclusion of the legal proceeding, Lee de Forest announced his intention of repaying at the earliest possible date the sums to aid him, and has now repaid such subscriptions in full.”43 He also added interest to the repayment. Lee de Forest did value the Yale experience, wrote about it often, and defended its name. The well-known de Forest penchant for poetry also became part of this trial, as there was a de Forest-written song that was apparently used in the wireless telephone company to build up camaraderie in the sales force. The jury heard this song read: Hark! A flash of wireless words from the lake so bright and deep, Tell us of Dr. De Forest’s triumph in the dark and silent night; With the headphones there I listened for the long-expected call, Where the buzzer loudly sounded, while the stars were over all Chorus

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Then, ‘Hello, Hello!’ on the wireless phone. The good old radio It is working fine, all along the line From Chicago to Buffalo Oh! You cannot guess what a great success Is the wonderful radio wireless telephone.44

The Audion Amplifies De Forest’s early work on the Audion as an amplifier of audio was slow and the Audions were noisy. It was said that they contained too much gas, a feature that de Forest believed they needed based on his original experience with the flame and gas detectors. His Audions were not made with a perfect vacuum, and it is during this work that some scientists question whether or not he really knows what he is doing. As the experiments continued the next step was to try them in cascade, connecting the plate of the first Audion to the grid of the next, repeated many times using many tubes. As more tubes are added it does make small signals louder, but it also increases the noise of each tube caused by the gas. But the Audion did amplify and de Forest friend John Stone Stone took this version of the amplifier idea to J. J. Carty of AT&T. The telephone company was successful in local service but they really had no way to get into transcontinental telephony as the signals would not travel over the distances required. Engineers at AT&T believed that some form of Audion amplification would make long-distance telephone service practical, and through Stone it was believed that AT&T would offer de Forest $100,000 for the patent rights to the amplifying Audion for transcontinental telephony. It was during these Palo Alto experiments to determine the best telephone amplifier using cascading Audions that de Forest accidentally discovered in August 1912 the feedback principle or the regenerative process of his tube. Better than the cascade method, regeneration was the feeding of the output of the tube back into the input, thus building up the signal almost to the point of a squeal, but amplifying it tremendously by “feeding it back into the source.”45 But it was not just de Forest who claimed this discovery, and at least one other inventor, E. H. Armstrong, had filed a patent on it first. There were also five other minor inventors with claims, and so beginning in 1914 and lasting until 1934, the ownership of the feedback principle was fought from patent court to District Court to the U. S. Supreme Court. Part of the problem was that de Forest did not apply for the patent on regeneration until 2 years after his laboratory notes indicate

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Figure 4.5 De Forest poses in his Palo Alto lab with an Audion amplifier, about 1912, in anticipation its sale to A.T.&T. This one-Audion device is connected to an early horn speaker, then just an acoustical way to amplify an earphone. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

he discovered it. De Forest would maintain that the pressure of his ongoing mail fraud case and his lack of finances would interfere with his rush to patent the new use of the Audion, a use that would lead to 20 years of litigation with Armstrong. Even in death Armstrong would remain number one on the de Forest “enemies list”. Leaving California in 1912, he demonstrated his cascade amplifier to engineers of AT&T in New York (Fig. 4.5). While there he met, courted and married opera singer Mary Mayo and the new couple returned to Palo Alto in January 1913. The demonstration for AT&T had gone well, but they said they needed more time to evaluate the Audion as a telephone amplifier. The time he and Mary will spend in California will be brief for several reasons. First, de Forest was just about out of money and patience. He had waited in vain for AT&T to contact him about the patent licensing, and his development of the Audion as an amplifier and oscillator was at a standstill. At the same time he was awaiting the previously detailed trial on mail fraud, which would require his presence on the East Coast. It was mid-1913, between marriage and trial, between East and West Coast, that another

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Figure 4.6 “Midnight in Riverlue,” one of the hundreds of poems written by de Forest, this one an ode to his house on the Hudson River. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

inventing opportunity will present itself, this one significant as it is a predictor of his interest in the talkies. A group of people in New York contact de Forest in April with a proposal: if he returns to New York City, they will not only pay his trip expenses, but they will pay him to experiment on a novel idea for synchronizing sound with silent pictures. So he and Mary return and move into their now completed but unfurnished estate on the banks of the Hudson River, a home Lee called “Riverlue,” or where dreams come true. He is moved to write a short poem about it (Figs. 4.6 and 4.7).

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Figure 4.7 Riverlue, the house where de Forest and third wife Mary Mayo began their family. Then and today, it would have been prized real estate, overlooking the Hudson River near the “Spuyten Duyvil” meaning Devil’s Spout. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

The immediate plan is for de Forest to work at the 14th Street Biograph film studios developing a way to use his Audion to record and reproduce synchronized film sound on the “telegraphone recorder,” a Poulsen device which can best be described as the first magnetic wire recorder. For recording a moving wire is drawn past an electromagnet connected to the output of a microphone and amplifier. The variations in sound waves translate into magnetic impulses, which are saved on the wire, exactly like the magnetic tape recorders of WWII German design. Said de Forest of this brief experiment at Biograph, “There was an old projection machine available on the premises, and I began to design and to have built mechanisms whereby the telegraphone wire could run over a large pulley attached to the socket spindle of the projector in such a manner that the steel wire, as it traveled from one telegraphone reel to another, would exactly synchronize with the travel of the picture film. This was, I believe, the first idea of a talking picture with sound recorded on a steel medium. The date was 1913.”46 The reason de Forest even considered the magnetic wire technology was that theoretically a recording could last a long time, at least as long as a reel of film, then 10–12 min. But recording on wire, which he experimented with

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for recording code messages while at Federal Telegraph in 1912, would always be a failed way of recording audio. Even the wire recorders of the 1940s were never good enough, with telephone-like sound quality. So when Dr. Elman Myers hired de Forest for this project, he apparently did record one single simple synchronized film of a dog barking before the experiment was abandoned. The audio quality would have been poor, recorded using the primitive microphones, amplifiers, and loudspeakers then available, and its synchronization would be unreliable. While the de Forest biographers refer to this brief experiment, there is very little evidence of it today, other than what de Forest wrote about it.47 The Biograph experiment quickly ran out of money, the system was never developed, but what this did was plant a small spark of interest in de Forest’s inventing mind, one that he would begin to think about and later exploit as Phonofilm. He would learn well from this mistake. Meanwhile de Forest is getting desperate. He is out of funds and living in his new house with new wife Mary. The Biograph job ended after a few months and the expected money that was supposed to come from the AT&T Audion licensing had not materialized. He continued to ask Carty of AT&T whether or not they had reached a decision. When would they buy the patent rights? He had almost given up when he was contacted by an attorney named Sidney Myers. Myers told de Forest that he represented an “unnamed” party who wanted to purchase the wire amplification rights but they could only offer $50,000. At first de Forest refused saying it wasn’t enough, but Myers appealed to his current situation, suggesting that he, “consider the financial situation of your radiotelephone company. I know that it is soon to be sold out for debt to the State of New Jersey.”48 De Forest, hungry and despondent, agreed, but found out later that he had been duped by Myers and AT&T. Understanding his personal situation, they were able to take advantage of him at his weakest, and in the process get one of the great bargains in inventing history. All along the giant company had been prepared to pay de Forest a lot more for what they knew was an important piece of technology, but because of the inventor’s money situation they didn’t have to after all. They only had to wait. Myers was clandestinely acting on behalf of AT&T and de Forest had sold out for half of what he had believed the value of this important function of his Audion. Now with enough money to furnish his new Hudson River home, and a new wife to take care of, he begins to look at other ways to exploit his Audion. Seemingly undaunted by continuous adversity and disappointment, his energy knows no limitations. In a 1914 de Forest notebook called “Notes, Ideas, Inventions,” there are many drawings of this ongoing inventing work. In the February 2nd entry, there is a schematic drawing of a new version of

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his tube he calls a double grid Audion, and the invention is labeled the “Singing Audion,” described as a super-sensitive receiver. He writes on the following pages about telephone amplifiers, and generates several more circuits, like that of an “Oscillator Audion,” with an antenna connection likely to be part of a transmitter of radio. In the March 13th entry, he draws antenna radiator circuits, saying, “To avoid the Lodge Patents,” and a few months later he has turned to the phonograph, creating in drawing what was a new needle in groove arrangement. This complicated device appears to be a way of picking up the sound using some sort of suction pump and hollow needle that barely rests on the surface of the record. He writes, “if records are made specially for this form of reproducer it can do away with the diaphragm, sound chamber, etc., then have the sound reproduced directly by the air escaping from the nozzle.”49 An air phonograph? Surely all inventors propose many more nonfunctioning inventions than those that are successful. De Forest was not ashamed to save failures and successes. While preserving his legacy he has included this fascination with the odd, the nonordinary, and the non-Edison acoustical phonograph that eventually would lead to a real invention for the sound film era (Fig. 4.8). Now that he is settled into a home and laboratory routine, and the radiotelephone stock trial has ended in his favor, he is able to continue the life of the lone and independent inventor. He will have success as a radio manufacturer. There are radios to be built for both hobbyists and the U.S. Navy, and that year de Forest went to work building his panel radio sets. In this endeavor he worked with Charles Logwood, and many of these sets are sold to an eager Navy as well as to moneyed amateurs. In August 1915, there appeared another odd attempt at a transmitter, this example more like science fantasy, and while it was called a radio telephone transmitter, it “put a ‘gas microphone’ in high voltage discharge path of a high inductance Tesla coil secondary of a transformer….”50 This invention used a number of flames and was probably a very dangerous way to get on the air. There were also ongoing patent issues with the Marconi company surrounding the Audion. It began when the Marconi legal team informed de Forest that his Audion patents infringed on their patented device, the Fleming Valve. De Forest and his attorney Sam Darby countersued, saying that Fleming and Marconi now infringed upon his Audion patents. The odd thing about this whole disagreement is that Marconi operators had long used the Audion, preferring it over the less sensitive Fleming device. The court, in a “bad science” judgment, erred when they said that the two devices were similar, that the Fleming valve was an amplifier, when in fact it was a diode rectifier/detector only. As a result of this court case, the infringement alleged by both sides was declared a draw, with each side required to tell

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Figure 4.8 From his 1914–1915 notebook, the inventor invents, this time a strange device to improve the phonograph. See the appendix for other pages from this notebook. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

the other how many Audions they were manufacturing, respectively.51 An exasperated de Forest later wrote of this court battle, “Judge Mayer’s vile and half-baked decision for the Fleming valve as against the Audion is sickening. That and the appeal set us back $40,000 easily. All my life I have been coining money for lawyers. I am a gold mine for them – like all good inventors.”52 Parts of many of these remembrances and diary entries found in the de Forest papers were used in his 1950 autobiography, but in some cases his

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rhetoric was toned down, minimizing the “vile, half-baked,” wording in favor of a more temperate de Forest. Meanwhile de Forest again was approached by AT&T who having a better understanding the possibilities of the Audion wanted to purchase additional rights, and for this they were now willing to pay $90,000. And even though de Forest would have preferred to retain the rights and make the millions he believed the Audion was worth, his tube was now paying the bills. He took the money.

The 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco Returning to San Francisco, de Forest saw a new opportunity to publicize his radio manufacturing companies. The occasion was the 1915 world’s fair, the Panama Pacific International Exhibition, known as the P.P.I.E. Both AT&T and de Forest had arranged for display space to show off their latest technology. AT&T was demonstrating its new transcontinental telephone system while de Forest was showing off broadcast transmitters and new uses of the Audion. AT&T furnished a booklet to go along with its exhibit called “The Story of a Great Achievement,” invoking every inventor including Edison, but not mentioning de Forest’s contribution of the amplifying Audion that made their telephone “achievement” possible. This slight was countered as de Forest, obviously outraged by their brochure, immediately has his own created, copying exactly the size, the design and title but emphasizing his name and role in the text. If fair patrons picked up the AT&T booklet, they could also get a second nearly identical one telling the de Forest side of the “Great Achievement” at his booth (Fig. 4.9). Notice the similarity of these two publications: On page one the AT&T booklet features a photo of Bell and proclaims, “Less than 40 years ago, Alexander Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, sent through a crude telephone, his own invention, the first spoken words ever carried over a wire, and the words were heard and understood by his associate, Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver in an adjacent room.”53 The point of using Bell in this book in the historical context was that this same experiment was publicly staged for the Fair anew on January 25, 1915, but this time Bell was in New York and Watson in San Francisco talking, “over a wire stretching 3,400 miles across the continent as part of a system that includes 9,000,000 telephones connected by 21,000,000 miles of wire.”54 The booklet, obviously written by AT&T public relations, went on for many pages to praise the company officers for their foresight and their contribution to finally making transcontinental telephone call possible. Motivated by more than money, de Forest spent much of his energy trying to get the fame he believed he deserved. His reaction to the AT&T booklet was no exception. Knowing that it was the sale of the amplifying

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Figure 4.9 This is a comparison of the opening page of the two books created for the P.P.I.E. The one on the left is the original by A.T.&T. and the one on the right is the one by de Forest. The covers and the sizes of the competing booklets were identical. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

rights of his tube that made the AT&T fete possible and doubly insulted by its giveaway price, de Forest counters with this look alike book, replacing the Bell photo with his own. Now the text reads: “For more than twenty years, telephone engineers had sought in vain a Repeater or Amplifying Relay, which should be at once extremely sensitive, free from delicate and frequent adjustments, and yet which would amplify every modulation or variation of the human voice, without distortion. Without such a relay the telephone, at that time, was limited to a few hundred miles.”55 You have to admit that de Forest was quick on his feet, as it was reported that after discovering the book at the AT&T exhibit, he fussed, fumed, wrote, and had produced this identical copy overnight. The rest of the de Forest copy was filled with accolades for de Forest, but in technical rather than public relations terms. Meanwhile war is near and Lee de Forest is becoming an activist. In 1915, a year and a half before America’s entry into the world war, he travels to England and France in an attempt to stimulate international sales for his radios. He finds Europe in a state of war. Upon his return to New York, he gives the press his opinion, that we as a country are not prepared to aid our

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allies: “I have actually met but one American abroad who does not bitterly decry our desperate condition of unpreparedness and the attitude of the Administration toward the Allies’ cause.”56 He seems to be sounding an early warning that our role in the war was needed but yet to be decided. As he saw it, “No one can travel about now and not realize that France and England are fighting our battles – the battle of civilization. Our historic ideals mean more to the Allies today than they do to the American people, and we shall certainly pay some day for this rotting of our national fiber.”57 At times de Forest was fiercely patriotic, he traveled abroad often and he did have a unique perspective on the war America will eventually enter, a war that we are slowly learning about through news dispatches over the transatlantic cable and the wireless, but mostly from the opinions of travelers like Lee de Forest. “Americans can little realize the intense earnestness with which the British people are now facing the war and its responsibilities.”58 It will take a long internal debate before this country would finally and officially enter the war in April 1917.

Electronic Music and the Audion Piano In 1915, he flirted with a totally different line of experimentation. Using his Audion, he developed an update of his 1907 early electronic music generation experiments to create what may have been the first electronic musical instrument. Like the Theremin which would be invented in 1920, his device used the capacitance of the human body in proximity to the device to change the tones of the music. He also used a series of capacitors and resistors to change the timbre of the sounds produced. This is exactly like the electronic analogue-based synthesizers used in the 1980s. In 1930, de Forest licensed this technology to both the Wurlitzer and Hammond Organ Companies. From a 1915 news story on a concert held for the National Electric Light Association, “Not only does de Forest detect with the Audion musical sounds silently sent by wireless from great distances, but he creates the music of a flute or a violin or the singing of a bird by pressing a button. The tone quality and the intensity are regulated by the resistance and by induction coils.”59 De Forest explained at the concert: “You have doubtless heard the peculiar, plaintive notes of the Hawaiian ukulele, produced by the players sliding their fingers along the strings after they have been put in vibration. Now, this same effect, which can be weirdly pleasing when skillfully made, can be obtained with the musical Audion.”60 Of course not all of the sounds produced by his early synthesizer were musical, and a member of the audience compared how one of the sounds produced by this instrument very closely resembled the frightened calling of a lost chicken. Said de Forest of this observation: “I venture to say that no musical instrument ever made sounds like that before.”61

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Mary Trouble De Forest was apparently settled domestically during this time, and he seemed to have enough money to experiment with new uses for the Audion beyond the long-distance telephone amplification for which he no longer owned the rights. With issues at home apparently settled, he has traveled to Paris to sell some of his Audion-based transmitters and receivers. But this 1915 letter from Paris to wife Mary Mayo in New York introduces another issue that now affects their 3-year old marriage, Mary’s proclivity for the bottle. He breaks the ice by writing about possible new riches to come their way: “for no matter how long it takes, if I can come home with $75,000 to $140,000 of ‘Bacon,’ it will be well worth a year of trouble!”62 He tells her that he is lonely for her, that he is worried for her, “I only hope I won’t lose you in some illness or smash-up in Virginia!”63 He tells her that he knows she has suffered terribly, “But it will be all well atoned for, and compensated for, if as a result you will stay on the wagon, forever.”64 He underlines the last five words. He is cautiously optimistic. Even though he was having some success and his companies were generating income, he writes in December 1916 that home life was not quite right for him: “For the past 3 years I have noted a strange, sad change coming over me. I am more or less a dead man alive – my former eager and youthful spirit has slowly died, due to the struggle for success against great odds; due more than all else to the recurrent sadness and despair of soul which the lapses, ever recurrent, of my wife have caused me. So far from being a mental companion to me, I have lived practically a hermit’s life with her here in this home which I built as a little Temple of all my early ideals.”65 He is writing about his problems with wife Mary, but something important is missing. In this collection of dates and events remembered by de Forest, there are reasons why it was probably written in the early 1920s. This same passage was used later in the 1950 autobiography Father of Radio, but with this change. In the early version, the excerpt reads as: “despair of soul which the lapses, ever recurrent, of my wife have caused me.” In the Father of Radio passage it is modified to read, “despair of soul which the lapses into drunken stupor, ever recurrent, of my wife have caused me.”66 This description of Mary’s alcohol problem in 1916 would have been easier to write in 1950, 25 years after the fact when Mary was long gone, but in the early 1920s when this was likely written, they were still married and she was on and off the wagon. Applied to de Forest his passage regarding his obvious depression might foreshadow a mental illness if he were alive and working today. Based on what we know about the past life of de Forest, he would have been indentified in elementary school and put on Ritalin, and later in life he might be diagnosed as bi-polar, manic-depressive, and

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would be visiting the druggist for Prozac and Lithium. This is only one author’s observation with no real basis in fact other than the writings of the man: “Perhaps you notice the change in my letters; how the buoyant romance and poetic splurgings of the old days have gone, and how the humdrum of a busy life and gnawing ambition have taken their place. I wish at times it were not so. I loved those things – do now, but feel that life slowly starving away.”67 He was in Europe during part of 1915 and 1916, and therefore the reference to “letters.”

The High Bridge Broadcasts De Forest was now ready for actual broadcasting. Under his painfullynegotiated A.T.& T. agreements, he was not allowed to profit from the use of his Audion in a radiotelephone for two-way communication uses, but according to historian Douglas, “He insisted, though, on being allowed to continue using his apparatus for the distribution of news and music, and being allowed to manufacture and sell apparatus capable of receiving these broadcasts.”68 Among his many inventive interests, successes, and failures, de Forest has already flirted with broadcasting music and voice many times since he first imagined it in 1907. He apparently understood its significance as entertainment media, and “he had, by 1914, developed a strong sense of who his audience was and what they wanted.”69 By 1916 he is operating from High Bridge New York using a technology that will end 15 years of marginal radiotelephone development beginning with the spark and leading to the arc, “dead-end” technologies of low quality that while an interesting curiosity, they were not good enough to usher in the age of radio broadcasting for public audiences. So de Forest starts another radio station, this time using his Audion as a transmitter, an oscillator of radio waves. This facility is a relatively mature version of a radio station 4 years ahead of licensed broadcasting (Fig. 4.10). The de Forest High Bridge New York broadcasts led to yet another news story about “the first public demonstration of conveying music by wireless.” This 1916 article was published at least a decade after the articles about the “first broadcast of music” by de Forest himself in 1907, and by Charles Herrold in 1909. If the newspapers had only checked their morgues, they would have realized that the “first radio broadcast” story is an “oft told tale.” But in 1916 the story was all about the de Forest broadcasts from the Columbia Graphophone Company, one of several transmitting locations from which de Forest broadcast: “The demonstration is the culmination of more than 2 years experimental work by Dr. Lee de Forest to convey music

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Figure 4.10 De Forest operates one of his earlier Oscillion transmitters, this one similar to that used at the High Bridge, New York station. Remember that de Forest and others broadcasting prior to 1915 were using arc transmitters. The Oscillion was his version of an Audion transmitter and he was likely the first broadcaster to use this technology. From Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

tones by wireless.”70 One fact that is missing in this and the previous stories is the nature of the technology used in both sending and receiving. For his 1910 “broadcasts,” the transmitter was an arc and the receiver an Audion and earphone, but in the latest “first broadcast,” the transmitter was the oscillating Audion and the receiver was an Audion detector and amplifier and maybe even a horn loudspeaker. The quality of the latter broadcast was far superior to that of 10 years previous. To the evolving audience, it would be radio that was finally “listenable.” De Forest, who ironically would rail against radio advertising in future years, believes that because he announced on the air the records furnished

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him by the Columbia Graphophone Company and because he introduced them, he was entitled to call himself the “first disc jockey.” He was obviously not aware of Sybil Herrold’s experimental and well-documented work playing recorded music on the Charles Herrold radio station of 1912.71 He further believes of this Columbia experiment, “This was unquestionably the first ‘sponsored’ radio program service. It aroused a great deal of interest on the part of radio fans, not merely telegraph code hams, because now that there was something on the air which all could understand and enjoy, and our sales of radio receivers, Audions and crystal sets, began to pick up in a most gratifying manner.”72 This evidence does suggest that he was a reluctant advertiser: “I distinctly remember how then I began to extol through the microphone the merits of our various radio wares; rather shamefacedly it is true, because I still cherished the earlier, quixotic idea that naught but good music and good entertainment, or educational matter, should go out over the radio.”73

The High Bridge Election Broadcast Said de Forest in a speech given in 1917: “The first election returns to be broadcast were those of the Hughes-Wilson contest in November 1916, sent out also from our High Bridge station. The New York American ran a wire line into our office so as to have the up-to-the-minute reports. I myself served as one of the announcers. At 11 o’clock that night, we signed off, after assuring our invisible audience that Hughes had been elected president. The next morning we learned of our slight error – Wilson, rather than Hughes had won the election. However, ours was a pardonable error. Many newspapers had kept us company in our premature decision.”74 De Forest as a “Progressive Republican” did not like Woodrow Wilson, and he had smugly signed off that evening proclaiming Charles Hughes the next President of the United States. The “modern day” significance of de Forest’s 1916 Hughes–Wilson election broadcasts was that it occurred exactly 4 years earlier than the long-publicized “first election broadcast by radio,” the Cox-Harding election broadcast in 1920 broadcast over KDKA in Pittsburgh. Said de Forest: “This, note well, was just 4 years before the much flaunted, the falsely flaunted, loudly advertised Westinghouse Pittsburgh station KDKA, under the direction of Dr. Frank Conrad, broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns, in 1920.”75

America Enters the War In April 1917, the United States enters the War in Europe. This would put a stop to the so-called “hobbyists” who were broadcasting voice and music to scattered audiences from New York to San Jose. Lee de Forest at age 45

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was too old to be drafted, but he would serve the Allied war effort with his transmitters and receivers. This author asks in his Charles Herrold book: “Since broadcasting to audiences actually was taking place prior to the World War, the question arises,‘Why didn’t radio capture the public’s attention in 1917 the way it finally did in the early 1920s?’ The principal reason that radio was unable to fascinate the public sooner was far beyond its control. Radiotelephones were taken off the air as the United States entered into the Great War on April 6, 1917. It was an instant decision brought on by the wartime emergency affecting all of these experimenters. The government assumed control.”76 Licensed amateurs were ordered off the air through this letter from the Department of Commerce and the U.S. Navy District Communication Superintendent: “To all Radio Experimenters, Sirs: By virtue of the authority given the President of the United States by an Act of Congress, approved August 13, 1912, entitled, ‘An Act to Regulate Radio Communication,’ and of all other authority vested in him, and in pursuance of an order issued by the President of the United States, I hereby direct the immediate closing of all stations for radio communications, both transmitting and receiving, owned or operated by you. To fully carry this order into effect, I direct that the antennae and all aerial wires be immediately lowered to the ground, and that all radio apparatus both for transmitting and receiving be disconnected from both the antennae and ground circuits and that it otherwise be rendered inoperative both for transmitting and receiving any radio messages or signals, and so remain until this order is revoked. Immediate compliance with this order is insisted upon and will be strictly enforced. Please report on the enclosed blank your compliance with this order; a failure to return such blanks will lead to a rigid investigation.”77 The air was suddenly silent. How does the war effect the march of radio technology and the patents issued so far? By now de Forest has sold most of his remaining Audion patents to AT&T, “which included valuable circuits, and AT&T paid him $250,000. In these transactions de Forest made only one reservation: he retained the right to sell his equipment to amateurs.”78 This sale would be beneficial for de Forest as it gave him the cash he needs to develop his next big invention of the Phonofilm, and it would allow his manufacturing company to sell radios to hobbyists, which looked like it would be a big business, post-war. But while de Forest had some patent success, he is now under two challenges for patent interference, one by Marconi for their Fleming Valve, and the other by Edwin Armstrong for the feedback and oscillation characteristics of the Audion. How would these patent disputes be resolved? Partly it would take the United States entry into the War. The patent battle would

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be put on hold by the World War and Government decree. The Navy wanted equipment and they needed it quickly. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter to all the radio companies invoking wartime powers: “Contractors were to make the equipment needed. Claims under patent rights could later be filed with the government and adjudicated.”79 This was known as the wartime radio patent pool and all inventors and manufacturers were expected to work together and share all patents for the good of the country and the civilized world. When the war variously known as the Great War, the European War, and the War to End All Wars was over, the worldwide death total was unbelievable. Fifteen million people were killed in WWI, making it the deadliest war in human history. Look at the newspaper headlines of the time as they reported American War deaths: August 12, 1918, US casualties in WWI exceeded 20,000; November 17, 84,529 American casualties; December 24, 200,000 American casualties; January 2, 1919, 219,000 dead; February 19, 260,000 dead, March 8, 277,000 Americans dead.80 These figures reported in the daily news reports were probably exaggerated. The official U. S. Department of Justice figures indicated that in WWI the American soldier death count was 117,000, still an incomprehensible number for a war that for American troops lasted about a year. In 1919, WWI ends and what remains of Johnny comes marching home. Nevertheless, the Navy emerged from the war having used radio to its fullest, and it was believed that the amazing speed of electronic progress during just those 2 years of wartime development had helped to make America the superpower it will become. The radio is widely credited with serving the cause of war from the top down. “When President Wilson sailed for Europe in 1919 for the peace conference, the Alexanderson Alternator was his link to the world. He wanted, while en route on the S. S. George Washington, to be kept informed by his aides at home via the radio telephone.”81 California radio amateur Don Wallace, W6AM, was asked by President Wilson to be in charge of the radio station that brought news from the peace talks. Wallace, in a 1985 interview with this author said “I was asked to assemble 30 men to operate the powerful alternator transmitter aboard Wilson’s ship. We were all just young boys and the president would often come to the radio room to watch us work. He was fascinated by it.”82 After the wars’ end, the Navy wanted to keep radio, to forever be in charge of it and that meant that they wanted to determine who would be allowed to use the new miracle of electronics. In December 1918 with the war just ending, Secretary of the Navy Daniels approached congress about his proposed legislation: “The passage of this bill will secure for all time to the Navy Department the control of radio in the United States, and will

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Figure 4.11 De Forest rides in this military truck, right, seated next to a large radio device. This photo was taken during experiments with a “Resonance Wave Coil Antenna,” for the U.S. Signal Corps. It was said that satisfactory telephony was carried out while the vehicle was moving at 24 miles per hour. De Forest was always eager to furnish his technology to help the Allies war effort. From the Seaver Center on Western History collection of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.

enable the Navy to continue the splendid work it has carried on during the war.”83 The Navy believed that radio should be a monopoly, their monopoly, but that was not a universally-held opinion. While radio as a government controlled entity did catch on in several European countries after the war, it was not so in America. The American Radio Relay League, representing amateur operators, was against the Navy bill, as were others in Congress, urging restraint and study. The bill was tabled. Meanwhile the war has been good for the de Forest radiotelephone manufacturing company (Fig. 4.11). Between 1917 and 1919, there predictably was big demand from the Navy and others for his radiotelephone technology. Free of patent problems, he now profited by selling radios and tubes for the war effort, and he was even responsible for a successful test and installation of a radiotelephone in a fighter aircraft. De Forest, who had

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signed up for but barely served in the Spanish-American War, was now too old for active service, but aided the allies effort through his technology, which proved far superior to that of the enemy. Writing in September 1919, he showed his ambivalence and perhaps his guilt for being an industrialist rather than a fighter in the war: “The great war 2 years old, and still raging, though the Allies’ cause is steadily winning for humanity and civilization – fighting our battle; while we cravenly snarl at tactics which somewhat inconvenience us – and coin countless millions from their necessities. My company prospers although, through lack of better business management than I can give it, still remains small and slowly advancing.”84 He also writes about the 1916 High Bridge broadcasts, believing that one day radio broadcasting of entertainment, only good music according to de Forest, may become a profitable business (Fig. 4.12). Meanwhile he continues to work on what he says are the first radios for airplanes. By this time he has also been making laboratory notes on what will be his third act – the invention of Phonofilm and the talkies! There is one other gambit that de Forest is working on in 1919, apparently in earnest. It is a version of the two-way radio telephone, not broadcasting, but an actual replacement for the wired telephone. He is suggesting that the present telephone service is not all that dependable, and he has a solution: “With his new portable wireless apparatus all one has to do is to plug into an ordinary light socket and talk. At present the workable radius is 25 miles.”85 There were a half dozen newspaper stories about this new invention, although there is no record of such a device ever being manufactured and sold. It was described as a telephone-like device that plugs into your power, perhaps an early version of what was later called “carrier current,” the use of the power lines as an antenna for radio. Rather than an antenna and ground, the simplicity of it was that you just plug it in. An editorial writer commented about the mysterious de Forest telephone: “Inventions of this kind may only serve to increase gossip and breed that familiarity which, in its turn, begets contempt. It is quite certain that we have not nearly assimilated all the wonderful discoveries of the last 50 years.”86 Since 1918 Lee de Forest had also been thinking about an invention that had begun to occupy more time – that of the recording and reproduction of sound. For years, de Forest the music lover had hated the sound of the phonograph. He now turned to optical sound, audio recorded on film, in an early effort to find a longer-playing, scratch-free replacement for the acoustical phonograph. The disadvantage of the older device is obvious: the time limit of the then standard 78 rpm disc was just a few minutes, far short of the length of a symphony’s movement or an operatic aria. And, because the phonograph had been developed and prospered pre-Audion, it was still in the audio dark ages, still grooves on a disc that vibrated a

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Figure 4.12 De Forest holds one of his aircraft radios used in the War. While too old for the draft, he did his part to improve the radio technology of battle. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

needle connected to a diaphragm and to a large horn. De Forest admits he first thought about recording on film as a way to record and playback great music with full amplified audio quality, but his replacement for the phonograph was put aside in favor of synchronized sound for motion pictures.

1920: A Watershed Year Then there is the manic year of 1920. Remember this year. For inventor Lee de Forest, the year 1920 is one that he would never forget, a year when practically all of his previous inventions will come together and touch each

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Figure 4.13 Unknown opera singer prepares to sing over the Lee de Forest California Theater radio station in San Francisco. Following the High Bridge, New York station experimental broadcasts and the shutdown of all radio activity for the War, de Forest took his technology to California. He was on the air from San Francisco beginning in January 1920, 9 months before KDKA in Pittsburgh. From the Seaver Center collection of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.

other, for better and for worse. What changes 5 years will bring! Beginning with his trial for mail fraud and the “misrepresentation of the value of his Audion” in 1914, to the insult by AT&T at the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, to the meager amount originally paid him for the rights to the amplifying Audion, to mixed marriage success with Mary Mayo, it is a War that would kill a quarter of a million American boys that would be his financial salvation. In 1919, de Forest writes in his diary about how he is happy now with Mary. They are settled in Riverlue, and while she has had past problems with drink, now he is happy. And there is an addition to his family as Mary gives birth in September 1919 to their first daughter, Marylyn. They are happy. It will not last.

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Events in the de Forest year of 1920 will seem so interesting, daunting, satisfying, depressing, and hopeful, that you might wonder if this all happened to one person in just this 1 year. In this single year of his life his inventing will touch radio and film and his heart will be touched by family. He begins the year 1920 by delivering a paper to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia “On the Audion and its Salvation,” and for this he received an award. Next he was on to California to establish a broadcasting station, pre-KDKA, and he writes on January 28th, “California Theater radiophone is in pretty good shape. Antenna on Humboldt Tower is not ideal, but the music has been heard 1200 miles out to sea (Fig. 4.13).”87 In August 1920, he also writes of some early success with his sound-on-film experiments he began the previous year, now saying that he is able to record and reproduce clear sound-on-film.88 And on November 2nd, he writes that he voted for Harding, and offers some political opinion about outgoing President Wilson: “The elections of the nation are today administering an impolitic and final rebuke to the greatest egoist, the blackest traitor, the most unprincipled, falsifying, deceiving, self-willed man that America ever put in a high place.”89 He was against Wilson, actually hated him, but Wilson was an improbable ally of de Forest, refusing to agree to post-war Navy control of radio, opening the field for an industry in which de Forest is a leader. Of course his vote for Warren Harding was a vote for major corruption. But the year did quickly turn bad as money trouble resurfaced. This was a familiar complaint: “Would that I had spent my money, like a drunken sailor in recklessness, for limousines, house enlargement, paintings, trips, press agents, cultivating the acquaintances of really influential people who now might be of past assistance to me is re-buttressing my business – radio and the film – rather than lose it.”90 By the end of 1920, there has settled in him a quiet depression: “These are exotic days, warm with sunlight, but cursed with cares, nights of calm stars, but of troubled dreams. These are the last days at Riverlue. Dreams have come, but I awake from dreams, and reality is harsh and soul-killing. The affairs of my company are not well – too much to sacrifice heavily my personal fortune to keep it from disaster. Meanwhile expenses here at home are terrific – far in excess of my income and salary that must soon be reduced.”91 And when all else fails there is always a mother’s love. On August 21, 1920, Anna de Forest sends this birthday letter to her favorite son: “Mother’s dear love for this forty-seventh birthday of her oldest son. She is proud of his honored name in the world of science, of his battle with many difficulties and optimistic outlook when all was discouraging and dark and of his final success. She hopes many years of increasing usefulness are before him, filled with new discoveries and new honors.”92

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On to the Radio Broadcasting Era In this new decade, everything will change for Lee de Forest and the American entertainment industry. It is de Forest who predicted early that radio would bring music into homes and by doing very early broadcasts he had already shown the way. This will be the greater contribution of de Forest, early and publicly showing the way for others more organized, better capitalized, better connected politically, and those companies better able to carry out the ideas of an inventor. This is not what de Forest wants, to be known in the history books as just another footnote, as an unknown someone who invented something that only influenced others. He wants it all – the fame and the fortune, the applause. He will not entirely succeed. Put 1920 into the larger perspective: America has just lost hundreds of thousands of boys in a brief but bloody war, and the public will need to put it behind them and enter a modern era. At the decade’s beginning, the state of entertainment technology remains primitive: the phonograph is still acoustical, meaning that to record music the orchestra has to gather around a large funnel-shaped horn and play loudly to vibrate the needle on the wax. The film is silent but the public had made it and its stars successful, and going to the cinema was now a weekly habit. Halted by the war, radio and the broadcast of entertainment and information was about to get its license and take off with a whisper as listeners would begin to share the headphones of the earlier era. All of these life-altering technologies would mature before 1930. By the end of the decade, the technologies developed by Lee de Forest would be used to improve the phonograph, the radio, and the film. In the next chapter, the rise of the loud radio and what it portended for the silent film.

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Radio broadcasting brings the millions of our citizens, high and low, in cities and in the most remote districts, into contact with our leaders in every field of activity; political leaders, leaders of the drama, of art, great editors, captains of industry, singers and musicians – in a manner in which no other medium, since the beginning of civilization, has begun to approach.1 The RCA Agreements Defining American Radio Broadcasting Hugo Gernsback and Radio News Creating a Radio Audience Radio Technology Matures

The connection between radio broadcasting and the talking motion picture cannot be overemphasized. The acceptance of the sound film would not have happened as quickly as it did were it not for the radio. Broadcasting was grabbed onto by the public beginning in 1920, quickly leading to better programming and better radios, all of which would directly influence the advancement of the movie from silent to sound. And it was not just the improvement in the radio set itself. It was the arrival of the missing voice, something that would seem very natural by the middle of the 1920s. By the time radio broadcasting had exploded in popularity, the movie studios were already worrying out loud that it would kill the silent film, and that the public would rather stay home and listen to their favorite radio programs than go to a movie theater. This was troublesome. Imagine what it was like to be an audience member in the mid-1920s, as both a listener of radio and a spectator of silent films. With radio, for the first time you are able to hear the sound of the announcer, the comedian, the singer, and conveniently right in your home. This new aural experience was free. The radio announcer talked just to you, maybe with the weather forecast or chatter about a local event, or an interview with a famous baseball player, but it was personal. It was exciting! The silent film was also excellent entertainment, with big stars and lots of action and romance. But the silents must have started to seem a bit dated to the new radio audiences. M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_5, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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As a movie-goer, you were probably asking the questions, “Why do I have to watch their lips move and then read what they are saying? Why can’t I hear my favorite entertainers like I can on my radio?” Why indeed. This will be a problem for the giant film industry. But in 1920 it will be radio’s turn on stage. First, the transmitter technology had moved from the technically-inferior devices based on spark and arc and alternator to the clearly superior vacuum tube. Then the Government allowed the radio age to begin officially in 1920 with licensed broadcasting. And more than any single event, it was the swift popularity of the programs on the radio that drove the technology toward improved receivers, technology that would later make it possible for the sound film to be heard with realistic quality. Along with the radio, the phonograph also benefitted from the technology of the radio, moving from all-acoustical recording and reproduction in 1920 to all-electrical by 1930. The amplification system needed for the successful sound film would have to wait for the radio and the phonograph. Between 1919 and 1927, radio moved from a hobby with homemade crystal sets and headphones and stations that were on the air irregularly, to a fully formed industry with high quality radios with loudspeakers. The talkies will struggle to follow radio’s opening act. Lee de Forest is in the forefront of all electronics-based entertainment media beginning as one of the more prescient inventors of the radiotelephone. Yes, there were others who invented important parts of the wireless telephone technology used by de Forest in the beginning, but it is he who sees ahead to the content of the new media in the form of its programming. And significantly, he will attempt to do the same for sound movies, exploiting the devices used for radio to drive the progress of the talkies. These included better and more sensitive microphones, the Audion amplifier, and the loudspeaker, technology that happened in large part because of the public demand for radio entertainment. Both the radio and film audiences want the same thing. Both are ready to be entertained by something new. But first the public will have to be convinced. Once they embrace radio and begin to hear the voices of their favorite stars, the silent film will somehow seem “old.” The idea of talking pictures will begin to make sense. It will take just a few more pieces by a handful of inventors to make it all work together.

The RCA Agreements The transmitter technology of the radio in 1920 was much improved owing in part to the World War I patent pool. This enforced arrangement was so successful that there were some who believed it should continue for

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national security reasons. The April, 1917 pooling of patents happened just in time, as the major wireless inventors and companies were locked in countless court battles and complex patent infringement suits. It was the Government’s contention and demand that these patent suits be put on hold for the benefit of the Allies’ war effort. The pool was so successful for the war effort that in 1918, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels believed it was his organization that was best-equipped to control the radio spectrum and licensing: “Another argument for military control was the extent to which such control had furthered national political and diplomatic goals during the war.”2 But now that the war is history and it appeared that the Navy will not get its way and control radio in America, there are other issues to resolve. There were many questions: In this uncharted and mostly unknown business of radio, who would own what, who would have which rights, how would the government be involved, what would the role of the private sector be, and how could the proven American technological supremacy work for the benefit of all? The patent pool did show that it could be done, that it was possible. Could a monopoly of manufacturers and their patents further ensure American dominance of radio communication? The American film industry had done this in 1908 with the Motion Picture Patents Company and their business seemed sound. In the beginning the Radio Corporation was a postwar reaction to the possibility of foreign ownership of an American company. Admiral William Bullard and General Electric president Owen D. Young were the major early players in this issue, that of the possible sale by General Electric of its valuable Alexanderson Alternator transmitter to the British company Marconi. In a letter by Young, Bullard indicated that “the president (Wilson) had been deeply impressed by the ability to receive all over Europe messages sent from this side – particularly the fact of the broadcast across all international boundaries from this country by the Alexanderson Alternator.”3 General Electric was persuaded for the good of the country to refuse the sale of the alternator to Marconi, but this put GE in a position of having factories but nothing to manufacture and sell, now that the war market had ended. It was Bullard who was the first to suggest that maybe it was time for an American monopoly of radio, this one governmentsanctioned. This could profit all. The Radio Corporation of America was formed in October 1919. Under the agreement, Young was able to merge American Marconi with RCA, thus keeping it entirely out of the hands of the British. General Electric was now allowed to manufacture radio devices, which would be purchased by the Radio Corporation. Later, in 1921, former GE rival Westinghouse joined the Radio Corporation, and brought with it the Armstrong patents. Like GE,Westinghouse would be allowed to manufacture

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radio devices. The significance for radio broadcasting was that both GE and Westinghouse could manufacture radio receivers to be sold by them and the Radio Corporation, or RCA. The president of the new corporation was Edward J. Nalley, formerly of American Marconi. The new commercial manager was a young David Sarnoff, also formerly of American Marconi. Sarnoff in 1916 had written the famous radio music box memo that detailed how radio should be exploited, in his opinion as a way of selling the equipment. He now applied his earlier idea to the Radio Corporation. In 1920, AT&T had been brought into the RCA, and under the agreements would be allowed to sell transmitters made by their manufacturing company, Western Electric. AT&T was also granted the rights to “toll broadcasting,” by which it was believed meant advertising, and “chain broadcasting,” which eventually led to the formation of radio networks.4 This formidable “radio trust” held 2,000 of the most important patents for all things radio and wireless, and as of June 1921 it was the biggest Government-approved monopoly ever: “The cross-licensing empire fashioned by Owen D. Young took in a new partner – Westinghouse. It became a GE-RCA-AT&T-Westinghouse alliance.”5 And what had earlier emerged from the garage of Westinghouse Engineer Frank Conrad was KDKA, a commercial radio station that Westinghouse vice-president H.P. Davis believed could be helpful in the selling of radios. In the beginning, there was no real understanding of what radio might become or how it would be used. It was evolving fast, and the RCA monopoly wanted to take advantage of all radio and communications in this country and internationally. In 1919, the Radio Corporation, really an equipment monopoly, was more interested in commercial and military communication than in some halfbaked idea of people singing on the wireless. But the press and public attention given to the debut of KDKA was unmistakable. They were on to something. What would it mean? Missing in all of this was Lee de Forest, now the odd man out and marginalized by only being allowed to sell his tubes and radio transmitters and receivers to so-called “amateurs.” Under the RCA agreements, he was out of the mainstream radio manufacturing market. And he said that he was getting out of radio because there were too many people in it, and while correct, he really had no choice. Nevertheless, he continued to build and sell radios legally for the “amateur” market. Of course in the early years of the decade this meant any citizen who wanted a radio (Fig. 5.1).

The Clark Radiana Collection Much of what is known about early broadcasting is a result of the work and career of historian George Clark, an ex-Navy man and a former wireless

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Figure 5.1 The rear label on a 1919 de Forest radio receiver indicating amateur use only, “where messages are not transmitted for pay.” Under the RCA agreements de Forest was limited to the amateur as opposed to the commercial market. From the Stewart Oliver collection.

operator who worked for most of his adult life as the in-house RCA historian. Clark collected the documents of everything radio from 1900 until his death in 1949.6 It is the most important history of radio collection. Lee de Forest knew and admired Clark, so much that in 1917 he was moved to write a poem about him, certainly in a beloved friend way, the title “The Underground Telegraph or Descent, Scent and Ascent by Lee de Forest, P. P. (Passionate Poet)”: George Clark, he was a wireless man Of credit and renown He worked like hell for Uncle Sam, Up antennas and down! All day long, dictate and dig Did this grave radio feller: And e’en at night by the audion’s light He’d copy in his cellar!

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Down in Clark’s cellar Hear that gurgling sound! Sayville calls to Nauen “Let’s have another round!” Strange was our Clark’s devotion To Radio’s silent call. Each decremental motion He loved. Short waves and tall Surged and urged through the lofty dome Of this Radio Bureaucrat; And when at last he reached his home Down cellar, with the rat!! Down in his underground lab Hear Eiffel’s whirr, whirr, whirr. ‘Tis Dubonnet calls Clark away To Bhyrr, Bhyrr, Bhyrr, Eight hours of work are not enough For this radio Devotee. Digests of calibration stuff Peeve him exceedingly. At close of day, by battery A The code calls of a nation Demand his might-as-well they may And ‘cordial’ cooperation Down in his dismal sound-proof vault Are ‘Leyden jars’ without a fault! Where interference is cut out By means of crème de menthe and stout (and a tiny tickler made of ‘fizz’) To the mystic call of Darien Clark an rush the crystal can Deep ‘etheric spirits’ drinking While his wife upstairs is thinking “My wondrous wireless wiz”7

Defining American Radio Broadcasting In the history books of school children and in the first major serious history of radio, Gleason A. Archer’s History of Radio to 1926, it is KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its creator Frank Conrad who was said to be first on the air with a commercial license. The KDKA claim is that it received its license and went on the air in November 1920 to broadcast the election returns of the Cox-Harding presidential race. According to Archer,

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“The noun ‘broadcasting’ today has a very clear meaning to listeners; it means the dissemination of speech or music, purposely for entertainment or education, to a listening audience of nontechnical people, on a regular program, which program is known to them in advance. Therefore, the word ‘broadcasting’ as a noun can be applied to the first program of KDKA, and all that follow.”8 That definition of broadcasting is similar to one that historian George Clark used as his measuring stick, and the opinions and writings of both men influenced several generations of radio historians who defined it in a similar way: “A broadcast station must (a) utilize radio waves, (b) to send noncoded sounds by speech or music, (c) in the form of a continuous patterned program service, (d) intended to be received by the public, and (e) be licensed by the government.”9 Under the last criteria of “licensed,” KDKA clearly had that first government permission under the new category of commercial license. While KDKA in November 1920 was first to be commercially-licensed, the idea of a continuous and dependable program service was not completely realized for several years. Before then, stations may have only been on the air a few hours a day, and in the beginning hundreds of stations were fighting for just a few channels until the Radio Act of 1927 finally expanded the radio band and assigned frequencies to the surviving stations. And the idea of a nontechnical public audience was also slow in arriving. The early audiences for radio were amateurs who had to construct their own radios, but as their parents began to listen and become interested, broadcasting gradually found a public audience as its programming offered a reason for purchasing a more-advanced radio.

What the Boys and Girls Knew While broadcasting by radio was about to become an important part of American life, experimental and amateur radio had been known for many years. Young people had an early interest in and were fascinated by the idea of sending and receiving messages without wires. You can get some idea of what the youth of the era were learning about the emerging entertainment media technologies by reading the popular juvenile books of the day. Among the series with radio content were The Wireless Boys, The Radio Boys and The Radio Girls, The Hardy Boys, and the most famous of all, Tom Swift. Most of these series employed various contract writers who wrote for a single series under an assigned “house” name, such as Victor Appleton and Franklin W. Dixon.10 The stories told in these radio-themed books were as basic as the construction of a radio sending set that allowed an undiscovered singer to debut for an audience. Other stories had teens building a radio for a shut in senior, or for the crippled boy in their town

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who has to stay indoors with little to do all day. These are stories of “do-gooders,” acting in some cases when government or church or school would not. Some of these stories portrayed young boys and girls as social workers, helping the downtrodden of society through the use of radio, both its art and science. Those volumes and series with radio as the theme began in 1910 and lasted until the early 1930s (Fig. 5.2). These stories were written to show the pluck of the youth of the day, as they join forces as bright teenagers, using gee whiz technology, some real, some science fantasy, to right wrongs, and to help the local police and government officials put the bad guys behind bars. The point of many of these stories involves some form of invention using radio employed to foil evildoers. Radio saves the day or alerts the town of an impending flood or the robbery of the widows and orphans fund from the church. These young people do not seem to have any bad habits, they neither drink nor smoke, and they do well in school, even though they do not have any discernible time in their busy schedules to ever attend. All of this part science possibility and part science fantasy was designed to appeal to the young boy or girl. It was a version of the inventor as hero and role model. It was wholesome and it probably motivated some who read them as young boys and girls to contribute to science and technology in their adult careers. All of these books were about the wonders of the radio, whether twoway amateur communication by radiotelephone or wireless telegraphy, or entertainment broadcasting. Radio was the star, radio saved the day. The Radio Boys and Radio Girls stories were simple, most taking places in small towns in New York State. In The Radio Boys at the Sending Station, the story is introduced by famous Titanic-era wireless operator Jack Binns who touts another youth, E.H. Armstrong, and gives a pitch for his superregenerative system for radio receivers saying, “This system is bound to revolutionize the art of wireless communication in every branch, as it is in itself the most important discovery since Marconi put into operation the first crude form of wireless apparatus.”11 In the book, The Radio Girls on the Program, the girls organize a broadcast concert from their city, Stratfordtown, the proceeds of which are earmarked for the Hospital Fund. This was a telethon that raised $10,000, a sizeable sum in 1922. One of the girls said of this event, “I don’t suppose we shall ever have anything more important to do with radio-telephony, or radio any-phone, such as we have had here.”12 Talking about radio, which was just emerging at the time of this writing from its two way communication roots the girls believed: “Radio telephony is a very public thing, if anyone should ask you. See what it has already done for the hospital fund. And it has only begun. Why, one of the richest men in this county had not

Figure 5.2 The cover of one of the volumes in the “radio boys” juvenile fiction series. In dozens of these popular stories young men and women were introduced to the excitement of radio. From the author’s collection.

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heard of the charity until the entertainment started yesterday over his radio.”13 The excitement and the power and the usefulness of radio was being communicated to a younger generation who within a decade would be listeners, the new audience. And it was this steady improvement in radio, driven by an insatiable public, that accelerated improvement in the technology that would allow the device that follows in the wake of the radio, that of the talking motion picture.

Hugo Gernsback and Radio News If the boys and girls discovered the early excitement of radio through their books, their parents were learning about it from reading the many radiothemed magazines of the day. One of the most influential publishers of radio magazines was Hugo Gernsback. His longest lasting mostly technical periodical, Radio News, boasted that its circulation was higher than all the other radio magazines combined. Gernsback began by serving the amateur radio set builder through Modern Electrics. Before most he saw the radio boom of the early 1920s and began to feature articles by famous inventors, Lee de Forest included, along with monthly listings of radio stations and reviews of radio sets. The most interesting series of Radio News begins in 1919 and lasts through 1925, the approximate years that the Phonofilm technology was being developed by de Forest. This parallel development of radio and sound movie technology shares some characteristics, both artistic and technical; there is a remarkable similarity between the two evolving media, both in public acceptance and the improvement of their similar technologies.

Radio News: 1919–1925, An Analysis A study of the Radio News content during the so-called “boom years” of 1919–1923 show the rapid maturation of radio as told by the print media. Part of what the radio hobbyist and public learned about it was through the monthly editorials by publisher Gernsback. Some of these were outrageous predictions, and some actually came true, some were political calls for action, and many were flights of fancy, usually concerning a technology or a programming genre. The other important content in this publication was the news about new radio stations, articles about new ideas for radio programming, and of course advertisements for radios themselves. In the beginning years of radio broadcasting, its evolution was driven more by science than by art, and the equipment makers and sellers were a big part of the magazine’s content (Fig. 5.3).14

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Figure 5.3 The cover of an early of Radio News when it was called “Radio Amateur News.” This volume tells of how opera might be sent using radio. Lee de Forest himself did that 10 years earlier. From the Paul Bourbin collection.

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In 1919 the publication was called Radio Amateur News reflecting that commercial licensing and radio entertainment had not yet arrived. In an article in the July 1919 issue, de Forest himself wrote an article called “The Audion and the Amateur,” in which he wrote about his early radio days, “When I started experimenting in 1898 and 1899 the Art itself was very amateurish from the Rhumkorff coil transmitter to the coherer and trembler of the receiver.”15 He then lists the “modern” radio equipment available today, 20 years later, and suggests to amateurs how the radio life might be: “I can imagine no keener zest, no livelier interest in any toy or device than the young man will experience during the flying hours up in his ‘radio lab,’ locked away from the family, the movies, and ‘the gang.’”16 In 1919, the radio business was still mostly hobby, mostly experimental, and de Forest was writing about the excitement of it all, postwar. He was also selling radios. But what radio would become in just a few years was not yet clearly imagined. Even publisher Hugo Gernsback did not foresee that his “amateur” radio publication soon would be in the mainstream of the radio boom. In September 1919, in an editorial titled “Government Radio Control – Once More,” he opined,“It seems, however, to be a favorite pastime in Washington to sponsor Government Control of radio every month or so,”17 and he suggested that the Radio Act of 1912 was perfectly fine for present day regulation. The 1912 law referred to by Gernsback was a revision of the Wireless Ship Act of 1910. This legislation required that ships carrying more than 50 passengers and traveling 200 miles between ports have wireless installed and operators on duty day and night. This act was modified after the sinking of the Titanic to require operators to be on duty around the clock. “The Titanic is also often cited inaccurately as the reason for drawing up the Radio Act of 1912. The subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee had actually completed its work on this bill and the bill had been reported out prior to the Titanic disaster.”18 What Gernsback failed to realize was that the 1912 act was in no way adequate to govern the radio services about to be developed. He certainly did not foresee a monopoly like that of the Radio Corporation. Before the war radio had resided with the Commerce Department, as much useful radio had been in the service of the shipping business. While the Navy had briefly tried to gain control of it, Commerce continued to license and supervise radio stations. Gernsback argued for control of radio by the private sector with limited regulation: “if radio cannot work out its own salvation, it certainly will never amount to much.”19 Gernsback was correct in his opinion, as the model of the private sector with limited government control continues today. He offers the invention of the telephone

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Figure 5.4 The early radio audience. A young amateur listens to his radio on the roof, up high where reception was likely to be best. From the Dave Burns collection.

as an example of a technology that worked itself out without too much government interference, and he concludes “we hope to report before long the abandonment of Government control of radio.”20 What would have happened had the Navy taken control of radio? Certainly, the broadcasting of entertainment for the public era might have been delayed, and the forthcoming radio boom may not have happened as it did (Fig. 5.4). The word “radio” was not the only term that was common in the press and popular speech. There was not, in 1919, universal use of the term “radio broadcasting,” but the terms, “wireless” and “radio concerts” were also employed as the nation and the nascent radio industry decided what to do with the new technologies. Would it mostly be used for two-way business communication, or might there be other uses of the new device? A series of articles published in Radio News between 1919 and 1925 begin to make clear what radio will mean to a public clamoring to be informed and entertained. Compare the transition of the cell phone to the smart phone. Like radio, it begins as a basic radiotelephone, a dumb box. Then the applications (apps), or in radio terms, programming, begin to appear. The device is now used for more than just a two-way communication device. Now the

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phone, like the earlier radio becomes the center of your media world with news, information, shopping, music, movies, and more. What happened to the cell phone in just a few short years is exactly what happened to the radio between 1919 and 1925. Also in that September 1919 issue, there was perhaps the first article that would begin the separation from radio as an amateur-only curiosity into what it is today. The article,“Grand Opera by Wireless,” described a Chicago broadcast of opera in a way that must have warmed the heart of Lee de Forest for in 1910 there was almost the exact same headline in a New York paper about a de Forest broadcast. Here was the premier national radio amateur magazine touting the possibilities of a new use for the radio, featuring the music genre that de Forest had favored since childhood. Still viewing the radio in amateur terms, and through 1919 eyes, Gernsback writes, “During the next few years it will be a common enough experience for an amateur to pick up his receivers (meaning earphones) between 8 and 11 o’clock in the evening and listen not only to the voice of such stars as Caruso, Tetrazzini, McCormack and others, but also to the orchestra music as well, which is being picked up by the sensitive transmitters along with the voice of the stars.”21 This one-time 1919 “broadcast” was touted as the next big thing, but the writer had a narrow vision of how it would happen. Gernsback still saw the audience as one of “amateurs.” He did not yet see the radio boom and the public’s clamor for major radio entertainment, rather he saw it as it existed – the young ham operator with his crude homemade transmitter and receiver, pausing in his hobby to hear a bit of opera. This will change quickly. In this opera article, Gernsback does begin to raise the big issue that would be part of the ongoing discussion of radio – how to pay for it: “We cannot expect that grand opera by wireless will be an accomplished fact until some means has been found to reimburse the producers.”22 He suggests that some sort of subscription service might be used to compensate the musicians and others, that “probably 10 out of a 100 radio stations, amateurs and otherwise, would pay monthly or yearly dues to sustain the management.”23 Gernsback’s plan for subscription opera will not become part of the American system of commercial broadcasting by radio.24 And without mentioning de Forest, he suggests another radical possibility: “The underlying idea is not only to give grand opera by wireless, listen to the music and to the singers only, but to actually see the operatic stars on the screen as well.”25 He goes on to describe his pre-sound movies, pre-television system, which consists of the musicians making a silent film of their performance which is duplicated and sent to theaters. The musicians, hidden behind the movie screen, then play live along with their film in one

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main theater, but using radio the music is broadcast to theaters all over the country that are also showing the silent film of the cast performing and singing. It is a start. It is this sort of “gee whiz” thinking out loud that often precedes solid invention. It is just one of the many new ideas for the new technologies being publicly touted. The disparate pieces that will make a complete radio system are known and discussed. In the same issue as the grand opera by wireless scenario, Lee de Forest writes an article called, “Reviewing American Radio History.” In it he credits Marconi, Fessenden, Poulsen, Tesla, John Stone, and others, and talks about his own development of the Audion, its early uses as a detector or radio, a “listening lamp,” and its later use in 1915 in San Francisco where it was used to amplify a cross-country telephone call. He brings his work up to date with the invention of the oscillating Audion, the Oscillion, and its use by the Signal Corps, “When America entered the war in 1917 our Signal Corps very soon came to the conclusion that the wireless telephone could be made of far greater usefulness than the telegraph for short-line communications.”26 And in keeping with the amateur theme that still dominated radio, de Forest wrote about the Audion: “Then again the ease with which any boy can duplicate most of the operations, at least on a small scale, makes this the most interesting scientific toy which the American boy can possibly play with today.”27 Early product placement? Not said in the article was the fact that de Forest only had the rights to sell his tubes and radios to amateurs, and the Radio Amateur News readership was filled with future customers (Fig. 5.5). By November 1919, it is announced that as of October first, all wartime restrictions on amateur stations, and those technical and experimental radio stations at schools and colleges were removed. The only remaining restriction was on commercial stations, and that would change with an official presidential proclamation of peace. Gernsback’s editorial “The Future of Radio” was another conservative-libertarian railing against the heavy hand of potential Government control over radio, “No sooner has the new art demonstrated its inconceivable boon to the world that some well-meaning but misguided official steps up and frantically tries to shackle it down, hands, body and feet.”28 His predictions then for radio are limited to believing that soon everyone will have a radiotelephone, but within a few years he and others will begin to see the new media in a different, more inclusive way. Then, he was speaking to the amateur, his core readership, but in a few years both radio and Radio News will begin a transition from all amateur to all citizen. New uses for the radiotelephone were announced every month. In the May 1920 issue of Radio Amateur News, the story was, “Dancing by

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Figure 5.5 One of the few surviving de Forest 1919 radiotelephone transmitters. It still uses the “old” technology of the telephone microphone, but this time it modulates de Forest’s transmitting tubes rather than the singing arc. Author photo from the Stewart Oliver collection.

Radiotelephone,” and it showed a group of several dozen young people, all tethered to earphones, listening to and dancing to the “Georgia Tech band that was radiotelephoned from nearly two miles away.”29 Imagine what it means to be happy enough to dance after a brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens. In 1920, it has been argued that the public needed something new and exciting, a better life. Although most did not necessarily see radio clearly as entertainment media, there would begin a steady stream of programming ideas for the radio, which taken in

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totality would define radio broadcasting as an industry, both science and art. This is just a glimmer of things to come. In Atlanta that day, seven months before that first commercial license was issued to KDKA, dancing was also the order of the day as, “each young man and his dancing partner are equipped with a pair of radio receiving headphones and connecting cords suspended from various parts of the room, thus enabling them to cover a considerable part of the floor.”30 You have to picture this group of couples wearing earphones, dancing in a way as to avoid the inevitable entanglement of their wires, but fun it must have been, and it was reported that, “the first radiotelephone dance was a huge success.”31 This was the start of programming for the radio audience (Fig. 5.6). Gernsback predicts! In his editorial in the July 1920 issue titled, “Radio in 1945,” he writes about the rapid progress in the technology of the radio, looking back at the past 20 years and forward to the next 25, or what it might resemble in 1945. He writes about the radio now: “We use a little loop of wire 3 feet2; we have a small vacuum tube and a pair of receivers (headphones) all encompassed into a box that fits into your suitcase, and lo and behold! We can set up this box, and within the radius of hundreds of miles receive radio music by which we dance. Had we suggested such a thing 20 years ago we would have been most severely condemned as visionaries and dreamers.”32 So what are his predictions for radio in 1945 as seen in 1920? Radios will not need antenna and ground wires. That’s a safe prediction. The need for listening using headphones will be replaced by something, and he does not really imagine a loudspeaker but instead he can see a tube that vibrates with audio. He does proffer a fantastic plan for radio movies, using a bank of several hundred vacuum tubes reacting to the light and dark areas of a film, projected using radio waves, the goal to send out a movie using radio so that all theaters can project it at the same time, their audiences watching it together. That’s television, Hugo. Actually, the technology he is describing is the original large screen used at sports venues, the Mitsubishi “diamond vision.” And little does Gernsback know that one of his writers, Lee de Forest, has already submitted a patent application for a similar device, one that will bring the sound and picture together on a large screen for eager audiences using motion picture technology. The July 1920 issue introduced what would be both a prophetic and major symbolic change in both the masthead and the emphasis. No longer was the publication to be called Radio Amateur News, but just Radio News. This marked the change in attitude that reduced the role of amateurs and viewed the radiotelephone in a different and more public and commercial way. The radio boom of the early 1920s was just getting started. In the September 1920 editorial, “Radio Concerts,” Gernsback described how

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Figure 5.6 A Radio News cover demonstrates how a radio dance might look. This publication was key introducing what began as amateur technology to new audiences of people who would rather buy radios than build them, and wanted some content for their new media. From the Paul Bourbin collection.

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Europe was getting ahead of this country in its music broadcasts, and declared about our progress, “real enterprise, as far as radio telephony and radio concerts is concerned, is rather rail and spasmodic here.”33 He realizes that there are unplanned and uncoordinated experiments in radio music emanating from various cities, and he has a few ideas as always, and summarizes hope for radio with a call to action, “Of course there are countless schemes and ideas of a similar nature, all of which make it possible to popularize radio, and that is what we are after. Now, why don’t we get together and do it?”34 In 1920 the influence of Hugo Gernsback as an early radio “Program Director” is being heard loudly during the formative years of radio (Fig. 5.7). One month before the broadcast of the Harding-Cox presidential election by KDKA, the cover story in Radio News in October 1920 was “Reporting News by Radio,” with the image of a young reporter before with a radio set with microphone and earphones, watching a fire and supposedly describing it for an unseen audience. The article itself was less about radio news as it is understood, but rather it describes how the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper was experimenting with the use of the radiotelephone by their reporters to send breaking news back to the paper where it would be typed up and sent out as a print extra. All of these little pieces are part of the gradual evolution of radio from a young boy’s hobby to an adult business. In that same month, the Detroit News station was put on the air using a de Forest radiotelephone installed by Lee himself. Unlike the Examiner’s use as a communication tool between reporter and city room, the Detroit paper actually broadcast its news coverage to the public. There are many others and quickly they would be licensed as a new service. All of these scattered experimental broadcasts were pre-KDKA (Fig. 5.8). Lee de Forest, who broadcast many times between 1907 and 1916, is also involved in postwar radio broadcasting early in 1920 in California under experimental license 6XC. In a June 1920 Radio News article,“The California Theater Radio Station,” the de Forest station was profiled, its technical specifications, antennas and “studio” were detailed, and there was an explanation of how phonograph records and live music were transmitted. Programs of classical and opera are said to be sent out on a schedule, one half hour 3 times a day on week days. This schedule, a sign on for a short broadcast and then the sign off, characterized all early radio stations, both before and after the licensing of stations which began with KDKA in November 1920. The de Forest station was never licensed as a commercial one, and like many radio stations in the very early experimental years it died for lack of operator interest and revenue. The attitude and purpose of this and other “first” stations was summarized in the article: “The

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Figure 5.7 A Radio News cover explores the possibility of live news coverage by radiotelephone. But this is not what you think it is. Rather than a reporter giving news over the air as we have today, in this case the reporter was using the radio to send the story back to a newspaper where it would be typeset and published as a printed story. From the Paul Bourbin collection.

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Figure 5.8 De Forest seated at the radiotelephone he installed for the Detroit News in 1919. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

transmission of music from the de Forest station at the California Theater has developed from an experimental standpoint to a worthwhile contribution to the musical progress of the city, and receiving sets for the reception of this music alone have been installed at clubs, hospitals, hotels, and many private homes since the inauguration of this service.”35 Again, Lee de Forest saw an audience and was supplying it with inventive content. There is a story in the August 1921 Radio News called “Radio in a Country Town.” The author brings a radio set to a small town in Pennsylvania and shows how a typical small town might embrace the new invention if given the chance, “It was news to them that the town could get the weather forecasts, the latest market reports on farm produce, official news services from New York and Washington, correct time from the Naval Observatory at Arlington. The more they thought about it, the more they wanted it as a regular thing.”36 The position of this article is that those who are developing radio have 35,000 American small towns that can be served and thus generate profits through the purchase of radio sets, as advertising was not yet developed as the major revenue source for radio. Then there were less than 100 stations on the air, most all of them in large cities. And while radio was licensed and beginning to get organized, it was still the wild west as a business, and most who listened in August 1921 did so using radios

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Figure 5.9 This is a basic amateur-constructed radio kit, just a crystal detector and coil. Author photo from the Stewart Oliver collection.

built by young people who embraced the hobby as amateur enthusiasts, and as a side benefit built the radios that their parents would listen to and thereby become interested. Although they did not fully understand it, they would be the first radio audience. Also in that same issue was a story telling how the State of Missouri had embraced radio to broadcast market news from the Board of Agriculture. Gradually, the new uses for the new medium were being introduced and it was exciting. This is the evolution of the Radio Program. By October 1921, along with the many articles on building the radio receiver, there began to be some deviation from the usual components of the crystal detector, tuning coil, and earphones (Fig. 5.9). It was said that the loudspeaker, which was invented several years before by Magnavox of Oakland California, was being improved to be good enough and loud enough for more than one person to hear radio entertainment. This would begin the family shared listening experience. It is ironic that in 1920 the private listening that the earphones required would be something less desirable, something to overcome. More than 50 years later, the Sony Walkman reintroduced the popularity of the private listening experience using earphones,

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and it continues with the even greater popularity of the iPod personal music player. Parts of entertainment technology have come full circle. But a more prophetic article in that same October issue was titled simply, “Advertising by Radio.” This was the beginning, a story of how a Portland, Oregon music store was using radio to advertise phonograph records for sale. Although many experimental and newly-licensed stations were broadcasting phonograph music, this station was a bit different: “The name of the record, its price, and the address of the shop where it may be bought is announced before each piece.”37 This was very early advertising, not really allowed under the RCA agreements. The right to so-called “toll broadcasting” was accorded to Western Electric/AT&T, and their WEAF in New York was the only “legal” station allowed to advertise. Nevertheless, “Many glowing claims are set forth for the radio telephonic advertising of music. It enables rural dwellers to keep up with the newest in records and music, for there are so many receiving sets throughout the country districts which can listen to the concerts.”38 The act of selling records was almost presented as a public service! In 1921 “radio concerts,” as they are called, are a common form of programming for a growing audience. By the end of the year, Hugo Gernsback is able to see the radio future more clearly, and he summed it up in an editorial, “The Radiotrola” a word derived from the combination of radio and victrola, as in recorded music by phonograph. This is how radio is seen at the start of the new year, 1922: “To the careful observer, during the past 6 months it has become apparent that we are finally headed in the right direction as far as popularizing radio is concerned. We may say that we are right now in the midst of a revolution, as far as radio and the great public are concerned. We see the weather marks everywhere. The newspapers are becoming enthusiastic about radio, and devote more and more space to it. The man in the street is beginning to take a lively interest in all things radio. We may say that radio is entering into its last and final stage, as far as the public at large in concerned.”39 The important point of this article detailing this transitional time in radio, according to Gernsback, was that radios must be available, already built, his “Radiotrola” idea, “We cannot expect the future wireless radio enthusiast to buy the parts of an outfit, and put it up himself. He will never do it. What he wants is a sort of Radiotrola that is all connected up for him, and, with a few intelligible instructions, can be used as easily by the young hopeful as by grand-dad.”40 This is clearly an “ah ha” moment for Gernsback. Is this what it will take for radio to really explode, a ready-made set of which there were only a few? For universal adoption, the radio would have to be more than a box of mail order parts to be put together by a son or daughter. It would have to be a simple design with two knobs, on–off and tuning. Less complex meant universal adoption. Gernsback was onto something.

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Also at the end of 1921, articles began to appear about licensed radio stations. One early station was profiled. WJZ in New York was another of the Westinghouse Electric Company stations, and was a powerful station for which listener reports were mailed in as far as 600 miles away. Said Radio News about WJZ, “Never before has a radio telephone station sent out broadcasts, on a regular schedule day after day, so complete and satisfactory a musical and bulletin service; as a result of this, literally thousands of new receivers are being put into operation every week, and a tremendous interest in radio telephone has been aroused.”41 Even though the owner of WJZ, Westinghouse, had a vested interest in selling the radios they manufactured, they were offering service that the public wanted, music and news broadcast on a regular schedule. By January 1922, Gernsback proclaims: “It seems that 1921 will go down in radio history as the birth of the radiotelephone, as far as its universal adoption, and its cognizance by the public are concerned. An art may be said to have ‘arrived’ when it becomes universally known and when the public begins to use it one way or another.”42 His point is that inventions are often known about or “invented” years before they are widely adopted. Broadcasting by radio on a regular schedule to a known audience was done as early as 1909, but it did not find universal acceptance until, according to Gernsback, the year 1921. His prediction for 1922? “We predict for one thing that every manufacturer of radio receiving instruments will be swamped with business beyond his fondest expectations, and those who read the future as it looks to us had better get an early start to keep up with the radio boom toward which we are surely headed (Fig. 5.10).”43

Radio Enters the Home To reinforce that 1922 would be a banner year for the sales of ready-made radios, the Radio Corporation of America published its first catalogue called, “Radio Enters the Home,” with complete information “for those who desire to be entertained with concerts, lectures, dance music as well as for the radio amateur.”44 In 1922 RCA is acknowledging two facts: one is that the public is going to be a big driver of the business of radio and two, that the nascent entertainment medium still has its roots in amateur radio. This was a very useful book and it demonstrated that RCA was serious about radio. There are articles on the manufacturing process, what you should know about broadcasting, the radio station, how to get good reception, and of course sections on the type of apparatus required depending upon your needs. This is first complete attempt by RCA to aggregate all of their radio parts and ready-made receiver business and tie it to broadcasting. Radio had left the basement, garage, and attic of the experimenter and entered

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Figure 5.10 A radio broadcasting studio and transmitter room in 1922. All stations had similar furnishings, heavy drapes to absorb sound and a piano and microphone. From the Perham collection, History San Jose.

the home, and this was illustrated by well-dressed young couples dancing (without earphones) to the obvious radio in the center of the room. RCA sold radios manufactured by General Electric and Westinghouse, with prices ranging from $18.00 in 1922 terms for a crystal set (headphones extra) to what must have been a very big hit, $350.00 for the Aeriola Grand receiver, this one with a built in loudspeaker, and obviously designed for the very wealthy for their illegal Long Island cocktail parties.45 It is an oversimplification that radio “just happened” one day in 1920, but for decades it has been simple for historians to point to the KDKA November, 1920 date as the day when radio suddenly shed it amateur roots and became a family entertainment medium. The truth is much more complicated. The transition from amateur to citizen radio listener was gradual and took several years. As a contrast to the 1922 RCA book and its advice for buying a ready-made set, as late as 1923 there were books of instructions showing how to make a radio: “It has been the purpose of the authors in the preparation of Radio Simplified to provide in nontechnical language an explanation of radio with emphasis upon how it works, and to furnish simple and definite directions and suggestions for assembling and installing home radio equipment at small cost.”46 So while the elite, and the affluent and those early adopters living in the major population centers

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could buy a ready-made set, there were countless millions of Americans who would still buy parts and with the help of their young children gradually get into radio.

Creating a Radio Audience It seems that everyone is listening! By 1922, it is the new media of radio that is on the mind of the public, more so than any media in history. More than the printed word, more than the live performance, even more than the silent film, it is radio that will remake the media world and quickly. In March 1922, with more than 80 stations on the air, the Gernsback editorial, “Boom Times in Radio” compares the selling of readymade radios to the Texas oil field boom and the motion picture industry years ago. And while the economy is not universally strong at this point, apparently it is for radio. By the April issue, Radio News is telling its readers that they had to combine two months for an issue as now they were printing a magazine that is five times as large as in the past. The question asked in that issue, “Is Radio a Fad,” was answered with a loud no, telling of its advantages: it is absolutely free, and the entertainment is convenient. But it threatened the existing entertainment venues and there were uncertainties: “Managers of two of the best known theater chains will dismiss any and all of their singers, actors or actresses who give radio entertainment over the broadcasting stations! In other words, our vaudeville and moving picture houses are afraid of radio.”47 In the July 1922 issue, Gernsback is asking, “How long will the boom last? When will the storm of prosperity blow over, leaving everyone prostrate with huge stock on their hands?”48 Even though the radio stations have not found a way to support their broadcast activities, as advertising will provide within a year or two, the original revenue source of the selling of radios remains a booming business. Now it is the variety of programming that is being most talked about. Now football games are broadcast and are finding an interested audience of fans. Early play-by-play is described for the first time as an announcer, “talked a graphic descriptive story of the game into a telephone transmitter and interested thousands scattered all about the eastern part of the United States and even Canada.”49 The radio dance has become very popular, on board ships and in the homes of mostly the wealthy. “At any time of day there is something in the air. One has but to throw a switch and listen. Lectures, sermons, speeches, fairy stories for children, informative talks on matter of moment and readings by well-known authors vary the musical programs. There is general news – agricultural reports and other matter of

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interest to farmers, shipping news, weather forecasts, the baseball scores.”50 This is radio, almost a fully formed media of entertainment and information, and it has captured the public’s interest as did no previous media. As the movies had done earlier, it was radio that was now creating a national “public,” a collective consciousness. Other questions fuel the maturation of radio, “Can radio supplement university education?” “Can department stores benefit from operating their own stations?” and the big one, “Advertising by Radio, Can it and Should it be Done?” This article, written by J.C. McQuiston of Westinghouse says no, “It would ruin the radio business and nobody would stand for it.”51 Of course Westinghouse was permitted under the RCA agreements to manufacture radio sets, and that is how the company saw the business. This writer suggests that the annoyance of ads will alienate the public, and in this there is some general agreement. What he and others did not completely understand is that when the multitude of radio station owners realize that there is no profit in just sending out entertainment for free, advertising was only one of several ways to support it. For many stations, it was either that or to cease operations. Other ideas were Government control and funding, and a subscription or a radio tax, as in the United Kingdom. It is the height of the radio boom and there are no real models and no rule book on how to run a successful radio station. Unlike the model of paying an admission price, like the movies or opera or a play, radio broadcasting is in new territory. Certainly, the advertising of products and services was a large part of early broadcasting. In the early part of the 1920s, the majority of stations on the air were licensed to businesses, so advertising, whether permitted or not, was obviously taking place in a de facto way. Of course there were loud voices against it and plenty of discussion. Lee de Forest and David Sarnoff still believed in nonsponsored radio, paid for using a neverdefined subscription system or the earlier “Radio Music Box” idea. “The conventional wisdom of the American middles classes in the 1920s held that radio advertising could not possibly prosper because no one would put up with it.”52 Historian Doerksen concludes that while all the attention was paid to a small handful of stations owned by the major companies – RCA, AT&T, Westinghouse – most broadcasters were mom and pop operations and if they survived in those early years, they all had something to sell or say: “While these small commercial broadcasters received short shrift in the corporate-centered historiography of radio, it was they who presaged the commercial and cultural future of American broadcasting, and who pioneered program formats and business practices that persist to the present day.”53

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Like it or not advertising will be radio’s future salvation. Under the RCA agreements, only the telephone company, or AT&T and Western Electric, are allowed to engage in so-called “toll broadcasting” interpreted as the use of paid advertising on radio. As a practical matter, the enforcement of any sort of ban on advertising was becoming impossible, as stations would come and go, many owned by the very businesses they were trying to promote. The only stations that did not advertise products were those with purely educational motives, stations operated by colleges and universities. The AT&T station, WEAF in New York City claims it was the first to run a legal commercial, albeit a lengthy one, on Monday, August 22, 1922 at 5:15 pm. Hawthorne Court was a collection of tenant-owned apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens, and the commercial, really a 5-min talk, was soft sell: “Imagine a congested city apartment lifted bodily to the middle of a large garden within 20 min travel of the City’s business center. Imagine the interior of a group of such apartments traversed by a garden court stretching a block, with beautiful flower beds and rich sward, so that the present jaded congestion section dweller on looking out of his windows is not chilled with the brick and mortar vista, but gladdened and enthused by colors and scents that make life worth living once more.”54 There is no question that commercials like this were being read on many stations. AT&T had in the beginning negotiated the rights to toll broadcasting, believing it would become a paid radiotelephone service, much like paying for a long distance telephone call, but a mass media was not what they had envisioned. By 1926, “A.T.&T. had come to the conclusion that there was no rational place in the operations of the telephone company for broadcasting and the problems it entailed.”55 AT&T sold WEAF to the radio trust. It is mid-year 1923, and according to Radio News, the great radio boom has ended. There is much discussion as to what must be done, and one answer is that there needs to be new markets in which to sell radios. It was believed that as of this writing, only 60% of the population has ever heard a radio concert, so the opportunities to equip small towns with radios and stations must be looked upon as an opportunity. The writer gives an example of four small town with the combined population of 8,000 inhabitants, but with a total of only ten radios for the entire population. The solution, of course, is to send out salesmen to the farms and rural areas and try to sell more radios. In September of 1923, there begins a battle between broadcasters and the music publishers for who has the right to broadcast recorded or sheet music under their copyright, and who gets compensated and how. The music business people believe that when a record is played over the air and the listener can hear it for free, they won’t have to buy it. On the contrary, the broadcasters insist that by playing a record over the

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air it creates a demand and sells more records. They prove this by giving examples of how by playing certain songs they became popular. This same argument has been made in recent years regarding music broadcast over the Internet. In both the earlier and the current complaint by the music industry, the broadcasters agree to pay fees to play copyrighted music.

Lee de Forest Remains Involved While undoubtedly very busy with the public premiere of Phonofilm in July, 1923, Lee de Forest found time to gave a speech over station WOR on July 23, 1923 and wrote an article in the October, 1923 Radio World based on that speech, about his “first child,” radio broadcasting. Called, “Radio as a Means of Expression and Contact,” the de Forest premise was that: “Radio broadcasting brings the millions of our citizens, high and low, in cities and in the most remote districts, into contact with our leaders in every field of activity; political leaders, leaders of the drama, of art, great editors, captains of industry, singers and musicians – in a manner in which no other medium, since the beginning of civilization, has begun to approach.”56 He describes his earlier 1909 opera broadcasts and the High Bridge New York station of 1916, saying he sees radio more clearly now, “I confess that in those early pioneer years my eager imagination fell far short of picturing the astonishing hold with which this idea so suddenly gripped our entire nation.”57 In this article he writes of radio in the same way he will later write about his sound films, as a way to educate and bring great music to all citizens, and to promote such great understanding among all people of the world that war would be abolished. It is very likely that a person living in the 1920s could not go for more than several months without reading a story by or about Lee de Forest. He was always in the newspapers and magazines as well as on the radio.58 In the July 1923, Radio News de Forest finally made the connection between radio and Phonofilm with the introduction of his flame microphone. It is a scary-looking device, about 2 ft tall, and the flame must make it very warm to be around. This how he described it: “Sound waves in air are translated directly into electrical energy through a flame, without vibrating diaphragm. It is the result of Phonofilm development.”59 He believes that the device, while designed for recording sound for the Phonofilm, will find application in radio broadcasting. He is correctly searching for a better and more sensitive microphone, as the type used in radio broadcasting is still the decades-old carbon based on the telephone, of low quality and not very sensitive to all the nuances of live music. He calls his new version a “speaking flame,” as he has long held the open flame in high esteem. That a better microphone was needed is true, but the flame microphone did not see the light of day (Fig. 5.11).

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Figure 5.11 De Forest showing and writing about his gas-powered “flame” microphone, in Radio News July, 1923. Too hot to touch? From the Paul Bourbin collection.

While Lee de Forest was well into his development of Phonofilm, he did find time to promote another vision of radio, an egalitarian view of how he sees it: “All true lovers of music, all those who desire to extend educational opportunities to the many, government officials who are interested in helping to enrich the lives of many millions – one and all, I believe, owe it not only to themselves but to humanity in general to see that the best in art, education, literature and music is put at the disposal of all those who make up the major part of our nation.”60 This vision is one that de Forest promoted until the end, a public broadcasting-like vision of programming that will not become the majority view of the listening public. There was at the beginning of radio regulation pressure to broadcast the sort of fare wanted by de Forest, but mostly it was the so-called “sustaining,” or advertising-free programming heard on Sundays when networks aired their limited public service programs. Radio grows up fast. In the beginning, there was uncertainty over who would control the new medium, let alone how would be used. Through most of the 1920s licenses continued to be issued and their recipients monitored by the Department of Commerce, insuring that commercial radio licensees were able to operate their stations based on a quasi-free enterprise model.

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Quickly radio is adopted as entertainment media by a listening public, and its programming becomes a combination of music, talk, news, drama, and commercials. But as the radio dial became more and more congested, there are calls for more regulation and fewer stations: In the October 1927 Radio Broadcast, there is an article asking the question, “Should the small broadcaster exist?” The answers in an ongoing discussion are that during the daytime it is impossible in many isolated areas to receive the powerful stations from the big cities and so the small local station does serve its community. But then, the writer believes that the small stations should be abolished from the large cities as they are difficult to receive due to interference from the high powered ones. Regulation that would categorize all stations by power and channel was on the way.61 The Radio Act of 1927 creates the technical and legal framework for the radio station, establishing the precursor to the Federal Communications Commission, a new regulatory agency called the Federal Radio Commission. After nearly two decades, the Commerce department is no longer in charge of radio licensing. The radio dial of the AM Broadcast band is set at 550– 1,500 kilocycles, the period of license before renewal is agreed upon, and those who have a license are required to operate their station in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Radio belongs to the “people,” and station owners have new ethical and programming responsibility. By the end of the decade, there are two radio networks, NBC and CBS, and the “Golden Age of Radio” programming is about to begin its 20 year reign; The 1920s have been radio’s defining decade. But to return to Radio News and Hugo Gernsback. In an April 1927 editorial, “Radio Steps Out,” he wrote that while radio may appear on the surface to be just the box that entertains the public with music and talk, there are many unnoticed benefits of the progress in radio since 1919 when Radio News was an “amateur” magazine: “The talking motion picture would not have been a success if the vacuum tube and radio principles were not used in the various stages. The same statement is true of the modern phonograph, where both the recording and reproducing are now both done by means of radio instruments.”62 That is the point of Lee de Forest.

Radio Technology Matures The science of the radio receiver itself matured rapidly. In the beginning, it was the neighborhood kid building a crystal set and you had to listen with headphones. The crystal detector was the basic detector of audio that had

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been around since 1906, and its only advantages were its low cost and the ease with which a radio could be constructed around it. All a young experimenter needed was to purchase a small piece of galena as the crystal, a way of mounting it, a fine wire called a “cat’s whisker” that touched the top of the galena until a station was heard. You could buy wire and wind your own antenna coil. Add a long wire for an antenna, and pound a metal rod into the earth for a ground, and you might receive several local stations. The final piece of required equipment is the headphones. This is how the 1920s began for those few radio listeners, and while you could receive a few stations, there began to be problems for this early receiver. For one the crystal set was not selective enough to separate two powerful stations broadcasting at the same time, a common occurrence. The other problem was that the sound was not loud enough to be useful for more than one very patient listener at a time. The technology was just too crude for the development of a public audience. Although many of the young boys and girls understood it, their parents either ignored it or regarded it as a curiosity. By the middle of the 1920s, the radio had moved from the garage and attic into the living area of the home. Now, instead of the difficult to tune crystal set and earphone, the horn speaker was added to a slightly easier to tune radio set. These new radios used tubes both to receive and amplify the programming. There were many more stations on the air and the typical 1924 radio required that three tuning knobs had to be adjusted just right to separate the dozens of stations now available. This is not the “radio dial” that is familiar today, but just three large dials, each numbered from 1 to 100. Tuning the radio still required patience, but it was now worth it, for there were many interesting programs being broadcast and because of the emerging loudspeaker, an entire family could listen and have a common media experience like that of filmgoing, something to talk about with friends, the common expression being, “I heard it on the radio.” The radio of the mid 1920s still used automobile-like storage batteries that you had to take to the local “charging station” every week. Even though the 3-dial mid1920s radio was better and louder, there were problems to be solved, like that of too many stations crowding too little space, and consequently interfering in a way that was making listening a hassle (Fig. 5.12).63 There are articles in 1923 about simplifying the radio, noting that the average listener does not care how it works technically, just that it is easy to turn on and tune in. The listener, called the “radiophone fan,” just wants to listen. The early radio listener is compared with the car owner who, “cares not a hoot what is inside of the case or how the ‘blamed’ thing works.”64 The emphasis in 1923 is on the easy to set up and use radio. By 1927, the

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Figure 5.12 De Forest and an unknown man show off the radios manufactured by the de Forest company, probably the early to middle 1920s. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

October issue of Radio Broadcast magazine was announcing a complete line of electric radios in furniture cabinets that plug into the wall, “Servants of your light sockets.”65 By 1929 networks were in place so that the entire country could hear the same great shows from New York and Chicago, while advertising had become the de facto means for support of this programming. While in 1920 the radio magazine articles might have been, “how to find parts to build a simple set,” by the end of the decade the articles were, “Announcing the 1928 Complete Sets: What the Set Manufacturer Offers the Public (Fig. 5.13).” The de Forest company manufactured a large number of models of radios between 1920 and 1924, and as was typical in the beginning they were little more than scientific curiosity, but later they evolved into devices that more resembled furniture, plus they were easier to tune. Later he will sell the controlling interest in his company to be able to concentrate on his sound film technology, the Phonofilm system he believed would lead to fame and fortune and applause from an adoring audience.

The Phonograph in 1920 One entertainment technology had not been significantly improved in 1920. The technical foundation of the phonograph had not improved since

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Figure 5.13 What a difference a decade makes. By the end of the 1920s radios were in attractive furniture cabinets, tuning dials were fewer and less complex, and the sound from a cone loudspeaker was life-like. This type of loudspeaker would allow the movies to talk with a realistic voice. Author photograph from the Stewart Oliver collection.

the early Edison cylinder. The phonograph was still all-acoustical in its recording and playback. In 1920, the musicians still had to play into a giant horn, which cut a groove in a wax-like master. Electrical amplification, now theoretically possible because of the de Forest Audion, was not yet used to improve the phonograph. By 1923 the demand for better speakers to listen to a better radio began to influence the technology of the film and the phonograph. By 1925, electrical recording of phonograph records is possible and the improvements can be heard because of better amplifiers and loudspeakers. This is because of de Forest’s Audion and the rapid public acceptance of radio. Now the musicians play into a microphone, which when amplified is sent to a magnetic device that holds the needle. The vibrations

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of the recording are still mechanical, but the sound quality is much better. The modern cutting head for records is a transducer that changes electrical variations from the microphone and amplifier into the vibrations of a needle to cut the grooves in the recording master. It’s hard to believe, but it was not until 1948 that consumers will finally have replacements for the 78 rpm 12 inch record that began production in the early 1900s. The 78 disc, with its high surface noise and its limit of 3–4 minutes per side lasted for almost half a century! In 1948, two new formats were introduced by competing companies: Radio Corporation’s RCA Victor Records replacement was the 7 inch 45 rpm record with the large hole and its series of multiple disc changers was one format, and that format stayed in production through the 1980s. Columbia Records, CBS, brought out its competing system, called the 33 1/3 rpm long playing disc, 12 inches in diameter with a small hole, and that format remains today as the surviving analogue recorded disc format.

Radio is a Fact of Life Lee de Forest does pay public homage to others who helped to make the radio what it had become in 1922: “There are indeed many names to be included in the honor roll recording the development of the modern radiotelephone – not forgetting the still earlier period of Marconi, and today, if there is any one thought I should like to suggest to the new comers in the public field of radio, it is this: in our concern for the ever present, let us not forget to pay honor to those who in their laboratory research have made their contribution to this new field of human activity and progress – Edison, Tesla, Stone, Fessenden, Squire and Alexanderson and many others yet to be publicly recognized.”66 And who is missing from this list? Do you have to ask? The inventor of many important improvements to radio, E. H. Armstrong, who had become and would continue to be de Forest’s number one enemy in the patent wars past and to come. So it is a grand confluence of technology, art, experimentation, and public demand that created the radio and its programming between the wars’ end in 1919 and the final radio act of 1927 that specified its regulation and public responsibility. Many factors contributed to radio and broadcasting as entertainment media. The wartime patent pool and the technical and business muscle that resulted from the radio monopoly of RCA was one. Another was the public’s need for and embrace of something new and exciting following a devastating war experience. But more than anything, it was the experimenters, the inventors, the Fessendens, the Conrads, and the de Forests who while ahead of their time, did prove that when the public was ready to accept the first new entertainment media since the silent film,

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the technology and the early program ideas would be ready for wider acceptance. It was from the wireless and radiotelephone era, 1900–1920, that pointed the way to a complex communications industry featuring radio broadcasting that emerged in its current form. Radio began like film, its content that of other media – vaudeville, live stage, concerts, the newspaper – and ended up as a mature service with network programming, supported by advertising and available on radios that required but a single tuning knob. Important to Lee de Forest and sound-on-film, the parallel development of radio programming and technology influences the sound movie and the public’s embrace of it as an entertainment platform, just as they had the radio. Next, a return to the slow march toward the talkies.

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On this day I made a photographic voice record on film with ‘talking flame,’ which actually spoke words to me which I had forgotten were there, ‘one, two, three . . ..’1 De Forest’s Inspiration Inventing Phonofilm The Case Connection The Arc of Family Part 1 The Phonofilm Decade

The film going public was not really waiting for sound films. It could be argued that films had never really been “silent,” as there was almost always some musical accompaniment in the theater. The big city movies featured an orchestra or ensemble, maybe the “Mighty Wurlitzer” theater organ, while the small town houses may have had a piano player, but the film audiences of the “pre-sound” era always expected to hear music during the “silent” film experience. And by the 1920s, the major film releases often had music scores specifically written to accompany and enhance the visuals on the screen. The emotional cues that we expect from sound were always a part of the cinema experience as music, carefully selected to reinforce the story. This was the “sound track” for the cinema, pre-1926. Beginning as a Yale undergraduate, inventor Lee de Forest enters and exits the story of sound for the movies several times during his long and productive career. Whether or not he realizes it, he has been thinking about a way to make pictures talk for a long time. He has been reading about and making notes on a technology that will seem to be a part of almost every invention he touches including those of the wireless telegraph detector, the Audion vacuum tube, the radiotelephone, the microphone, and the talkies. That technology, if you can call it that, is the use of the flame in his early electrical and later electronic experiments. Every de Forest invention begins with fire. And as he begins the process toward the invention of a sound-on-film system, he also begins a 5-year collaboration with fellow inventor and Yale alumnus Theodore Case. Unlike any other relationship in de Forest’s life,

M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_6, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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the one with Case happened on many levels. They were both Yale graduates with scientific backgrounds, both had told their families that they wanted an inventing career, and both ignored their family educational plans, which dictated that de Forest attend divinity school and Case law school. Rather than resent Case for his inherited wealth, there is evidence that de Forest treated Case like the son he never had, in the beginning working with him as an equal in the invention of Phonofilm. As their relationship deteriorated, de Forest was surely embarrassed as he failed to make a successful business from Phonofilm and was deserted by the younger man. But even though the work of Case was important to Phonofilm, it all ended in a patent infringement court case that was never completely resolved as the movie industry quickly converted to sound and left both men behind.

De Forest’s Inspiration The historical record shows a small but evolving connection between the early devices of sound film and the inventing path taken by Lee de Forest. Starting in college he read about the early modulated light experiments of Alexander Graham Bell and the arc of Poulsen. He was well-informed about the existing science. And there are other signs: First, de Forest was very early into development of the wireless telephone. What seems to have made de Forest different in this invention are his public pronouncements about its nonmessaging uses reinforced by actual demonstrations of the broadcasting of live and phonograph music. His interest went beyond two-way communications and into entertainment technology. Second, he actually participated in a brief foray into synchronized movie sound as early as 1913, and he did this with full knowledge of the failed experiments of Edison and others. There are other obvious markers pointing toward de Forest’s transition from inventing for radio to that of the talkies. There is the artistic motivation: Opera was one of his passions, and he wanted to share “his music” with what he always believed was a culturally-ignorant public. He was an elitist, plain, and simple. His other reasons were more practical: He had helped to invent the technology of radio, but it was out of his hands as he had sold many of the rights to important patents, and his New York and San Francisco broadcasting stations would not make it past the experimental. By his own admission, the radio field was becoming too crowded, and de Forest’s place in it was limited in the beginning to the manufacture of radios for use by amateurs. There was also his decade-long desire to find a better way of recording and reproducing sound, one superior to the all-acoustical phonograph. De Forest had long wanted improved audio quality to better enjoy recorded music, but these improvements will have to wait until the Audion

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successfully amplifies and improved loudspeakers replace the telephone earphone. The scientific advances that allow amplification by electronic means will mostly take place between 1915 and 1925. Moved forward by the public’s interest in radio, and helped by the rapid technology advances during the World War, the technical improvements needed for sound movies will finally be in place by the middle part of the 1920s. Lee de Forest will be more than a bit player in this story of the talkies.

The Early Sound Recording Experimenters The quest for sound that could be synchronized with film fell into two camps, the Edison phonograph and optical, or “writing with light” on unexposed photographic film. The experimentation leading to the final system would last from 1886 to 1930, an incredible 44 years! In the beginning, there were the optical inventors, like Charles Fritts who invented the first selenium-based solar cell, and others who recorded visual representations of sound waves photographically but could not play it back as audio. You could see it but you could not hear it. The Fritts patent application “included a claim: ‘the method of making a sound record which consists in photographically affecting a sensitive surface in accordance with sound waves.’”2 These early systems used a carbon telephone microphone in series with a high current electrical source that caused an arc lamp to flicker analogous to the sound picked up by the microphone. A visual “record” of the flickering light exposed the film, and it was developed and preserved as a visual-only representation of those sound variations. Related to recording using light was the 1886 patent called “Transmitting and recording sounds by radiant energy,” by A.G. Bell, C.A. Bell, and S. Tainter. This was called a variable density recording system, and it recorded sound as ink using light through a slit and onto large glass discs. The de Forest Phonofilm system of 1919 would specify a variable light source through a slit for his variable density sound-on-film method.

Separate But Equal: Variable Area and Variable Density Soundon-Film Recording As early as 1886, the light recording methods of Bell and Tainter would predict the entire future of optical sound-on-film recording. According to Ernst Ruhmer, “These methods may be divided into two groups. In one of these a source of light of constant intensity is employed, and the ray of light from it is modified at some point on its way; in the other group a source of light is used in which the intensity is altered directly by the sound waves.”3 The first method describes the basic variable area sound track in which the light area falling on the film is controlled by a galvanometer that moves or shifts a tiny mirror to focus a varying portion of the light on the

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film. The galvanometer is an electromagnetic device like a volume meter and needle that is controlled by the current of a microphone and battery. The second method describes the variable density sound track that will be used by de Forest for Phonofilm. In this similar but simpler system, a special light source is varied by a microphone and battery to write the sound as light and dark lines on the film. Both sound track formats can be played back on a standard optical projector (Fig. 6.1). Although all of these early systems could record using light a picture of a sound wave optically on a photo-sensitive surface, there was no practical method for hearing what was recorded. This was partially solved by 1899 with Ruhmer’s device, the Photographophone. It recorded sound on film using what he called his “speaking arc light” focused through a tiny slit onto the film.4 He describes his camera: “Two rollers are placed in a light tight box and off one of them on to the other a photographic film is wound with constant velocity. A small electric motor drives the rolls so that the film passes with a velocity of several meters per second. The film travels in front of a cylindrical lens which concentrates the light of the arc upon it.”5 The film is developed and played back. This is a sound-only recording device and in Ruhmer’s device the sound is recorded on the entire width of standard 35 mm film. His method of recording using a modulated arc shows on his film as a variable density record. This is essentially the path de Forest will later follow (Fig. 6.2). To reproduce the recorded sound of Ruhmer’s Photographophone light was focused through the film and onto a selenium cell connected to a telephone earphone. This is very close to a modern day sound film, especially in its theory. Practically though, while a selenium cell was known to react to light by changing resistance and thus vary electrical impulses when light falls upon it, it was crude and noisy. It was not at all sensitive, and because of the lack of amplification its very tiny currents would barely be loud enough to be heard using the most sensitive telephone receiver. But these very early systems of Bell, Fritts, and Ruhmer demonstrated that it was possible to write with modulated light onto unexposed film, the film processed, and the sound reproduced. It proved that sound vibrations could be converted into variations of light and stored on film. But it would prove to be a technology dead end: The selenium cell as an audio pickup device would never be good enough. These experiments did not anticipate synchronized sound for film as the cinema itself was not yet a mature media, but like many beginnings it pointed the way for de Forest and others. Most important, it was in the scientific literature for future inventors to read and improve upon. So in the last decade of the nineteenth century, there is really only one device that records and reproduces sound well enough with which to continue any future experiments in sound for the movies. It is the Edison phonograph, invented before his system of motion pictures but not yet fully

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Figure 6.1 Two strips of film showing the variable area sound track on the left piece of film and the variable density sound track on the right. The right sound track is from an actual de Forest Phonofilm. The de Forest variable density method faded from use in the 1930s, while the variable area method continued until magnetic strip and digital means replaced optical recording in the present day. From the Case Research papers, Cayuga Museum.

exploited as an entertainment device. All sound-on-film inventors, major and minor, will credit the early work of Edison who believed that by synchronizing his cylinder phonograph with his movie invention of the Kinetoscope, he could draw attention to the phonograph and improve its position economically. In 1925 Edison was asked to write a few paragraphs about his role in the invention of film, to be presented to the Society of

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Figure 6.2 Ernst Ruhmer’s Photographophone. This is his 1908 playback device which used a selenium cell in series with a battery and telephone earphones to hear the recorded sound. Ruhmer recorded a variable density sound track across the entire 35 mm film. No picture was recorded using this device, but it influenced the future experiments of Lauste, de Forest and others. From Ernst Ruhmer, Wireless Telephony, Crosby, Lockwood and Son, London, 1908.

Motion Picture Engineers, the SMPE: “In the year 1887 the idea occurred to me that it was possible to devise an instrument which should do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that by a combination of the two all motion and sound could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously.”6 At this time in the pre-history of electronics, the Edison acoustical phonograph is the only game in town.

Sound Film Pioneer W.K.L. Dickson William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was Edison’s assistant between 1881 and 1895, and is one of the primary people responsible for both the silent Kinetoscope and the sound kinetophone experiments. Writing in 1932, Dickson explained how it began: “In 1886 Mr. Edison disclosed to me his idea of combining a Zoetrope moving picture effect with his phonograph to act in synchronization – which pioneer experimental work I carried through to a finish in his Orange New Jersey laboratory.”7 Dickson claims

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that it was he who contacted Mr. Eastman in 1889 to produce the film stock which Dickson claims he perforated and adapted to the stop motion necessary for moving pictures. Dickson in his later years insists that his important primary role in the invention of motion pictures has been suppressed. Dickson does claim that during his work with Eastman to find a satisfactory flexible film base, which was then called “flexible transparent celluloid,” that “this perforated band was christened ‘film’ by Mr. Edison, which name has stuck to it to this day.”8 Surely, Edison is widely believed to be the inventor of the motion picture in America, and he did hold most of the important patents at the start of the silent film industry in 1900. It is also not questioned that Edison had tasked Dickson to be in charge of his film inventions, but insists Dickson was working with Edison ideas and drawings (Fig. 6.3). Dickson describes his first sound demonstration for his boss: “In 1889 Mr. Edison on his return from a brief visit to the Paris Exhibition saw and heard his first Kineto-phonograph (so-called then) which was projected onto a white screen – an arc lamp from our Zeiss microphoto outfit was used. The subject of the film was my entering through the door, advancing and speaking – ‘Welcome home again – hope you had a good time. How do you like your Kineto-phono show,’ or something to this effect – raising and lowering my hands while counting 1–10 at each gesture to prove synchronism.”9 He describes how it was the commutator, or speed controller, built into the phonograph that controlled the projector, then called the Kinetograph. This experiment as documented 60 years later may have been the first attempt to invent talking pictures. This was a few years before the silent Edison Kinetoscope personal movie viewer was commercialized. The earliest surviving synchronized sound film is a 15 second short called “Dickson Experimental Sound Film,” and it features Dickson himself playing a violin into a large horn of a cylinder phonograph while two of Edison’s lab workers dance. It was made at the Edison “Black Maria” studio in 1894 for a device called the “Kineto-phonograph” or “phonokinetograph.” It used two Edison devices, the Kinetoscope and the cylinder phonograph. The latter was equipped with rubber ear tubes like those used by the airlines years ago, allowing an acoustic transfer from the needle and diaphragm of the phonograph to the ear. Only one person at a time could see and hear it. Only 45 of these machines were manufactured and sold. A rubber belt was used for synchronization and most of the time synchronization between picture and sound was not accurate. “Predictions in the March 16, 1894 Orange Chronicle that these new ‘Opera at Home’ machines would be ‘a living reality in the homes of thousands’ were premature”10 (Fig. 6.4).

Figure 6.3 William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an Edison employee who led in the development of film technology and directed many of the first Kinetoscope films. From the Dickson papers, Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

Figure 6.4 A frame of a surviving Dickson sound film made around 1895–1896. Dickson is seen playing violin into a large horn connected to an Edison cylinder phonograph. Two of Edison’s lab workers are seen dancing. The camera is recording the action, later to be played back with the phonograph for early synchronization. From the DVD series, “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894–1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco.

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These very early examples of phonograph sound synchronized with film had mixed reviews. They were better sounding than the parallel experiments with optical sound-on-film and its playback using the flawed selenium cell. The phonograph and the movie camera and projector were proven and commercially-available devices. The problem for Edison and Dickson was how to keep the two very different technologies in exact synchronization. De Forest and others would identify even more problems with the phonograph as the basis for film sound. First, the 78 rpm 12 inch diameter phonograph record had a maximum playing time of 4 minutes, not even close to the 10 minute “one reeler” picture. Second, even the largest phonograph horn was not going to be loud enough for a big theater space. And because for a realistic effect the sound source would have to come from behind the screen on which the film was projected, synchronization required a long mechanically-driven belt from the projection room to the stage, resulting in a very labor-intensive synchronization nightmare! Nevertheless, there continued to be other inventors who would follow the Edison and Dickson model and try to somehow improve upon the film-with-phonograph model, including Edison himself, but it will not be until the 1926 Vitaphone system that the phonograph would finally, and for a very brief time, be the voice for the movies. By 1910 there were dozens of film and synchronized sound systems, all using some form of the phonograph record. From the Gaumont Chronophone to the Miles Brothers Picturephone to the Cameraphone, all advertised: “motion pictures that actually sing, talk, and dance.”11 An obvious problem beyond just the impossibility of mechanical synchronization between the hand cranked projector and phonograph was that all these systems were different: “At a time when the film industry was addressing its financial problems through increasing standardization, sync-sound systems required companies to follow the opposite path.”12 Although each system was different in the way it attempted to synchronize sound and picture, the real problem was an obvious one: the projectionist. There was neither the will nor the way to train the operator to master complex synchronization, one which required him to watch the film and either speed up or retard the speed of the picture or the record player to maintain the illusion of synchronization. A somewhat discerning public did not accept the poor quality and uneven synchronization of phonograph and film systems, preferring, after the novelty wore off, to see the real stars in person on the stages of the day. All of these early film-phonograph devices were short-lived. But might Lee de Forest have been influenced by these early systems? Yes, he did write many times about Edison’s failed sound experiments and

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the limitations of the phonograph. But he may also have been influenced by those early ads for synchronized sound systems. Although his technology would prove to be superior, he did use the same program content for his later films – vaudeville and music – and his advertising posters are very close in concept to those of the Cameraphone, with its listing of filmed live acts.

Edison Sound Films Try for Maturity Between 1910 and 1915, Thomas Edison employed 3,600 people, with an annual payroll of $2,500,000.13 This was the period that Edison dedicated to improvement of both the phonograph and the film projector with the desired outcome of motion pictures with sound. In the early part of the new century, both inventions were mature and successful devices for separate entertainment businesses, recorded music and the silent film. Edison’s goals for the phonograph were to find a new material that did not break easily, and a surface with less hiss. While the phonograph was said by him to be “his baby,” he invented it many years before he ever developed it commercially, and even then he did not initially see it as a player for recorded music for entertainment purposes. But from the beginning he envisioned that someday it would come together with another of his devices, the motion picture projector. This will be the second try for Edison and sound film. But before he could be successful he knew he had to overcome what all inventors were faced with in their sound film inventions: One was the absence of microphones sensitive enough to pick up voices of actors from a reasonable distance, and a way to play it back loud enough to be effective for a large audience. The other limitation remained the lack of a dependable means of synchronizing the phonograph and film projector. Edison gives it one more chance. He calls his new device the Kinetophone. On February, 1913 at the New York Colonial Theater, he premiered a sound movie with actors and singers, one of them “Nursery Favorites” with the “Edison Players, Quartette, Orchestra.” Reviewers were not impressed, reacting to the visual qualities of the film, which for its day was primitive. “Nursery Favorites” was all in long shot using none of the filmic art and language available in 1913. It was really just a filmed stage play. Artistically it was a step backwards. Like Lee de Forest would say 10 years later, Edison believed that this sound film process would “put great operas within reach of the poor. The poor man will be able to witness for a nickel performances which the rich man now attends at a high price.”14 Edison and de Forest both had an interest in bringing culture to the small towns and the underprivileged. But the seemingly insurmountable technical problems facing Edison in 1913 could

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not be solved, like those of the limited capacity of the phonograph record and the positive synchronization for playback. Edison lost interest in the sound film after this demonstration, and there was not much written about it then or later. Like all other pre-de Forest attempts, this demonstration is just another footnote in history. Had there been greater reinforcement from the audiences and critics, he might have perfected this system, but it still would have used his prized invention of the phonograph, acoustical technology sans amplifier, and loudspeaker. Edison was 67-years old in 1914 and while he abandoned sound movies, he did continue to spend quality time on his favorite invention of the phonograph. He moved from the cylinder to a flat disc, the format used today. He brought a number of improvements to his phonograph, including building the horn into furniture cabinets for more resonant sound, and the minimization of surface noise on the disc itself. Also the state of the art of film and its content may have tempered Edison’s work with sound films. He was outspoken about the content of silent pictures of the mid-teens: “Those we make here can be witnessed by any child. If white slave pictures are to be made, I will let the other fellow make them.”15

The Wizard of the West Another inventor believed that he could improve upon the Edison system using the phonograph with the film projector. Edward H. Amet of Redondo Beach, California had filed his first patent on such a process in 1911, and in a 1912 news report called, “To Hear Voices with Pictures,” it was reported that the “Audo-Moto-Photo” of Amet “will completely revolutionize the moving picture business and make it possible for actors to be photographed and their dialog recorded at the same instant.”16 Amet believed that his device would be immediately adopted by film makers and he even suggested possible ways his system could be used: “With a singer in a garden, photographed at a distance of a few feet, the possibilities of dramatic entertainment through the Audo-Moto-Photo are illustrated. The lips of the performer move in exact accord with the utterance of the phonograph”17 (Fig. 6.5). Amet, who had earlier worked for Edison and had been accused several times by him for patent interference, called himself “The Wizard of the West,” after Edison’s similar eastern designation. Amet made many short films with which to show off his sound synchronization device which he believed superior to Edison’s, as explained in this demonstration in 1912 of photographing a moving train, “The camera was set on its tripod and the battery attached. The microphone was fixed to a long horn and set on another tripod nearer the tracks. As the steam locomotive approached,

Figure 6.5 A better way to synchronize the phonograph and the projector? E.H. Amet used electrical means to connect the Edison cylinder phonograph with a movie projector. Amet was one of dozens of inventors all trying to find the best way to synchronize film and the phonograph. From the E.H. Amet papers, Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

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Amet began turning the camera’s crank; the phonograph recorder, which was linked directly to the camera, began turning too. Quickly, Amet punched a button which simultaneously marked the film and made a buzzing sound on the record.”18 The film was processed and the film mark and the buzz on the cylinder were used to start both in synchronization. In later years, films would be kept in sync when recorded by the clap stick method, an audio clap recorded and its action filmed. To match up sound and picture, the frame when the clap sounds and the two pieces of wood are seen to visually touch is marked as the synchronization spot. The Amet technology ultimately failed, but it did feature an important difference from that of Edison. There was another part of his invention, also submitted for patent in 1911, that if it had worked, and it probably would not have worked well enough for public showing, would have solved one problem that plagued Edison: how to get the sound from the phonograph in the projection booth to behind the screen. Edison ran a long belt from the projection room under the floor of the theater as a mechanical link to the phonograph located behind the screen. The Amet patent titled, “Method and Means for Localizing Sound Reproduction, is an early try at electrical phonograph recording and reproduction, pre-vacuum tube amplifier, but using the telephone and it ability to turn sound waves into electrical energy and send them along wires.” In Amet’s patent, “The invention comprises an electrical telephone transmitter so connected that the greatest volume of sound may be reproduced from a telephone receiver and still retain the clearness of articulation and tone color of the record.”19 This system used a telephone transmitter, battery, and resistance in series with the diaphragm of the phonograph, and its sound was sent by wire to a telephone receiver behind the screen. This was somehow amplified using a large horn coupled to the telephone receiver, perhaps in the same way that the first horn speaker was constructed. On the cylinder are labeled tracks for each sound and a switch would direct the proper sound to its dedicated reproducer behind the screen. Amet may have been the first inventor of synchronized sound using the phonograph to bypass the allacoustical system of recording and playback then in use and replace it with an early form of electrical playback. Again, the device may not have worked well enough to be effective. What it did show was how inventors were first trying all the existing technology toward the goal of finding a better solution for film with synchronized sound.

Eugene Lauste and Real Sound-on-Film Finally some sense was about to be made in the synchronization of sound and picture in the only way that it would ever become practical and lasting,

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and that meant having the sound on the same strip of film as the picture, so-called sound-on-film. One of the names most known from the early period of sound-on-film inventing is Eugene Augustin Lauste, a Frenchman who came to America in 1887 to work with Dickson at Thomas Edison’s company. He remained during the important years of film technology development, leaving Edison in 1892. He might have known about the first Dickson sound experiments, and understood the difficulty of synchronization by mechanical means. About Lauste it was said that “in 1869, at the tender age of 10, he conceived the idea of taking a paper strip from a Zoetrope and oiling it to make it transparent – like a film before the invention of celluloid. Then he passed the strip through a magic lantern, covering up the lens between each projection of the pictures on the strip.”20 After his time at the Edison Company, he returned to Great Britain and worked on a non-phonograph sound-on-film system he called the Photocinemaphone. Inspired by the Bell Photophone, Lauste conceived of a method of photographically recording sound pictures, and by 1906 he had received British patent, No. 18,057, “A New and Improved Method of and Means for Simultaneously Recording and Reproducing Movements and Sounds.” Lauste received some financial backing in 1908 from the manager of a London company. For his early system, “to modulate the recording light, Lauste used rocking mirrors” and what have been described as “grate-type light-valves.”21 This first attempt was not satisfactory as it reacted negatively to the vibrations of the camera, so in 1910 Lauste moved to a system of recording similar to the type that would be used in the late 1920s. This early work by Lauste was the very first serious attempt to get beyond the limitations of the phonograph as a method of sound for film. This was perhaps the first time that an inventor successfully combined the earlier optical recording discoveries of Bell and Ruhmer with the film camera of Edison and others. By 1913 Lauste had developed a working sound-on-film system (Fig. 6.6). For his variable area sound track, Lauste used a method called a light valve, a magnetically-operated galvanometer and mirror that varies the light focused through the slit. To reproduce the sound, Lauste used the selenium cell. The Lauste record indicates that he moved many times during the inventing of his device, from France to the United States, to England to Germany and back to America. As early as 1911, he had demonstrated his technology in America, but he ran out of money and was forced to return to Great Britain. It is possible that if the circumstances had been right, and he had stayed with his project – at least remained in one country – he may have received more credit for what must have been the first nearly-successful

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Figure 6.6 A frame from a Eugene Lauste film. Lauste used the variable area method, in which a mirror galvanometer focused light on half of the film, leaving the other half for the visual. He failed to gain an audience because he used the inferior Selenium cell and its faint audio could barely be heard on a telephone earphone. He was too soon, several years before de Forest improved amplification. From the Maurice Zouary collection.

system. But it would have been only successful on paper. In 1911 his problem, like Edison and all others prior to 1920, was the lack of amplification and the speaker system to attract serious industry and audience attention. The Lauste system was an accurate representation of what would emerge as sound on film, but it was 10 years too early. “Regrettably, he was never able to provide Photocinemaphone with sufficient amplification for the system to be used satisfactorily in theaters.”22 In 1923 he demonstrated his perfected system for Scientific American, but after an article appeared describing it the 64 year old Lauste just faded away. The Lauste “light valve” system became RCA Photophone in 1930.

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The Transition to Optical Sound-on-Film Another important sound-on-film patent, one basic to the systems of de Forest and others, was filed in 1913 by E.E. Ries. This patent described the variable density method of recording sound on film. The problem with this patent is that it took until 1923 to be issued, and by then de Forest had shrewdly purchased it for his Phonofilm system. Like the earlier Lauste, Ries was another underfunded and independent inventor. Later, in the teens as the World War was raging, there would be other sound-on-film inventors who were concurrently chasing the correct system of writing with modulated light. There were the 1918 experiments of Professor J.T. Tykociner of the University of Illinois, and the German Tri-Ergon Company of the inventors Josef Engl, Joseph Massole, and Hans Vogt. The significance of the Tri-Ergon patents would be their effect on later film technology manifested by many patent interference challenges, culminating in 1935 with Tri-Ergon losing a Supreme Court battle to de Forest well into the era of sound films.23 Here is the state of the art in 1913: The synchronized audio track can now be recorded right on the film next to the picture and be played back on a specially-designed projector. But there are problems: First, to record an actor or musician along with the visual, the only microphone available was that of a telephone, a carbon granule device with a frequency response suited for telephony, but of such low audio quality that in some cases recorded voices would not be recognizable. There is no bass and few high

Figure 6.7 State of the Art? Prior to the 1920s all recording and playback of sound, either phonographically or photographically used the components of the 1880s Bell telephone, a carbon microphone and magnetic headphone. From the author’s photograph at the Antique Wireless Association conference display.

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frequencies recorded. These microphones were not sensitive either, as they were designed for close talking as in a telephone conversation (Fig. 6.7). So recording for film was primitive, and in 1913 the preferred shot in a film was a long shot or medium shot, meaning that the available telephone carbon microphone cannot really get close enough to the sound source to properly record it. Playback is not ready either. Without amplifiers and speaker systems like those available in the mid-1920s, any sound on the film would be just as unpleasant as the recording, and neither loud enough nor clear enough to command an audience’s attention. So with the inventions of Lauste and Reis and others the problem now is not the synchronization of the sound but it is the quality of it. The increasingly sophisticated film audiences, used to hearing a live music performance to accompany the film, would not like the restrictions of wearing headphones to hear an actor’s voice that sounded like it was “phoned in.” The available audio technology was not yet up to the artistic standards of the visual.

Inventing Phonofilm Lee de Forest now re-enters the picture: “If I was to work along new paths I must seek a new frontier. I decided on the ‘talking motion picture’ – not as Edison had attempted to solve it, by synchronized phonograph, nor with the steel telegraphone wire as I had attempted to do it in 1913, but as I had first envisioned it in 1900 and again during the past 5 years: by light recording of sound directly upon the photographic motion picture film.”24 This was the way de Forest described his entry into the invention of the talkies. As an actor would say during rehearsal of his lines for a filmed scene,“what is my motivation?” You may ask the same thing of Lee de Forest. Why, after so much success in wireless telegraphy, telephony, and radio, why enter an unknown field like sound films, something the public is not demanding and knows nothing about? De Forest seems to answer this in his 1950 autobiography, Father of Radio: “Perhaps the one consideration which prompted me more than any other was a desire personally to develop a new and useful application of my Audion amplifier, one which I could expect to develop largely through my own efforts as distinguished from its application to long-distance telephony, where obviously the intensive efforts of a large corps of engineers backed by a gigantic business organization were indispensible.”25 If you read between the lines, what he really means was that he is constrained in developing his Audion because he had sold the rights for many of its uses, and there were not that many obvious ones remaining. The words he uses are also interesting, “new and useful,” typically found in the opening paragraphs of patents.

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The De Forest Way There is a process often used by Lee de Forest when he is in the development of a new invention. It is a predictable process that he used for his wireless telegraphy system and his radiotelephone, and now he will use it for talking motion pictures. The process, call it the “de Forest Way,” can best be described as idea, patent, promote, and prosper. Inventors get their ideas from existing inventions, both in practice and theory. Marconi was aware of the scientific wireless experiments of Hertz who was aware of the theories of Maxwell. De Forest himself was aware of the vacuum tube detector work of Fleming who in turn was influenced by the discoveries of Edison. Ideas also arise out of the practical demonstrations and the journal articles of other scientists. The next step of the “de Forest Way” is to file patents based on a proof of concept of the idea. It is this step that seems to have eluded some would-be inventors due to the cost of legal representation, the need to have drawings and complete the necessary paperwork, and the construction of a prototype. De Forest managed the patent process well, utilizing in later years the expertise of the patent firm of Darby and Darby, a father and son lawyer team who will serve de Forest well for many decades. More than legal, these two provided friendship and wise counsel. De Forest was also highly skilled at getting publicity for his inventions. He was a favorite of the press, known as one who would always take time to sit for an interview. In the last step of his process, the results were uneven, for he did not always prosper from his inventions. There were many problems resulting from the promotion and sale of stock and continuous patent challenges proved costly. This understanding of the “de Forest Way” leads to the genesis of the Phonofilm. It is the author’s belief that part of the early impetus for the possibility of Phonofilm, its idea, may have been this prophetic entry in a notebook called “Electricity IV” from 1897, the first year of de Forest’s doctoral work at Yale. This notebook page has been referred to more than once because it is about the flame, something that always preceded a great de Forest invention. On this notebook page is a basic schematic drawing of an arc like that of the scientists Poulsen, Collins, and Duddell. In the primary circuit is the telephone microphone and a DC battery source. This is connected to the primary of an inductance, a transformer. Connected to the secondary of this inductance is an arc and its source of electricity. Next to the schematic de Forest has written: “Talking ark, like ‘speaking flame.’ It gives very fine reproduction of any sound in the microphone”26 (Fig. 6.8). How might this arc be used? If you modulated the arc with a microphone, and added an antenna and ground to the secondary of the circuit, you would have a radiotelephone. That same modulated arc could be focused

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Figure 6.8 A close up of a de Forest 1897 Yale notebook page showing his very early awareness and fascination with the singing or talking arc. He will begin his sound-on-film experiments with this flame-based system. Again, a carbon telephone microphone and battery is used to modulate the light of the arc for writing on film. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

onto a photographic surface to record an optical sound track. De Forest seems to have found solace in the open flame of the arc, using it at the start of each invention. The Flame is his talisman, and he will return to it in 1918 as part of his thinking about the Phonofilm. While his 1913 Telegraphone experiment at Biograph might have been the first documented and practical beginning of de Forest’s interest in sound movies, he traces his ideas leading to actual sound-on-film to text and drawings he made on October 12, 1918 (Fig. 6.9). This document is important because it supplies evidence used in a 1929 patent interference case brought against him by the German company Tri-Ergon. De Forest claims he first conceived of his sound-on-film invention that year, and produces the October 1918 sketches notarized by his attorney Sam Darby to prove it: “The evidence leading to this verdict was a long forgotten sketch made on the transport Carmania and preserved in a copy of Alan Seeger’s Poems with which I had entertained myself during my voyage to England. This sketch illustrated several circuits and descriptions of proposed methods for photographically recording sound on film.”27 It is entirely believable that de Forest is correct when he dates his first drawing of the system as October 1918, and the evidence that this is likely true is corroborated by the filing of his first Phonofilm patent in September 1919. The evidence is

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Figure 6.9 On this page dated October 12, 1918, de Forest lays out his entire system of recording sound on film. He specifies three possible light sources and for the first time he uses his Audion in a circuit for writing and reproducing the sound. This is a highly significant early document in the modern race for the science of sound-on-film. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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strong that he had his interest piqued while at Yale and in 1913 at Biograph, and later committed to paper an initial idea in 1918, for the next year a fully-formed patent was filed. Because the September 1919 patent was as complete as it was in the science, there had to be much earlier thought done prior to the patent application. Clearly de Forest had been thinking about his ideas prior to committing them to paper in 1918. In the October 1918 notes titled: “3 methods for photographing sound waves on film for talking motion pictures and phonograph,”28 he lists the three methods as “(a), use the ‘speaking flame,’ highly actinic gas, (b) very short fine filament incandescent lamp-superimpose voice currents on lamp current, gas filled lamp, (c) ‘glow tube’ light, glass bulb filled with gas, hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, argon, electrodes of plate excited by high frequency currents, modulated by voice.”29 He includes a schematic diagram of an Audion amplifier, the output of which is connected to the chosen light source, and he shows it being focused through what he labels as a “fine slit” and onto the “moving film.” It is obvious that de Forest did know what he was doing, and whether he had been reading about the work of Lauste and Reis, or had been exploring these technologies independently, it is on this scrap of paper in 1918 he has defined the future of the science of the talking motion picture. Of course even if de Forest did know about Lauste he chose a different path from Lauste’s mirror galvanometer variable area method. He also needed to avoid the reproduction system of the selenium cell also used by Lauste. From this idea the patent is written and submitted (Fig. 6.10). The first de Forest sound-on-film patent, the one he would soon name “Phonofilm,” was called, “Means for Recording and Reproducing Sound,” patent no. 1,446,246, filed by Samuel Darby Jr. on September 18, 1919. The drawing shows how for the first time in history, a de Forest Audion is used in the service of recording and reproducing a sound track recorded along side the picture in the same physical location where it remains today. Shown is how the device that reads the sound track is separated from the intermittent motion of the shutter used to project the film. His device is simple, a small light source modulated by the Audion amplifier and focused on the film to create variations in density, seen as light and dark lines. For projection, the process is reversed, as a light shines through the light and dark areas of the original recording on the film and falls upon a cell that turns those light variations into audio, which is amplified and sent to the loudspeakers in the theater. Because this patent is titled “Means for Recording and Reproducing Sound,” the text of the patent describes more than a single intended outcome. First and most obvious, “This invention relates to making a record

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Figure 6.10 The first de Forest sound on film patent, no. 1,446,246. It was submitted in 1919 and followed his 1918 notes. It was granted in 1923. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Figure 6.11 Close up of a basic part of sound-on-film playback. This is from the above patent and it shows how a steady light source is focused through a lens and through the recorded sound track of the film. The light is varied because of the light and dark areas of the film and that variation falls upon a photocell which is amplified for sound. Very simple. Very basic. De Forest patent, above.

of sound waves and to reproducing the same from the record so made,” but then, “The object of this invention is to provide an electrically operated mean for recording and reproducing sound.”30 De Forest sees this device as a “new and useful” way to better use his Audion to record, playback, and amplify using film, a process de Forest believes will eventually be superior to the phonograph disc and in this he is correct. Now the text description of the invention focuses on recording onto film with pictures: “A further object of the invention is to provide a photographic film having recorded thereupon photographs and sound record.”31 The final purpose of this patent could not be more clear: “A further object of the invention is to simultaneously reproduce from such photographic film the sound record and the picture or negative developed thereon, or, in other words, to reproduce talking moving pictures from a single roll of film.”32 Talking motion pictures, defined early in the coming race for sound-on-film (Fig. 6.11). The text continues to specify how this will be accomplished, “that a source of light may be directly controlled by the intensity, pitch and volume of sound in such a manner that the fluctuations caused by sound waves in the intensity of light emitted from the source may be photographed on the film. My investigations have revealed that certain light cells are more sensitive to the ultra violet spectrum than others.”33 This is where it will be realized that the de Forest system is far from perfected, three years before its 1923 public première. What this patent seems to indicate is that while the intent is solid, there is discussion about the photoelectric cell of the Kuntz type, and for it to be able to read the sound on the film, a dark blue filter must be mounted between the flickering light source and the film during recording. De Forest will quickly discard this cell and try several others, including one invented and perfected by Theodore Case. At least de Forest does not waste time on the long-discredited selenium cell.

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One of the strengths of this patent is his knowledge of the role of his Audion as an amplifier for recording: “I have illustrated for the purposes of this application a simple microphone circuit comprising a transmitter or microphone, included in a closed circuit with a source of current, the lamp circuit, and the microphone circuit being inductively associated with each other through transformer coils. With this arrangement the microphone sets up weak pulsating currents which effect the closed circuit of the lamp and thereby cause light variations which effects variation in intensity of light supplied to the sensitized surface of the film and thereby recorded on the film in the form of varying light exposures.”34 This is a very early description of how the variable density sound-on-film system works, one that is more like that of the earlier Ernst Ruhmer, but different from that of Lauste. This extremely detailed six page patent sets up the future of soundon-film recording and reproduction, and although it seems he has solved all the problems, there will be many trials and errors before the improved system will be ready by 1922 or 1923. Throughout the 1920s he will file at least 80 additional patents for Phonofilm. But now in 1919, the pieces necessary to develop the talkies into an entertainment media are on his drawing board. There are plenty of technical issues that will have to be resolved before the system is ready, one of which is the amplifier needed to turn these light variations and their electrical analog into a volume good enough to get beyond the telephone earphone. Then there is the microphone. In 1919, these remain derivatives of the telephone, a carbon microphone and the magnetic earphone, both major barriers to any serious discussion of talking movies. Now partly because of the concurrent public push for bettersounding and louder radios, de Forest and others will spend many inventing hours on microphones and loudspeakers, but that final resolution is five or more years away. The other issues to be overcome are the lamp that writes light on the film, and the pickup device that reads it for playback. According to biographer and technical film expert Maurice Zouary, “De Forest conceived of three methods of recording on sensitive film in an effort to discern which one of the three would be most practical and satisfactory for sound recording. Eventually he chose to use the ‘glow tube’ as opposed to the ‘speaking flame’ or the tiny ‘incandescent filament,’ since the ‘glow tube’ seemed to offer the only chance of achieving success.”35 His first experiments in 1919 are those of only writing the sound on the film. Later he records the visual along with the sound. In the beginning his experiments used a process that would never be commercially used for feature films, what is commonly referred to as “single system.” This means that the sound and picture are recorded simultaneously in the camera. Single

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system was used for news reels and other documentary filming, but it did require careful adjustment to get the correct balance between an exposure for the picture and that of the sound. Very early de Forest and others gradually migrated to what is called “double system,” that is, the recording of the picture and sound using a separate camera for the visual and a second camera mechanism but without a lens and shutter, for the sound. By using this method, each element could be exposed perfectly, as the exposure for one would not effect the other, and this is the system that the film industry will adopt for all productions. After processing and exposure, it was an easy process to align the sound and picture films using for synchronization, the sprocket holes on both films, and then make a master using an optical printer. The result was a single piece of film with both sound and picture, fully synchronized.

De Forest’s Latest Flame By the latter part of 1920, de Forest has cleared the decks for Phonofilm inventing. Earlier this year he visits his radio station at the California Theater in San Francisco and he spends time with his attorney Sam Darby on the Marconi patent infringement trial. Now it seems that he rarely leaves the lab in New York, working most every day on his system, trying different lamps, and using a variety of different types of film emulsion and development times. He has modified a German 35 mm movie camera of the type used for silent filming. He is a man obsessed. After toiling all day in the lab he returns to a somewhat peaceful and relatively settled family life at his house on the Hudson. It is here that he finally relaxes, to pause and reflect on a day of Phonofilm invention. At first he chronicles his experience using the original recording light source, a talking flame. It is possible that what de Forest meant by a “talking flame” can have two meanings. Based on his earlier patent descriptions, he must have first tried the familiar, an improvement upon Ruhmer’s earlier use of an arc light focused on film, modulated by a microphone and battery, a system similar to his early arc radiotelephone. The arc is sometimes known as a “flame.” The other “flame” used by de Forest was one of the several types of gas, with the size of that flame also varied by the microphone and battery output and focused using a lens and slit on the film. He writes this in August 1920: “on this day I made a photographic voice record on film with ‘talking flame’ – which actually spoke words which I had forgotten were there. ‘One, two, Three … nine, ten.’ I needed this encouragement,”36 and later, “The last film talks better than any heretofore. Developed this myself.”37 About his next experiment with the modulated flame: “Each film record now is apt to prove better than all preceding. I feel

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much encouraged, the deep mental happiness of which I am nowadays capable. But, Oh, could I truly again feel happiness?”38 The between-thelines conclusion here is that the sound film work is progressing fine, but wife Mary is probably on the bottle again. Even though his “go-to” technology seems to be the flame, in the long run these experiments prove impractical and unsatisfactory for sound-on-film recording. They could be downright dangerous when you understand that the nitrate-based film used was extremely flammable, and being around an open flame while using nitrate film would be risky. But consider the context: First, de Forest had a long-held fascination for the open flame, having experimented two decades earlier with a flame detector, which did not work, and five years after that he traced the discovery of his Audion detector to his work with the open flame in which a spoon of salt is used to detect wireless code signals. Second, an open flame in a laboratory was de rigueur in those days, as every inventor seemed to use the gas-fired Bunsen Burner for heating chemicals, bending glass, and maybe warming a cup of tea. And while there are many diary entries describing film experiments with the flame, lasting from August 1920 through the end of 1921, he seems to be using it interchangeably with an incandescent lamp. He is not ready to give up the flame just yet. There is evidence that he is trying other sound recording light sources other than just the flame in these early days: “Again tried to record phonograph music on a film – left over from last year, when I was using a tiny incandescent lamp for my voice-influenced source. Developed this in about the same time as the ordinary film required – seemed as clear and detailed also.”39 Still, he returns to the flame: “Improvements continue in my talking film work – I can now understand practically all it says to me, what amplifies the note writing consistently. But when I replenish the speaking tube by the microphone and Baldwin receiver the record was very poor. My two attempts to record fonograph music were failures. The glass changing the single flame was a decided step in advance”40 In numerous diary mentions, the science of his non-arc flame is not well detailed. It is theoretically possible to modulate a flame using a carbon microphone and DC source coupled to a Baldwin receiver aimed at the flame to get it to flicker using moving air currents. The de Forest flame will appear again in 1923, perhaps for the last time, but it may give a clue as to the original Phonofilm flame light source: Writing about his new microphone in Scientific American in July, 1923, he describes the use of a “speaking flame” of oxy-acetylene gas flames with two electrodes to act as a sound converter, to be used as a better microphone, and de Forest calls it an outcome of his work in developing the Phonofilm.41 During the Fall and Winter of 1920, he works everyday at a feverish pace, trying anything and everything to get a better recording. “Worked all day in the lab on the Talking Film. Exposed and developed it today.”42 “I have listened

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to my last film – much encouraged. Still have a number of experiments to try on the flame.”43 Undaunted, he continues with the unsatisfactory and dangerous flame, although it is described as totally enclosed in glass. At this point, de Forest seems obsessed. There is a time in every experiment when you have to say, “this will never work,” and it is toward the end of a frantic film-filled year that he will finally move away from the flame. But he is not yet done “playing with fire” for it is now giving him useable results: “For the first time I got a reproduction of gramophone music from my film. It was crude, but recognizable – the tune was ‘Tell Me.’ Previous attempts had sounded wholly discordant – scarcely identified as an attempt at music. The soft rubber diaphragm seems a step forward for music, but not voices. The Electrical Expo opened. We have a very creditable exhibit.”44 His invention is ultimately called the Phonofilm, but in the beginning there did not seem to be a name attached to it, just the sound-on-film experiment. In November 1920, he muses about a number of names: “The ‘Phonofilm’ or ‘Fonofilm’ is a good name for my talking films. Also, ‘Vitaphone,’ ‘Biophone,’ ‘Cinephone,’ ‘Cinefone.’”45 He should have called it the “Phonoflame” as in early November his factory burns down: “Thanksgiving Day at the flat. I worked all day at the lab on the talking film – while carpenters and some of my force worked on the burned building salvaging the materials.”46 There is no evidence that the fire was caused by his sound-on-film flame, but shortly after he begins to look seriously at replacements for the flame. He is tired and weary: “If I’m a hero I don’t feel it, my family certainly shakes the hero out of me. I plug on doggedly, day after day, Sundays, Saturdays, Holidays, on the film, on the film. I try to keep out of a rut – I believe I can win out, at least to the capitalizing point, with the flame, later going in for other recording methods, other light, short filament and infra-red, etc.”47 These new non-flame light sources show a possibility of newer and safer and more practical light sources of the incandescent type. Had de Forest been more connected to the realities of the film industry, he would have realized that a flame of any kind is not welcome on the film set, although the arc was commonly used in the projection room of the movie theater and to light the film sets. What de Forest needed in the latter months of 1920 was a technology that was already invented by a young inventor and a fellow Yale Alumnus Theodore Case.

The Case Connection Theodore Case of Auburn New York was of the type of student that Lee de Forest loathed when he himself was a Yale student. Although Case did not go there until a decade after de Forest, Case was of a type, a young man from a

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Figure 6.12 Theodore Case sits on the front step of his home and laboratory in Auburn New York. Case was an important colleague in the early years of Phonofilm development. His specialty was the glass tubes used to record and reproduce the sound. From the Case Research Papers, Cayuga Museum.

wealthy family who did not have to work. De Forest called these Yale students playboys and “rich kids” and the evidence is that Case did fit the type. Nevertheless, he did receive his BA from Yale in 1912 and he did attend Harvard Law for a year before dropping out to become an inventor. His father was an inventor and as a college student young Theodore in February 1911 wrote to his mother that “he was experimenting with a selenium cell, trying to photograph sound waves and use the positives as records for a new kind of phonograph, or a ‘lightograph’ as he called it.”48 After his year at Harvard Law he opened the Case Research Laboratory in Auburn New York. Like the older de Forest, Case wanted only to be an inventor (Fig. 6.12).

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In his 1917 monograph, “A New Way of Converting Light into Electrical Current,” Theodore Case wrote, “Appreciating the great benefits that would be derived if sunlight could be converted into electrical energy with high efficiency.”49 Case, the scientist, began to discuss his ideas for solar power. These were not specific to sound-on-film, but probably more related to his earlier experiments for the U.S. Navy during WWI, his lightbased signaling system which did use “invisible” light, or that above the visible spectrum. This was valuable in wartime as the enemy could not intercept secret messages. He went on to describe, “a cell in which copper bromide was the electrolyte with silver and copper electrodes.”50 Later he immersed his cell in water, connected it to a telephone headphone and when light fell on it a sound was heard. This was the beginning of Case’s research leading to the Thalofide Cell that Lee de Forest would use to reproduce the light recorded on the sound track of the film. Earlier, Bell, Ruhmer, and Lauste – even Case and de Forest – had used selenium as the basis for the reproducing cell but it proved unsatisfactory. A photocell will become the successful technology. Case will be an early and important inventor of it.

The Beginning of the De Forest–Case Relationship The relationship began quite innocently. The two companies, one in New York City, the other in the tiny town of Auburn near the Finger Lakes region of New York, began corresponding by mail in January 1920. A representative of the Case Research Laboratory wrote to the De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company asking, “Kindly send us a catalog of your recent developments in wireless apparatus.”51 The following month the Case Company purchased $44.00 worth of coils, purpose unknown. The order listed 12 different “inductance coils” specifying that they were from an earlier catalog of December 1919. Now de Forest wants something from the Case Laboratory. He has been granted the basic sound-on-film patent he had applied for in 1919 and he is now beginning his experiments. He writes to Case inquiring about his “very sensitive photo electric cell (Thalofide),” saying, “I understand they are extremely sensitive to light.”52 This is how the relationship between Lee de Forest and Theodore Case begins. It is simply two scientific manufacturing companies inquiring about each other’s product line. Soon both companies are connected in a mail order business arrangement, as Case buys wireless and electrical parts and de Forest buys samples of the Case photoelectric cell he will use for the reproduction of sound recorded on film. The Case device is called the Thalofide Cell. The 1919 de Forest patent specifies several types of modulated light for writing the

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sound on the film, but for the photocell for reproduction de Forest tells Case: “I have been using one of Dr. Kuntz’ photo electric cells for the work which I am doing. The source of light which I am throwing on this cell produces a very weak photo electric effect which I can barely hear when amplified thru an Audion detector.”53 He asks Case if he has made any comparison between the Kuntz and Thalofide cells. This letter is interesting for two reasons. One, de Forest does not really say how he plans to use the Case photo cell, and he never mentions film sound, even though he has received his basic patent. And second, de Forest is admitting in this letter what he is also indicating in his diary, that the Kuntz cell is not going to be satisfactory in his system. He wants a better photo cell for his system and it looks like Case has just the right piece. Case does answer de Forest: “We have no trouble hearing the photo-electric effect of very weak lights when amplified through an Audion detector. If the illumination upon the cell by the light which you are working with is very small, we would recommend you to use our Thalofide cell.”54 Is this a cat and mouse game, de Forest not divulging his purpose for the cell and Case acting like he does not know, or is this an innocent scientific inquiry? At this time de Forest has not perfected a system for the talkies, and Case has not even begun to consider how his photocell work might be connected to the movies. So far his cell has only been used for infrared signaling. The de Forest–Case relationship continues as the two research scientists exchange ideas and order products for their experiments. By August 26, de Forest was growing impatient with the ability of the Case Lab to ship the Thalofide cell in a timely manner. De Forest asks if maybe another version could be substituted, “including socket, so we may be able to save time by building a suitable container for same, to adapt it for use with the apparatus with which we intend to try it.”55 Still, de Forest does not even hint at the use he is planning for the cell. He is obviously anxious to begin experimentation and he asks many questions about the size, describing the “slit” that the light must pass through before falling upon the cell. Without saying he is using it for sound-on-film he asks, “if you have to make up a new cell to fill our order, you can, knowing the proposed method of use and shape of the beam of light which we are using, design the glass envelope especially for our purpose.”56 De Forest has a history of being paranoid about having his inventions copied by others and at this point in his work he apparently does not want to reveal its true nature.

The Check Is in the Mail One characteristic of the de Forest–Case relationship is the seeming inability of de Forest to pay Case in a timely manner. He does receive the

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cell but he has not paid for it, “The bill was never brought to me to be O.K’d consequently I supposed it had been paid. I regret that through an oversight this was not attended to, and am hastening to enclose our check herewith.”57 The charge of financial incompetence and the failure to take responsibility for debt does dog de Forest throughout his inventing life. As always he blames others in his employ, but it is a recurring theme. By December 1920, de Forest is asking detailed questions of Case, but he still has not revealed the purpose of his experiments: “When I first began to use this cell it was entirely quiet; I mean there was no sound in the telephone receivers connected to the Audion when the light which I am employing fell upon the cell.”58 Is Case wondering yet about how his cell is being used? It seems mysterious that such an important use has not been described by de Forest so that Case would better know how to respond. The de Forest sound-on-film patent seems to be solid as to the recording process, and perhaps he does not want to divulge this to Case until he is ready.59 Their correspondence yields few clues (Fig. 6.13). It is New Years Eve, 1920, and Case responds to de Forest’s problems with the cell but still does not know and does not seem to be curious about how it is being used. “Possibly the crackling to which you refer is due to a bad connection in the socket or somewhere in the line. Will you let me know if the second cell crackles after you have made sure that there are no bad connections in the cell sockets?”60 De Forest responds with detailed information but he does not say on what is he working: “My light falls on the cell thru a very narrow cell (author comment: he probably meant to say ‘slit’), and is therefore somewhat concentrated instead of being evenly distributed over the Thalofide disc. I use an incandescent lamp located 7 inches away from the photo-cell mentioned, dimensions of which are 1/8 by 0.005 – a lense system is interposed between lamp and cell.”61 Imagine if you were Case and you were given this collection of information. Wouldn’t you wonder what he was doing with your cell? Case does play along: “Possible you could introduce another small lens beyond the narrow slit used in order to diffuse the light over the entire cell and do away with the concentration on a small part of the cell.”62 This scientific discussion-by-mail continues through 1921 without any indication that Case knew about the film sound experiments or patents. The relationship is placed on hold while de Forest moves his family to Germany for a year of Phonofilm inventing. The publicity of this will finally put the de Forest sound film work on the front pages of the press and Case will begin to understand the process in which his company has been participating.

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Figure 6.13 One of hundreds of letters exchanged between de Forest and Case in the early 1920s. In this letter dated December 1920 de Forest writes about the good results he has obtained from using the Case Thalofide cell, the photoelectric tube used for playback of the recorded sound track. He is also pointing out some of its shortcomings and because of this weekly correspondence the cells are incrementally improved. From the Case Research papers, Cayuga Museum.

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The Arc of Family Part 1 The year 1920 continues to be a crowded one with the Phonofilm technical development only being a part of it. In September of the previous year, a child was born to Lee and Mary, and they named her Eleanor. She brought a new hope to a 7-year old marriage that had already suffered from the strains of Mary’s alcohol abuse and recovery, and the financial and legal ups and downs of the de Forest life. He is upbeat about his new child: “Oh, may this strange good thing which has so tardily come into my life have, even yet, be the potent spell to re-awaken my soul. For care and toil and disappointment for years endured have shriveled my heart. The arteries of my finer being have hardened long ago – the sinews of my soul have atrophied from long disuse. I have too completely buried my being in the dry debris of work and care to easily respond to the olden days. Too long, alas, has my finer self hibernated through winters of unceasing work to sense the spring.”63 There is guarded optimism in the de Forest household, a seeming return of normal family life: “Mother is alone this morning. Eleanor finally went to sleep. She sobbed, all so bitterly – her little heart fairly breaking because I reproached her for putting her finger way up in her nose.”64 His now one year old daughter is a long-awaited breath of fresh air: “Eleanor is taking steps alone. Today she walked 4 ft without a ‘helping hand.’ Her little toddling, faltering footsteps, her tightly clenching fist, grasping support, her upturned eyes, so large, so blue, so trustfully smiling; her cheery ‘shee’ meaning ‘Lee?’ fitting the occasion or not – all these heart joys for me!”65 And for the first time in many years, he is reawakened to the beauty of nature: “We ate lunch and crossed the Hudson for a long lonely hike up the river road, down the waterfall gulch back by the margin path. What glories of early Autumn – a sky without a cloud, air like crystal, river like sapphire, woods in fullest living of green – tall pinnacles of the palisades towering above the crowding tree tops against the azure eaves of heaven.”66 There are dark clouds though, now mostly about the money that Mary seems to require to support the household: “There I could have done very little on my film – for Mary and baby would have eaten up all of the $14,000 yearly that I have saved. I find that I’ve spent $36,000 in 22 months.”67 But while he does get some respite from work, he is living two disparate lives, one as an inventor, the other a husband and father. The two are often in collision: “Worked until 3 today at my lab – then to Mamas, where were Mary and Fuzzy Eleanor. At last now, even in my once yearning life, a little toddler goes to the door each morning to see me off and calls so cheeringly, ‘Goo Bye.’ But my soul is encrusted with toil – the mind cells are poisoned with this cussed zeal for work, to solve my problem, and grasp

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the reward.”68 It is the end of a remarkable year, 1920, and while there are problems with Phonofilm and money problems with Mary, de Forest does a very normal thing for him and votes for Harding for President. The year 1921 begins with the promise of parenthood: “I took my first walk with my little daughter – hand on my fingers – toddling footsteps and big wondering eyes. Eleanor now kisses Daddy. As the time for separation dawns on, her hood on my heart quickens, grows deeper with each new days developments. Mary too is suddenly given to much thought back to those good old days at the little Palo Alto lab and down by the beach station, where for the last time I was a youth alive with youth’s illusions and desires and aspirations, thoughts and hopes.”69 Finally it is Spring at Riverlue-on-the-Hudson, and de Forest remains preoccupied: “For a wonder, bright and sunny after days of NY rains. Eleanor is in her carriage, smiling joyously, the music of the bird song is pouring joyously from the phonograph in the living room, as clear as the original. Flowers, like and echo, from above the voice of my Mary. A rare hour of rest and peace and happiness, dotted by long drab lines of gloomy weather and endless recurring postponement. My eyes are gradually failing me – after all these years of study and constant use. Far sightedness is increasing (may it be seasonal as well as optical!). Soon, I fear, glasses (spectacles) will be necessary for reading. But at least I have the day to make acquaintance of my daughter, Eleanor without these disfigurements.”70 This is the soft side of Lee de Forest, one he tries to minimize, but it is there (Fig. 6.14). In the summer of 1921, a major change is in the air as a trip abroad is imminent. While continuing to invent Phonofilm by day, at night Lee de Forest writes about his family, “Mary was starting to sing professionally, Lee bought a Rolls Royce”71 He makes home movies with his new camera: “I filmed Eleanor for 180 ft of film with the factory movie camera – my first attempt at ‘camera man,’ eating her lunch, riding on her kitty horse, and in the fountain clad in her one piece.”72 Yes, this is the same Lee de Forest who one year ago was complaining that Mary spent more money than he made, but a closer look shows it was really he who spent the money, on cars, on trips, and on household help, having at one time at least a half-dozen servants. He plays well the role of the beleaguered yet wealthy inventor and industrialist, and in this moment he is successful. Of course it will not last.

The Phonofilm Decade It is probably a misnomer to call the decade of the 1920s “the Phonofilm Decade,” for while the technology did remain viable for the decade, and while his would become one of the major lasting sound-on-film inventions,

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Figure 6.14 Lee with Mary and their first child Eleanor. From the Seaver Center de Forest collection, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

it would not necessarily be de Forest’s decade. Stubbornly, he is still experimenting with and getting acceptable results from using a flame to write sound on film: “Kauffman, my mechanic, is still at work on the movie camera, seeking to drive it smoothly by motion. Experiments with the ‘Lexion’ and ‘Photion’ tubes are slow, because it is costly to take glass blowing pumps out of the production of the 1/2KW tubes. The capacity electrometer gives us no promise of sufficiently fast operation for voice recording. The voice-control applied to the flame offers no apparent advantage over the magnetic capsule – if the electrodes are in the flame, soot rapidly accumulates on points and nozzle. Hence my best chance of talking movies is the speaking flame (1/4 in. high) a slit 0.001 wide, xcyl lenses, cine film, special developer.”73 There is also a clue here about where he is getting his money. While he did profit from WWI he is now making and selling tubes legally to amateurs, and the de Forest name on a tube will continue to mean quality. Phonofilm inventing continued, and the talk of the flame as a modulated light source is not mentioned again. But there are many little issues, and there is a very good record of these ups and downs in the de Forest diary: “My movie camera still vibrates my Photion-made film records; but it’s improving, and sooner or later I’ll learn to overcome this mechanical fault. It’s a poor camera for my purpose so far.”74 His version of the lamp that furnishes the modulated light to write the sound is called the Photion, in the beginning a gas-filled incandescent source. It is his invention. He is

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still using the Case Thalofide Cell for reproduction. He works all day on Independence Day: “I worked in the lab on the talking film. The camera and heavy tripod is at last downstairs in my lab. I am nearly ready to attempt a picture. Darby is rushing foreign patents on the film and photion.”75 In July there seems to be a breakthrough in Phonofilm recording and while not perfect, it is significant: “Today I made my first talking movie picture of myself – talked too loud and the photography was poor – due to white back drop and the placing of the light. But it is at last made, despite shadows. Two months behind schedule and after 2 years of hard work in preparation.”76 After a year of perfecting the writing and reproduction of just the sound, he adds the picture on July 9, 1921.

The German Year In the summer of 1921, de Forest signs a contract with a German manufacturing concern, selling limited European rights to some of his patents. It is also going to be a break in the young family’s life, a chance to live abroad, and one he believes will benefit the family culturally. In early October 1921, the three sail for Germany. Was de Forest running away from something? Did he believe that he would learn about technology there that would allow him to improve upon his Phonofilm? The evidence suggests that his motivation is a practical one: “in distant Berlin I could be completely free from all business distraction, all radio problems, experimental and manufacturing – free to direct my every thought and energy to the ever-pressing problem of perfecting the Phonofilm to the stage where I could make public demonstrations and seek financial backing, and so work a needed revolution in the motion picture industry.”77 By the end of 1921, the three de Forest’s were settled in Berlin, Mary looking for singing opportunities while two-year old Eleanor was learning to speak German. But their time there was not a happy one, as according to Lee, the living conditions were primitive, the needed lab equipment did not exist, and it was cold, even more so than his home on the Hudson. And while Mary did fall off the wagon again, there were some positive cultural diversions, those of the fine music and opera then only available in Europe. The expected inventing outcome, although hampered by the lack of quality laboratory assistants, did seem to result in a Phonofilm system that was ready for public exploitation: In April 1922, he writes: “Mary played the role of Mme. Loraine in the first phonofilm drama, ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song.’ – But alas on the days when she recorded her song the Aeo Photion light was a poor one, thus she sounds bloaty, rough and unnatural. But when the new duplex phonofilm attachment is ready this may be pretty smoothed out. The weeks pass, the cost of production and maintenance of the phonofilm

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mounts ever higher. It’s a good deal of gamble as in any picture’s nature. But now a second attempt at drama. My firmest hope, as it has been my concentration on the work of recording – is the phonofilm reproduction of these scenes will be somewhat as realistic and convincing and satisfying as the sound in the studio.”78 A new element, the “Aeo Photion,” is introduced but not explained in any of the biography sources, and the diary has a noticeable 5-month gap between leaving for Germany in October 1921 and this day in April. The only reference to this apparent technical breakthrough is the “Kuntz photoelectric cells brought from the distant High Bridge laboratory.”79 The Case lamp de Forest in 1924 used for writing the sound on film was also called the “Aeo light.” The initials “AEO” as used by both de Forest and Case mean “Alkaline Earth Oxide.” In Berlin, there is a Phonofilm press premiere in late summer 1922 resulting in a series of stories in the American newspapers. This one in the Los Angeles Times surely attracted the attention of the film industry: “Sound is Pictured,” observed a Times reporter at a de Forest demonstration in Berlin for American reporters. “De Forest has solved the secret of talking motion pictures with perfect synchronization. With or without accompanying pictures, he can photograph sounds, vocal or instrumental, on an ordinary motion picture film and from the same standard film reproduce the photographed sounds. De Forest has been working on the problem for 3 years. In the first film, de Forrest’s assistant played the violin. You saw him wielding the bow energetically and at the same time heard the tone which to a musically trained ear, synchronized perfectly with every movement of the violin bow”80 De Forest tells another reporter, “We have to learn how best under all studio conditions to stage our picture and how best to record the voice which by our process of simultaneous photoplay on the same film inevitably synchronizes with it. That synchronization of the voice with the picture was the problem which made combinations of the phonograph and motion pictures an invariable failure. By our process no deviation of exact timing of the sound with the movement of the picture is possible.”81 De Forest also writes articles that explain his device: “The speaking film, or Phonofilm (the name by which it will be known) is now emerging from the laboratory stage into the film studio. The techniques of invention have been pretty well worked out. The technique of the new art must now be studied and developed.”82 The National Education Association was interested in Phonofilm too, and here de Forest suggests the nonentertainment uses of his sound film: “Education provides a limitless field for talking motion pictures, entirely aside from the possibilities of film operas, musical skits and vaudeville, scenic films, animated cartoons, news topic and captions.”83 In 1922, having

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just finished his laboratory work in Germany, he sets he tone for the use of his device before a readership of educators. He advocates using the educational sound film to save time in classroom instruction, and in defense of it: “To assume that our children must pursue the same painful, tedious, time losing methods in acquiring knowledge which their parents went through is equivalent to deprecating the arrival of stenography and typewriters on the ground that their development demands that we and our clerks write out everything in longhand!”84 So de Forest is willing to accept that what may seem a new-fangled short cut to some educators may be a better way: “Surely it would not be difficult to devise some method for improving the present inefficient and wasteful methods of education.”85 Touting the non-Hollywood uses of the sound film was also safe: The office of Will Hays said that in 1921 the money generated by motion pictures was $880,000,000, and that the industry employed 500,000. An argument made in 1922 was that the cost of changeover from all silent to all speaking films would be hundreds of millions, so advocating sound for newsreels, education, short musical pieces, opera, debates was a wise choice. Film industry expert Robert Ellis tells the NEA: “The invention, if it is what is claimed, is one of the most marvelous in history, putting the inventor on the level of Marconi, Edison and Bell, and coming from a man of such previous achievements as Dr. Lee de Forest, it is to be taken seriously.”86 Finally, “If it is a success, the overturn of things in the studios will be unimaginable. Some of the prettiest film stars cannot speak well and would be done for.”87 An early harbinger of things to come? Many stories were filed with the Berlin dateline in 1922, but the de Forest Phonofilm is returning to America. Newspaper stories begin to ask questions about what sound might do to or for the movies, or how life on the film set would change: “Ordinarily the film picture of today would not be greatly benefitted by the addition of the voices of the actors. An entirely new class of type of moving picture plays will be evolved for the Phonofilm. Actors and actresses who can speak as well as look pretty and make funny faces will be in demand.”88 The writer asked De Forest what might change: “One more revolutionary effect the Phonofilm promises to have on the present picture industry, Mr. de Forest added will be the silencing of the movie director. No more will he megaphone his instructions to the actor being ‘shot’ by the camera. All must be silent during production of the Phonofilm so as not to mar the recording of the actor’s voices. The director, therefore, must do his stuff in pantomime.”89 This is the great paradox: that in the production of a silent the set is noisy but the film is silent, but now the set must be silent while the film is noisy! In the silent film, the actors use pantomime while in the sound film it is the director who must learn it.

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There is some early angst about the possibility of sound in movies, even though it will take another 6 years. “Film stars of today will be eliminated by scores, while elocution teachers and throat specialists will become millionaires, if the speaking film of Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube, becomes a great popular success. The whole moving picture world will be revolutionized, according to directors and actors, if the ‘Phonofilm’ is a popular hit, but they do not believe it will jump into popular favor.”90 For this story, students of film were interviewed who, “generally felt confident that ‘speakies’ would never supersede the movies. Thousands went to the movies because they were restful and would stay away from speaking films because they would put too much strain on the attention and would, therefore, be tiring.”91 It was believed by those interviewed for this article that the speaking film “would fail because the illusion created for the eye would interfere with the illusion created for the ear, confusing and bothering the audience.”92 But wait. In just a few years it will be the new media of radio that will introduce the aural into homes, the missing voice, and the new sound.

Toward a De Forest–Case Contract After 2 years of trial and error and frequent correspondence between the two, Theodore Case writes to de Forest: “I have developed a new cell here which is almost as sensitive as the Thalofide cell but which is a great deal better for sound reproduction because it is absolutely quiet.”93 The indication is that Case is aware that de Forest is using the Thalofide cell for reproduction of audio for film. It is September of 1922 and de Forest has returned from Germany and surely Case does now know about the sound-on-film experiments from the newspaper articles. De Forest is still using letterhead titled “De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company.” He has not yet formed the Phonofilm Company. He finally writes openly about how he has used the Case cell: “All my Phonofilm apparatus is designed to take the Thalofide cell.”94 He asks if he might meet Case in New York City, “to discuss what arrangements might be made for the use of your light cells in fairly large numbers in connection with my speaking film equipment.”95 Case agrees to meet with de Forest in New York. The location is the Ambassador Hotel, the date October 2, 1922. This will be the first face to face meeting between de Forest and Case. Before that the lawyers get involved as de Forest makes his presentation in writing to Case attorney E.A. Thompson, explaining his history with the cell: “I find it very excellent and have purchased a number of these cells, I very much hope that arrangements can be made where-by I can continue to obtain these cells from the Case Laboratories as I believe I will be in a position to give them the widest

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possible market.”96 In this letter to Case’s lawyer de Forest reveals that he had used “photo-electric Kallium cells” in Germany but he needs the Case cells because they are being manufactured in quantity, “I have recently written to Dr. Case suggesting that some business arrangement might be made whereby I can use his cell in all of my Phonofilm projecting apparatus.”97 Was Case now somehow alerted to the possibility of developing his own sound-on-film process? The patents indicate that he began with the manufacture of the photo-electric cell and only later in the mid-1920s applied for and received patents for complete sound film systems.

The Slow Science of Sound-on-Film And while the contract negotiations are just beginning, Case and de Forest are still behaving cooperatively as scientists working on the successful Phonofilm system originated and patented by de Forest. Case remains helpful in the research: “The worst drawback to the Thalofide cell is the hissing noise when exposed to too much light.”98 The evidence strongly suggests that both de Forest and Case as fellow Yale alums had a mostly cordial relationship in the beginning, cooperating as two scientists engaging in research. De Forest writes about continued noise problems with the cell, “I obtain a very disagreeable scratching sound when the film is driven, even though this film is perfectly uniform having been exposed to an absolutely uniform light.”99 De Forest hand writes in the margin of this letter, “This is so with all Thalofide cells.”100 He also tells Case that he is working with Eastman Kodak to develop a film stock that is technically more suitable to recording sound along with the film. By now Case himself is experimenting with an alternative to the original Thalofide cell, this one using potassium. De Forest has some ideas. He suggests that Case perform this experiment: “You can easily try this yourself. Take a piece of transparent film from which all the emulsion has been cleaned and see if there is less scratching sound when this is passed before the potassium cell than with the Thalofide.”101 These early letters between de Forest and Case show the very slow development of sound-on-film science from a very convincing theory in the de Forest patent to its application in the form of actual films. Two years into their mostly science relationship, they are working as equals, and competition between the two remains nonexistent. The next day de Forest mails to Case a roll of Eastman positive film cleaned of all emulsion and asks him to make a test: “If you will run this in front of your thalofide and potassium cells you will doubtless find that the latter is far less influenced by the invisible irregularities in the stock than is the thalofide.”102 He discusses his experiments and Case makes a note in the margin, “‘write de Forest about galvanometer test.’”103 From the

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correspondence in these early years, de Forest appears to be pushing Case toward more testing. The older de Forest seems at time to take the role of the professor with Case as the brilliant but less-experienced student. Those who have written previously that Case was the real scientist behind Phonofilm and de Forest merely the showman and film maker should read these exchanges in the Case papers. It is good that Case saved these letters because it does show the scientific process leading to sound films. It demonstrates that there were no shortcuts, no “aha” discoveries, but rather the dull and methodical laboratory process, one small step at a time, slowed further by the pace of mail communication. And it was not just the lamps used to record and reproduce the sound, but it was the film itself, the microphones, the amplifiers, the loudspeakers. All of these individual pieces would have to be nearly perfect before the public would take it seriously. Contrary to the shorthand of history that says that de Forest took the process from Case, or Case from de Forest, it is obvious that in the beginning both men were collaborating in good faith toward a similar goal. The next month de Forest sends a lengthy letter to Case with the details of further testing using a standard 15 cent over-the-counter 1.5 volt lamp for recording the sound on film. He suggests to Case that he might try filling these bulbs with hydrogen as he has apparently done for his “phototelegraphy” experiments. He orders a half dozen of these and specifies their size and a filament amperage of 0.25. He is beginning to share with Case his work with various types of sound sources explaining how different bulb types seem better for voice while others better for music recording: “As I learned years ago this action is best just below the burning-out point of the filament – a loud sound is very apt to fuse the filament. Hydrogen should greatly improve this feature.”104 He adds, “Trusting that you are equipped to do this for me in a hurry!”105 The “hurry” is the premier of the Phonofilm system in New York City planned for the middle of 1923. He is clearly still treating Case not as an employee, but as a research colleague and his manufacturer and supplier of the needed lamps. Two days later he writes to Case almost breathless about the new microphone invented by Case: “it is such a remarkable device I can’t refrain from letting you know.”106 By now it appears that Case is beginning to look beyond just being the supplier of recording and reproducing lamps as he designs for the larger picture of the cinema system. De Forest is effusive about the results he has be obtaining, “It is absolutely perfect – voice and piano – and very sensitive. No one can hear this without being filled with admiration for the little ‘mike’ that makes it possible! My hearty congratulations and also thankfulness that you stuck to it.”107 This is the senior scientist de Forest taking pride in the younger Theodore Case. Certainly Case

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is beginning to understand what de Forest and others have known for the past decade – that for a successful sound film, many pieces need to improve and the basic audio technology must move beyond that of the telephone. De Forest mails six blank bulbs and instructs Case in what he needs: “Kindly fill these with nitrogen and exhaust as soft as possible, to give the maximum brilliancy on minimum voltage. Paint with bronze the two bulbs, at each end of the tube, or wrap carefully with tinfoil.”108 He suggests that Case put a drop of mercury in each, and tells Case that he wants his advice on what he is proposing. At this point in their relationship, de Forest has missed no opportunity to publicly praise Case for his innovations, even though de Forest obviously believes it is his invention. A few days later de Forest writes Case about another experiment: “I have made two attempts to photograph with the Western Electric bulb using first the slit which I have always used, and then gradually enlarging it.”109 He asks Case, “If you are not using the bulb which you actually used in taking the records which you showed me, I would appreciate it if you would lend it to me for, although the one I have seems to give brighter light than the first one, nevertheless this latter might be richer in actinic light.”110 At this point in the relationship, de Forest has made many useful technical suggestions but it is Case who now seems to have developed a better recording light resulting in better sound. At the end of 1922, this relationship seems to benefit both scientists, both of whom seem to share a common goal. What they have not done is committed the relationship to contract. Case responds: “The sharpness of the lines is fine except in places where the film evidently jumped away a little from the slit. I am having an arrangement now made to hold the film so it cannot do this.”111 He asks de Forest about the new lamp and tells him that he is continuing to improve his lamps. The next day there seems to be a breakthrough at the Case lab and a new lamp is sent by overnight train from Auburn to New York City: “It may not look very bright to you but it is extremely rich in the violet. I think that if you get this light right up to your slit you will have no trouble in getting pictures.”112 Case also sends a sample film made with the new light. First de Forest and now Case have film production studios in their labs so that they could light and shoot film, then process it in house, then play it back immediately. Case also tells de Forest: “I am fixing up a new camera which might be ready some time next week.”113 It is probably at this point several years into their relationship that Case begins to work independently toward his own patented process for sound-on-film (Fig. 6.15). Both scientists are excited, but the next day de Forest writes that the new lamps arrived smashed. De Forest has been experimenting with adding a small battery voltage so that the recording lamp is always on

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Figure 6.15 A 1922 Radio News story announcing that the “Pioneer in Wireless” Lee de Forest has invented the talking movies. He has just returned from his year in Germany where he rented a lab and made improvements to Phonofilm. From the Seaver Center de Forest collection, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

just a little, a faint glow, and while visually looking at it, it does not appear sharp, “It talks beautifully.”114 Here are two of the most important inventors of sound-on-film working seemingly around the clock, and with Christmas approaching, their families are probably wondering what happened to them. He has sent several drawings to Case now asking for a slightly different configuration of lamp, this one showing the anode supported in a different way. These are very minute but important changes to the system, each one tested using a music or voice recording and played back and carefully evaluated, “Or it might be better to put the support lead inside the anode, close up to the filament as otherwise the lead over the top of the anode will throw a shadow across the slit.”115 This level of detail and scientific communication between he and Case must have also taken place between de Forest and his early tube-maker McCandless during the development of the various Audions, but there were two de Forest laboratory fires and laboratory notes were lost. Also, as McCandless was in proximity to de Forest, it is likely that much of their correspondence was verbal.

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De Forest is late at the lab on New Years Eve 1922. He has just sketched a design for a hydrogen-filled “photion” tube saying: “if you can make up for me one or two along the following lines I’ll get me good results.”116 He describes the components needed, a filament with oxide coating, mercury inside the tube, and the use of a tungsten filament, positioned “so as not to shine directly through the slit onto the film.”117 He adds, “If it is not too much trouble make another with the anode inside this bulb, ring-shaped, and actually touching the glass bulb inside, i.e. so the glow is not too closely confined to the rear edges of the ring.”118 He draws another diagram of this, seen in Fig. 6.16. He asks to have this new bulb filled with argon gas and a drop of hydrogen. This is vintage Lee de Forest, working into the night on New Years Eve, likely missing the New Year’s arrival just as he has missed birthdays, holidays, and all social events. Was this detailed list of suggestions and supporting drawings the basis for the Aeo light developed later by Case and Earl Sponable? Both men in later years claimed that de Forest was only the “front man” in film sound invention, but the evidence in the Case Papers shows otherwise. It proves that de Forest was an active partner in the scientific development of Phonofilm, even in the tiniest detail. His instructions above asking for a “ring-shaped anode” describe the Case Aeo light. Surely Case did perfect important pieces, but based on hundreds of letters de Forest offered many suggestions and was an equal if not lead scientist in the relationship. De Forest does tell Case to start right away on whichever of the designs is the easiest to make telling him, “yesterday I got the finest lines and the clearest reproduction I have ever had, from my hydrogen-filled photion. I know these with filaments will give much more light, which is all I now lack for loudness.”119 He asks for other bulbs of different configurations and concludes, “With these I’m sure I’ll have a happy New Year!”120 All of this documents the very slow progress toward the talkies. Beginning in 1920 Case supplied to de Forest a better lamp, the “thalofide” photocell, to “read” optical sound-on-film. Now three years into their collaboration de Forest is suggesting a better lamp to “write” the sound-on-film, and Case is building it.

Other Sound Film Experimenters De Forest had been away from America for most of 1921 and in his absence other inventors are also looking at the technical possibility of adding sound to the movies. The “Great Race to Make Movies Talk,” compared current sound on film inventors, Tykociner of the University of Illinois, AO Rankine of England, Grindell Matthews also of England, Ernst Ruehmer of Germany, Leon Gaumont of France and Lee de Forest. All except Gaumont are said to use some form of recording with modulated light on the film. The writer

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Figure 6.16 December 31, 1922, New Year’s Eve. De Forest writes to Case with more feedback and ideas on how to improve the Thalofide cell. These early letters were respectful, honest and very much about the science of sound-on-film. There are so many pieces to be tried, tested, discarded or employed in every invention, and this series of letters is very useful to understanding the inventing process. From the Case Research lab, Cayuga Museum.

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suggests: “The greatest question in the motion picture world today is whether or not the pictures of players in the movies should be given voices and made to speak their parts like actors on the stage.”121 And an old film sound friend, the phonograph, was no longer just acoustical. Edward B. Craft’s 1922 demonstration of electrical phonograph recording and playback was being improved upon by Bell labs, leading to a synchronous film and disc system in 1924, later to emerge as Warner Bros. Vitaphone. There is now underway a number of improvements using the technology of the amplifier, with the initial goal to improve sound for the phonograph and the newly-popular radio. The major companies are also getting involved in sound-on-film and quickly. Western Electric experiments with a variable area recording on film using a light valve, and a Dr. Wente brings improvements to the horn loudspeaker, making it a moving coil design as opposed to the earlier systems using earphone drivers with their moving metal diaphragms. By 1926, a suitable paper cone loudspeaker of the moving coil type was developed, a technology that will first appear in radio sets and later the theater for film sound. In 1921, Hoxie at GE invents a film recorder with rotating mirror galvanometer for sound only, called the Pallophotophone for variable area sound tracks, and Orlando Kellum offers his film and phonograph synchronization system to D.W. Griffith for his experimental but failed sound film “Dream Street.”122 And while he was early and once the only active inventor in sound-on-film, Lee de Forest is now one of many chasing an elusive goal, sound for the very successful silent film. Even if they don’t want it.

The State of the Silent Any new technical development effecting film will have to be pretty spectacular to compete with the silent movies of the early 1920s. The art of film was at its highest level and audiences were making the movies a weekly entertainment habit. And there was more than what we today understand the movie-going experience to be. Rather than the bland, automated multiplexes of today showing a single picture, in the 1920s “Exhibitors considered themselves showman, not film programmers. The feature motion picture was only part of their evening’s entertainment, supplying about 68% of the total ‘attraction.’”123 Also on the program might be a one reel comedy, a newsreel, even live music from an orchestra or the “Mighty Wurlitzer” pipe organ. It was an entire show. The only thing missing were the voices of the performers. There was a system of recognizable stars, their lives were portrayed in fan magazines, and it seemed that nothing would stop the progress of the art of film. The only thing film had to fear was radio!

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Pioneer director D.W. Griffith would make, in this author’s opinion, one of his most compelling films, the 1921 “Orphans of the Storm,” starring the Gish sisters, Lillian and Dorothy.124 The story takes place during a rather simplified portrayal of the French Revolution, but it is really a tender and well-told story of two sisters left on the steps of a church and adopted by a poor family, who sends them to Paris so that the blind sister can be made to see. This is one of the best of the silent era, and it is a story told with a minimum of intertitles. It also features a Griffith staple, the battle scene. Whether the Civil War or a random revolution, Griffith is at his best directing battle scenes. But he gets his most emotional performance from Lillian Gish. According to historian Brownlow, “Griffith had an uncanny ability of setting his camera on a close-up of an actress and wringing from her a performance of heartbreaking poignancy. He did this with a magical combination of hypnotism, ventriloquism, and sheer directorial ability.”125 In the end, the hero Danton saves the sighted sister and her husband-to-be from the Guillotine, Robspierre is shown to be just as bad as the Kings his revolution has overthrown, and vision returns to the blind sister. This is silent film making as it is in the decade of its decline, later to be killed by radio, sound, and dialog creep, that tendency by the middle 1920s to use an ever-increasing amount of screen time for the intertitle. If this use of titles between every shot is how the story is going to be told, then it is the right time for talking pictures. Another silent, the 1923 “Lost Souls,” was all about Hollywood productions and the actors and directors. It featured 40 of the popular actors of the era, and had many morality lessons, including the small town girl who marries the wrong person, escapes and is “discovered by Hollywood” and becomes a big star. Her stern and religious Midwestern parents are shocked to find her working as an actress. But in the story she saves fellow actors from a fire on the set, and then she finds out that her husband has been married many times, and always kills his wives, but alas he dies in the fire. She kisses the lead actor who portrays the director, and in the end, the final title reads: “They are only players, after all; but they mean well and work hard, spinning pictures for the amusement of strangers. And they can never know, until it is too late to change, whether their toil will win them censure or applause.”126 This final thought is allegorical to the life story of Lee de Forest. One of the most significant films of the era was “Battleship Potemkin,” made in 1925 by Russian Director Sergei Eisenstein. The story is of a small 1905 event in Odessa, a revolution of the “people” vs. the Tsar. The workers on a ship refuse to eat bad meat and spoiled Borscht and when the captain threatens death for not eating the proffered pork, the sailors revolt and

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take over the ship. The Tsar orders his Cossacks to kill the now restless townspeople, a massacre that happens on the famous Odessa Steps, famous for its skillful use of editing together shots to communicate the horror of death. In the end the tiny Battleship Potemkin stands up to the larger ships of the Tsar and the sailors agree to be brothers in revolution, comrades in arms. The real significance of this film is in the editing, the so-called montage, and in 1925, as shown in this film, the art of cinema editing is now fully formed, perhaps as good as it will ever be. The 2007 restored version with the original music score but with a new orchestra is very effective!127 Another 1925 film that attempted to lessen dependence on the use of excessive titles for dialog was “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” a Warner Brothers feature directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch often complained that most pictures of the mid 1920s were just intertitles with a few pictures to illustrate, one reason, of course, why sound would not be such a hard sell. In this film, Lady Windermere’s once thought dead mother, a Ms. Erlyne, blackmails Lady’s husband to keep the Lady from finding out the secret. This is a comedy/tragedy of manners because the men who like Erlyne cannot marry her because she lacks social position. In the end Ms. Erlyne wrangles an invitation to Lady’s party. Fireworks ensue, but soon she meets and charms the ladies of the upper class. In the end she redeems herself, but goes away before telling Lady about her real parenthood: “It is a story about deceptions and misapprehensions among characters who fail to see the whole picture – to which only we are privy.”128 With the exception of the great films of Griffith, Eisenstein, Lubitsch, and others, the silent film of the mid-1920s is becoming stale, with too many titles, and not enough imagination. With so many of these titles as interruptions, it seemed the movies were crying out for synchronized sound to complete the story. Radio talked loudly already, and it was now competing with film as a communication and entertainment medium. In the documentary, “Hollywood, A Celebration of the American Silent Film,” writer Brownlow parallels the “movies” with its rival, radio, saying that the public was used to sound because of radio. But in a discussion of early sound experiments it is explained that the public could not take the limitations of low volume, bad sync, and wrong speed of the early experiments. As an example they use the D.W. Griffith partial sound feature experiment of “Dream Street” which used a disc synchronization system. Other film historians have suggested that the major reason for the failure of “Dream Street” was not so much the sound as the overall quality of the film. But the coming of radio did cause theater attendance to fall, and while the exhibitors tried many cinema gimmicks, they did not try sound.129

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De Forest and Case and a Phonofilm Premiere The Lee de Forest–Theodore Case relationship continues. It is largely by mail and mostly a formal one. Case always refers to de Forest as “Doctor,” and de Forest does the same, although Case is only a BA rather than a Ph.D. In January 1923, Case writes a long letter to de Forest summarizing the laboratory work on the new lamp used to write the sound on the film. During the past two years, both scientists have added improvements to the Thalofide cell as a pick up device in the projector and the creation of new lamps for the camera. Again the conversation is entirely scientific: “Of course with a lot of noise it can be over-modulated but if you cut down the modulation until it does not blare with your loudest tones I think you will find it pretty good when you get back at the end of the studio.”130 As an indication that they are sharing technology, Case asks, “Could you obtain for me a quartz condensing lens similar to the one you are using?”131 It is early 1923 and the two men have each set up studios and seem to be conducting parallel experiments in recording sound-on-film. They need each other and they are on friendly terms. De Forest sends Case an article from The Electrician magazine suggesting a way to modify the tube used to write the sound to get clearer reproduction. He is asking Case to make yet another bulb based on new ideas. Case is referring to a telephone conversation between the two and while these seem to be more frequent, it is still very much about the trial and error of the lab, “As for the symmetrical electrodes you suggest I will have one made up Thursday or Friday as soon as we get our system back in shape again.”132 In February, de Forest is recommending an article “Tyndall on Sound,” which describes the de Forest sensitive flame, and he asks Case: “Do you think it possible to use this method, setting a Thalofide cell facing this flame, and then a series of amplifiers between the cell or my light? If you get a chance you might try this.”133 De Forest also tells Case that he has discovered “what appears to be a more sensitive modulating circuit, but I hesitate to use it on this, my only good light.”134 In this letter he includes a schematic of the device, called a “5 watt amplifier” and describes how he adds a small transformer between the Audion and the lamp. He suggests that the “B” voltage may be too high and tells Case: “I flattened the edge of the slit, but the light is now far too weak to photograph. Must go back to sharp edges.”135 These early 1923 exchanges clearly show that the Phonofilm system is not ready, but all possibilities are being considered. There will be a New York premiere of the system in a few months and for that the Phonofilm, while still not perfected, will have to be much improved. Perhaps it is the romance of Phonofilm that keeps de Forest going, and he must also be pleased with the adulation of reporters invited to his studio

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as an early audience: “The sense of something being perfect, something being done so satisfactorily that the accomplishment alone, regardless of what that ‘something’ was, gave a feeling of utter peace; gave a feeling of surety that error had been barred out entirely, was strong on us as we sat in the little projection room and watched and listened to the latest and one of the most wonderful inventions of this marvelous age – the Phonofilm.”136 She describes the conclusion of the demonstration: “When the lights were turned on, we looked at each other, then simultaneously everybody drew a long breath. ‘It marks an epoch in human history’ said one man. ‘I feel as though I had witnessed the birth of a new planet or something’ rather emotionally insisted a woman. Dr. de Forest was smiling. ‘When I get the improvements done as I plan, the sounds will be clear as though the actual orchestra and performers were in this room.’”137 The writer describes the inventor: “He is tall, is Dr. de Forest, and slight in build, but of the muscular, wiry type which gives such an impression of strength. Fortunate you are if you can see him in his studio, hard at work recording, for then you get the full force of his enthusiasm. His 20 years of hard, intensive work have weighed lightly upon him. You would think him a schoolboy who had just discovered a new method of sling shooting, instead of a man who has compelled science to yield up one of her most stupendous secrets.”138 One the eve of the New York Phonofilm première, it looks good for Lee de Forest and Theodore Case, now the best known of the sound-on-film inventors. The talkies will not be far behind.

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If you ask whether the ordinary silent drama to which we are all so familiarized can in general be improved by the addition of the voice, the answer is an unquestionable ‘No.’1 Case Is Impatient De Forest Introduces Phonofilm The Business of Phonofilm De Forest Diversions What the Phonofilms Say

The year 1923 begins with great promise. Using the process he had first imagined in 1918, Lee de Forest is poised for his prime time premiere. By now he has made several dozen short Phonofilms and screened a few of these for the American and German press. This is the year of the Phonofilm, and for the first time members of the public will be able to experience a movie with synchronized sound. As Phonofilm matures Lee de Forest again turns from an inventor into a pitchman. First he speaks about his invention at engineering conferences. Then he carefully attempts to reach the widest audience possible and bring them in on what he has accomplished by making himself available to the daily newspapers, the scientific popular press, and the film technical support fraternity through the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. He also writes a booklet aimed at potential investors. At all of these venues and in print he sounds similar themes as de Forest, as always, “stays on message.” He will continue to be the producer and director of the content he envisions for his improved technology. He will be the face of Phonofilm. This year, 1923, is the premiere year for Phonofilm. But first he will be forced to reconsider his relationship with Theodore Case.

M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_7, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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Case Is Impatient The promotion surrounding the upcoming April 1923 New York premiere of Phonofilm has reached Auburn and has been noticed by inventor Case. What will this mean? If the processes he has worked on for the past 3 years are to move from laboratory to practice, and under the name “De Forest Phonofilm,” what will be the role of Theodore Case? This is the life-changing moment for him and his company as the de Forest-Case scientific correspondence of the past few years now gives way to the reality of talking pictures. How will it be done and by whom? Who will get credit? Case and his co-workers have quietly been improving their own version of sound-on-film, perhaps even leading to a series of patents. But de Forest seems to have assumed that his now 3-year long relationship with Case would continue along the lines of de Forest being the leader who suggests improvements to Case who responds by building the bulbs needed for the de Forest system. Now, as the former Harvard Law student, Case wants a contract, he wants the relationship on paper. Case is now being advised by counsel on his legal options. After being blind-sided by a letter from Case attorney John Taber, de Forest writes to Case: “Frankly, I am sorry that you and I cannot get together on this proposition personally without the aid or interference of our respective Attorneys, as I always feel that the Principals can come to a more equitable arrangement in this way without their Attorneys, up to the point of actually drawing up the Contract Papers to insure the carrying out of the ideas arrived at.”2 The communication process over the past 3 years has been cordial and formal, but it has been primarily carried out through letter and phone call, but seldom in person. And up until this moment, it has only been about science. It is one month before the first public showing and Theodore Case, having been an active part of the development of the de Forest system, now feels that he needs some protection for his ideas. He wants something out of this relationship beyond that of a lab assistant to Lee de Forest. He wants it in writing. De Forest is oblivious to Case’s concerns: “I have been working like the devil for over three years, building up a situation which promises to afford a very wide market for the Thalofide Cell, such a market as no other source offers to you, or will offer for a long time to come.”3 He is telling Case that he can make money if he remains the supplier of cells to de Forest. He can be the manufacturing arm of the De Forest Phonofilm Company. Surely this is not enough for the ambitious and bright Theodore Case. De Forest explains that under a proposed contract to equip 1,000 theaters with the Phonofilm device, it will mean the sale of 2,000 Thalofide Cells at $50.00 a piece, or $100,000. Case understands this figure, but if that is the scope of talking pictures, he wants his role to be more than that of a manufacturer. De Forest suggests: “It is certainly good business on your part to cooperate

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with me to bring the Fonofilm (a miss-spelling attributed later to de Forest’s stenographer) out on the market at an early date and in as practical and simple a form as possible.”4 He brings up the patent situation surrounding his recording tube, the Photion, telling Case he has, “a broad, basic patent covering the type of tube we are using. So that, presumably I am the only one that could employ this type of tube.”5 This is complex, who has contributed to what, and while in 1920 it was either a selenium cell or Case and his Thalofide Cell, now there are more patents and many variations of the tubes used for recording and playback. It will have to be sorted out. He describes the history of his work with the recording tube, his gas-filled Photion, and tells Case: “I hope that you and I will never get into an interference dispute in the patent office, but I would have no difficulty in establishing an early date on the use of helium.”6 Certainly Case feels threatened by this and he will wisely bring the situation to a lawyer. It is too complex and de Forest seems to be bullying Case into submission. But now without the benefit of counsel they are attempting to sort out their claims to the Phonofilm system: “As to the employment of an oxide-coated filament system, you are unquestionably entitled to broad claims, and I should very much dislike to have to use a dimly lighted tungsten filament, as shown in my 1921 patent application, although such I can use if such an arrangement is necessary.”7 He is telling Case that he prefers an agreement to use the superior Case lamps but if he has to, he can revert to those of his own patented design which he admits are inferior. He obviously needs Case, but he is trying to make him “blink,” to back down and agree to a subservient relationship: “I am sure if you and I can discuss these things as man to man, we can come to some mutually equitable understanding.”8 He offers Case a contract that pays him a royalty on all of the bulbs used, but he believes it too early to determine an exact amount. He also offers Case a financial interest in the company. He promises Case recognition for his contributions: “In all statements which I am giving out to the Press, and in the two Lectures which I am preparing, I am giving full credit to your Thalofide Cell, and also to the recent work which you have done in perfecting the Photion tube.”9 Before he adds his signature he concludes with a handwritten PS: “Excuse my stenographers’ inordinate fondness for Capitals!”10 Case thinks it over. He answers the following week and essentially agrees to a rental-lease arrangement whereby de Forest uses the cell and pays $3.50 per week per cell, “and nothing else, no stock, no guarantee, no share of profits either gross or net. In addition I am to be paid for the furnishing of the oxide cells, the cost of manufacture not exceeding One Hundred Dollars and for the furnishing of the thalofide cells Fifty Dollars each.”11 It is a few weeks before the big New York premier and Case surely sees immediate profit from a lease and manufacture arrangement. In this way he keeps control of the two important

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and unique pieces of the Phonofilm system, the lamps used to record and reproduce the sound. Case also advises de Forest: “The rental charge for the films will easily carry this load and it will make a great deal better proposition for you to put up to your prospective stockholders than a percentage of income gross or net.”12 Through the advice of his counsel Case does not want to be a part of the Phonofilm Company and the vagaries of stock sales, and the possibility that it will not be profitable. He has wisely opted for a steady income stream while he is developing his own film system. In this latest agreement Case has put his relationship with de Forest back onto a formal basis. Soon a contract will be agreed upon.

De Forest Introduces Phonofilm Dr. Hugo Riesenfeld is the musical director of the Rivoli and Rialto theaters, and the first industry impresario willing to take a chance on Lee de Forest. As de Forest’s early ally in the theater business, Riesenfeld believes in the potential of the Phonofilm: “He volunteered to find me a suitable studio, even a cameraman; when I was ready he would supply musicians for recording; when my Phonofilm was ready for public presentation, the Rivoli Theater would be at my disposal.”13 A few months had passed since his return from a year of inventing in Germany, and now with the backing of Riesenfeld the promise of a large Phonofilm audience is about to be realized. Moving at a rapid pace and with the help of his lab assistants and cameraman Harry Owens, a film studio has been constructed in New York City. Working with Theodore Case and his assistant Earl Sponable, a better light used to write sound-on-film has been developed to replace the Photion, called the “Aeo” light by Sponable, to whom de Forest credits its invention. De Forest also receives assistance with his original Phonofilm recordings from Western Electric, in the form of the loan of their latest high quality microphones and amplifiers. A program of shorts is filmed including an introduction speech, a dance synchronized to music, a comedy monologue by Eddie Cantor, and several other musical numbers. His first Phonofilm program reads like a 1923 version of a 1950s television variety show. It is one week before his première at the New York Rivoli theater, and de Forest appears before the New York Electrical Society to talk about the technology of Phonofilm and show the reel he has prepared for the Rivoli event. As he will a few weeks later before the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the SMPE, “He admitted that the technique of building a talking drama for motion picture audiences was something which would require a long time to perfect and predicted that the silent drama would never be transformed in to a talking machine drama merely by superimposing dialogue on the

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present type of photoplay.”14 He tries to convince the attendees that he does not want to replace the silent film, but rather he is producing and showing “short subjects” of musical and vaudeville acts, prologue-like films that will go into theaters to screen before the main silent feature attraction. As with the radiotelephone 15 years earlier, he is now attempting to present a complete cinema-with-sound system including its technology and content, as fully formed entertainment media. At the same time he is treading lightly around the motion picture establishment, saying he will not quickly venture into their territory (Fig. 7.1).

Figure 7.1 “The Sensation of the Century,” boasted a sign advertising a Phonofilm showing. There is a very large collection of playbills, programs, and newspaper advertisements promoting the theaters and other venues showing Phonofilms. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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The first major public showing of synchronized sound-on-film movies is the Rivoli Theater Phonofilm event of April 12, 1923. De Forest believes that Phonofilm is ready to show the public, and he hopes to fill the theater on this day with interested and influential members of the general public and press. This is an important day. He needs to make a big splash now in order to get funding so he can better his technology and continue to make more and higher quality films. He is counting on this showing for the unanimous praise he believes he deserves after four difficult years of development. Reaction at the Electrical Society showing several days earlier had convinced him that the nontechnical public might just like it too: “As the lights came on, the rapt pleasure and wonderment of the applauding audience resoundingly confirmed the judgment of Dr. Riesenfeld that the public would eagerly accept the talking motion picture.”15 Lee de Forest believed that he had again found his audience. The newspaper critics were not that enthused: The New York Times described the Rivoli program: “The first picture was called ‘The Gavotte,’ and showed a man and a woman dancing to old time music. The sound, which synchronized with the picture, was somewhat scratchy.”16 The writer pointed out that,“It was expected, however, by a good many people in the theater that Mr. de Forest’s invention showing a film synchronized with voices would also be the object of their attention. None was shown.”17 This may have been an oversight by the reporter, as the program did list several films with synchronized voices, like the Eddie Cantor performance. But for this important early audience, it was possible that at the last minute some films were deemed technically not good enough to show at this event. New York News critic P.W. Gallico wrote about it not as a new technology, but from the point of view of a man who cannot see a future for talking films: “Perhaps the reason for this is that we are prejudiced in the line that we hope to see the motion picture develop. Life truly expressed in motion photographs, emotion called forth by moving pictures, shifting paintings in black and white, these are the things which we earnestly desire the movie to attain. Expression in such pictures is as truly an art as painting, music or sculpture.”18 He is clearly a lover and defender of the silent film as it exists, and while not commenting on the technical quality of Phonofilm, he cannot see it compete, contentwise, with the current art of the film. Critic Gallico already has other issues with the film industry and he uses the de Forest premiere to air some of them. He seems to view the Phonofilm as just another “gimmick” to hide the fact that in his opinion the movies have lost their way as an art form. Gallico decries an industry that wants color, 3D, and sound with the lips synched over some art. This is an old story, art versus commerce. He lays out a perfectly good argument for the use of the language of film and

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editing, “Will the voice keep pace with these changes in dimension?”19 This is an important early discussion of how the sound film might be presented, as he asks what will happen to the voice when the camera goes from a long shot of a person speaking to a close up with speaking by the same person? This is normally done today with a change in “presence.” For the long shot you expect to hear more echo or room reverberation or street noise with the voice, but in the close-up you expect to hear just the voice with little echo. The audience has accepted this illusion as part of the language of film. Gallico writes about how with stage you see a character on one side of the stage and his voice comes from there, whereas a character on the other side of the stage comes from a different aural plane. He suggests that with the silent film this is not a problem, but with the talkies, all the voices, no matter where they are on the screen, will come from the same speaker. He

Figure 7.2 Two playbills of de Forest Phonofilm showings: “Pictures that talk without any phonograph attachment.” Even though the major première was in New York City, there were other Eastern United States venues, in the mid-1920s. These advertisements are for showings in Vermont and Boston, but they are not in traditional movie theaters. These were “speculative showings” by de Forest, and he was often there to run the projector and take the tickets. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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also talks about seeing the character 21 and a half feet high on the big screen and the voice coming out, “Will the normal voice do for such a monster?”20 These are interesting questions presented early (Fig. 7.2). So the press reaction to the Rivoli event was mixed and not necessarily based on the technical quality of the de Forest system. The subject was changed from the one de Forest wanted, his invention of sound-on-film, to questions about why the industry would want to replace the venerable silent film with movies that talk. A Cleveland reporter in attendance writes, “New talking picture shown, but what of it? The invention, which is called the Phonofilm and which has been perfected by Dr. Lee de Forest, does all that is claimed for it. The action and the sounds synchronize perfectly – but what of it? The music sounds like ordinary phonograph music, which is very different from that of a symphony orchestra to put it mildly.”21 His opinion after seeing it was that the public in small towns may prefer a Phonofilmed sound track to a lone piano player,“So while the invention, which is only one of a dozen that the writer has seen and heard, is interesting it is not particularly important.”22 In 1923 this reporter believes that the theatergoing public has not expressed an interest in talking pictures, but also suggests that if the quality could be improved, there might be a market for it: “The point is that after hearing a fine orchestra and witnessing really first class photography the pictures he (de Forest) offers suffers in comparison. Before he can hope to get theater managers to adopt the Phonofilm he will have to eliminate the scratchy photography tones.”23 This press reaction should be a wakeup call for de Forest, raising issues he had not considered during his largely technical preparation. Maybe Phonofilm is not ready. Perhaps it is too early? The issue of the localization of voices behind the screen will have to wait for a number of decades, but the public will not seem to care. The question of the audio quality of the Phonofilmed music is the one that will need to be addressed quickly as better microphones, amplifiers, and loudspeakers begin to appear. It has been said many times by de Forest that his system needs to be better than the Edison acoustical hornbased phonograph. One critic opined that the “scratchy” sound of the orchestra on the Phonofilm may be good enough to replace a small town piano player, but it would never satisfy the big city audiences. He is correct. Lee de Forest must have had his confidence shaken by the negative press, but he does not show it. He remains positive and continues full speed ahead (Fig. 7.3). Another New York editorial writer is more optimistic, going beyond what de Forest is saying about the uses and content of his invention: “Dr. de Forest’s invention, the Phonofilm, leads one to speculate on the possibilities that the synchronization of sound and action open up for the motion picture goer.”24 He goes on to say that while so far the device has only been used to film short dances and songs, and is not great quality yet, it does make the point that sound and picture can be reproduced from the

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Figure 7.3 A montage of news stories about the April 1923 Phonofilm showings, from the scrapbooks of news stories collected by de Forest. These scrapbooks are in two locations, the Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose, and the Seaver Center de Forest collection at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

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same piece of film. This writer did see ahead, in a way that de Forest may have not. He predicts the future correctly: “This idea will undoubtedly be so developed and perfected as to revolutionize the presentation of screen dramas and to make possible artistic offerings of an entirely different type from those we get today.”25 Imagine if this writer had the ear of de Forest and was given a budget to hire writers and directors to work in the de Forest studios to actually advance the art of the sound film. What if the popular actors and directors of the silent era were free of studio contracts and were allowed to make experimental features using sound? Instead, film production followed a bifurcated path through most of the 1920s. On one path the traditional and conservative owners of the silent movie production, distribution, and exhibition made successful silent films. On the other path the little de Forest and Case studios filmed vaudeville and musical performers, mostly acts from the New York stage. They existed in parallel universes. De Forest should have seized this moment but he did not. What should have happened quickly, if the interest of patrons like Hugo Riesenfeld was to be sustained, is capital and a creative and business organization. It was not enough to make short films and invite people to see them and hope for some favorable news stories. As the decidedly dim glow of the press and public’s interest in one-time events like the Rivoli presentation waned, there will have to be a spectacular follow-up, and both de Forest and the better connected Riesenfeld believed that they had to interest at least one major producer or studio. If just one highly placed industry leader could put together the right combination of script, actors, creative and technical crew, and marketing into a higher quality of Phonofilm, then the public and those pesky press people would see it differently. They would begin to see it as a revolution in entertainment media. But musical and vaudeville shorts will not get Phonofilm beyond the novelty stage. And didn’t the industry leaders know that another medium, the radio, was about to affect the bottom line of the silent film business? Still de Forest tried: “Riesenfeld called in Adolph Zukor. Carl Laemmle was vainly opportuned. His man Cochrane saw the light and heard the prophetic voice, but his superiors outvoted him. Balaban and Katz, Syndey Kent, all evinced the same reaction – No, Never, Nein and Nimmer! ‘The Publics dunot vant talking pictures.’ ‘Edison tried it and failed.”26 This was the early opinion of the industry leaders.

Telling the Phonofilm Story De Forest refuses to give up. He believes that the public and the industry need to know more about Phonofilm since they will be the final arbiters of whether or not it succeeds as popular entertainment medium. He chooses

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Scientific American for a technical Phonofilm introduction to the general magazine-reading public. Titled “When Light Speaks,” he begins by telling of his early motivation in 1918, his decision to devote time to “the field of talking moving pictures wholly by photographic recording.”27 As he had said many times, his primary interest was to develop a new use for his Audion amplifier and to “distinguish it from its application to long-distance telephony.”28 Years before he had sold the rights to the amplifying Audion to AT&T for telephony, and now with the greater possibilities in film and radio for the amplifier, he seeks to create a use for which he can own the rights. “Another motive was my desire to see a photographic device which would be free of many of the inherent short-comings of the disc machine, notably the short length of record, the necessity of frequent changing of needles, and the belief that by means of a pencil of light it might be possible completely to escape from the surface scratch which has always been inseparable from the existing types of phonographs.”29 He was telling the story as he understood it, as an advance in electronics, but he may not have understood the public’s emotional reactions to and connections with the stars, the glamor, and the action of the narrative silent film. Unlike millions of Americans, de Forest was not a weekly cinema patron. He may understand it but he does not “feel” it (Fig. 7.4).

Figure 7.4 In an August, 1923 Scientific American article written by de Forest, he explains his system works for a literate audience. De Forest was methodical in his approach: he spoke before and wrote for professional societies, the lay science press, and the major newspapers. He received plenty of coverage for his work. He was a science celebrity. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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He explains how Phonofilm works to a reporter for the Associated Press: “In the studio a motion picture is taken in the usual manner, but in addition to the camera lens which registers action, a microphone registers every sound made by the actor. A wire from the microphone passes through an Audion amplifier to a gas-filled tube called the photion located in the camera. The light from this tube fluctuates in exact accordance with the amplified telephonic currents which originate from the actor’s lips. A very fine slit is located near the negative film through which these fluctuating light rays are registered on the sensitive emulsion or the negative film as fine lines, which are actual photographic sound waves and being on the same film as the picture, insure perfect synchronization at all times. A positive print is then made in the usual manner. In reproducing, a small attachment contains a small incandescent lamp, which is placed in front of the photographic sound waves on the film. This light, passing through the sound record, falls upon a photo-electric cell, its brilliancy is governed by the density of the photographed sound waves. The photo-electric cell’s electrical resistance at any instant is determined by the amount of light falling upon it. The telephonic current from the cell is then passed through the Audion amplifier where it is built up hundreds or thousands of times. Thus, the actor’s words are converted into telephonic currents, amplified, photographically registered on the film, and eventually transformed back again into telephonic currents, which are made audible by the loudspeaker. As the motion picture must be projected upon a screen to be viewed, it is likewise necessary to project the sound in order that it may appear to come from the actor’s lips. This is done simply by running a lamp cord from the machine to the screen where a loudspeaker is attached.”30

On Stage at the May 1923 SMPE Annual Conference For his film industry technical audience de Forest arranges to present to the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the SMPE. This still viable organization (now the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, SMPTE) was founded in 1916 by film and television inventor C. Francis Jenkins for the purpose of the, “advancement in the theory and practice of motion picture engineering and the allied arts and sciences, the standardization of mechanisms and practice employed therein, and the dissemination of scientific knowledge by publication.”31 Lee de Forest believes that in order for Phonofilm to be successful he has to convince those film industry opinion leaders in the technical fraternity, the camera operators, editors, and others. De Forest wrote three Phonofilm articles between 1923 and 1926 for the SMPE Transactions, the written journal record of papers given at

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the annual conferences. In this he was practically alone, as in the first half of the 1920s it is mostly de Forest who writes about sound for the movies. He begins with a historical summary of all experiments previous to his, both sound-on-film and those synchronized with the phonograph. He lays down his seven standards for sound-on-film: “First, nothing but a single standard cinematographic film could be employed. Second, the speed must be that of a standard motion picture film. Third, the recording and reproducing devices must be absolutely inertia less, excepting possibly the diaphragm for receiving and the diaphragm reproducing the sound. Fourth, the receiving device must be sufficiently sensitive to permit its being successfully concealed at a reasonable distance from the speaker or source of music to be photographed. Fifth, the reproduction must be as good, or better, than the existing phonograph, and loud enough to fill any theater, where the talking pictures should be exhibited. Sixth, the photographic sound record must be so narrow as not to materially cut down the size of the normal picture projected on the screen. Seventh, the photographic record, therefore, must be in which the width or amplitude on the film was constant throughout, and the sound variations must therefore be photographed as variations in density in the photographic image. In other words, the light record should be in the form of exceedingly fine lines or parallel bands of varying densities all of the same length, and lying always transverse to the direction of the motion of the film.”32 He is the first to describe, before a public audience of motion picture, technical people what has been earlier described as “variable density” sound-on-film recording. All of his “seven standards” will become guiding principles for developers of sound-onfilm. This also shows de Forest’s ability to synthesize information from his experiences and the writings of others into a cogent whole (Fig. 7.5). He tells the SMPE audience about his experiments using different sources of modulated light, the flame and the incandescent light, and how he was able to record voice frequencies “up to 3000 per second.” He explains that while both of those light sources when focused directly onto a photocell for sound pickup sounded promising, he found he could not photograph them on film: “A photoelectric cell is far more sensitive than the most rapid photographic emulsion,” and so with flame and incandescent lamp abandoned, he turned a gas-filled tube he calls the Photion, which, “proved in the end the practical method for producing by electrical means light fluctuations of sufficient amplitude to be photographed in every necessary degree of intensity.”33 His reference to “3000 per second” may refer to the upper limit of the frequency response of early sound-on-film. Then telephone receivers were capable of a similar high end, but of course a major limiting technology was that of the carbon telephone microphone used to

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Figure 7.5 A reprint from the May 1923 SMPE Journal showing how Phonofilm works with text by de Forest. The SMPE published a written version of the papers delivered in person at their conferences. In the block diagrams the recording and reproduction process is shown in a very basic way. From the SMPE Transactions, No. 16, May, 1923.

record the early Phonofilms. The frequency response estimate based on the technology used then would have likely been less than 250–3,000 Hertz per second, satisfactory for voice reproduction but barely adequate for music. Today, most audio equipment is capable of at least 60–15,000 Hertz per second (Fig. 7.6). In this more technical revealing of how it works, he explains how it could not have been possible without his Audion not only as an amplifier of weak signals but also as an oscillator connected to the Photion tube to vary the intensity of the light. He compares his film recording system to a radio transmitter: “This oscillator is a form of the radiotelephone with which you are all more or less familiar. Connected to this high frequency output circuit is a gas-filled tube which I have called the ‘Photion.’ This tube glows at all times with a violet light which is highly actinic in quality. The intensity of this light increases around its normal brilliance in exact correspondence with the modulated high frequency energy of the oscillator. The light from the end of this tube is focused by means of a lens upon the very fine slit directly upon the emulsion side of the film.”34 This very detailed explanation should lay to rest what some of the inventors of the era as well as present day detractors have said about de Forest the scientist – that he didn’t know what he was doing. And he was also accomplishing

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Figure 7.6 De Forest poses with a modified Bell and Howell camera showing the Phonofilm sound recording attachment. The part that records the sound is mounted on top of the camera, so the sound is recorded before the picture. When sound on film was standardized by 1930 the sound was recorded 26 frames after the visual, leaving all de Forest Phonofilms obsolete. This photo is signed in French by de Forest himself. From the Seaver Center de Forest collection, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

something that even he may not have realized – he was showing how an industry might use his Audion as amplifier and oscillator in the service of more sensitive recording and louder and higher quality theater playback: “note now the all-important part which the Audion plays in the talking motion picture, or as I prefer to call it, the Phonofilm.”35 For the playback of his films, he has employed “the so-called Kuntze, potassium-mirror, photoelectric cell, and the less known but more sensitive and reliable ‘Thalofide’ cell of Theodore W. Case. I wish here to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Case, not only for his contribution of the beautifully suitable Thalofide cell, but for many very valuable suggestions, as well as practical laboratory assistance, in the latter course of my experimental work.”36 He does publicly thank Case, he still refers to him in the context of “laboratory assistance,” while Case believed himself to be more of a “co-inventor”(Fig. 7.7). What about Phonofilm in actual film production, the milieu well known to the SMPE? “For example, everyone must work in absolute silence, except the actors or musicians who are being actually recorded. This involves, of course, studios particularly designed for this work with every precaution taken against extraneous noises and interior echoes. The usual hammering, pounding and general bedlam which has heretofore distinguished the moving picture studio must be completely eliminated during a ‘take.’ A new

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Figure 7.7 On the left is a 1923 description of the “Thalofide” photoelectric cell from Case Research. On the right is an author photograph of the actual cell. This cell, used to reproduce the recorded sound, was the significant piece of the sound-on-film technology that made it practical and possible. This freed inventors from the earlier selenium cell used by Bell, Ruhmer, and Lauste, and for the first time made quality playback possible. This invention is Theodore Case’s claim to fame. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

type of moving picture director must be evolved, or if the old type is continued he must be thoroughly gagged, and learn to direct by signal and gesture only.”37 What he is doing, perhaps unknowingly, is threatening the familiar way of life of thousands of motion picture employees, not to mention making obsolete all the studios and equipment used in the very successful production of silent motion pictures. As a member of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers you would have to seriously consider all of this and what it might mean to your livelihood. De Forest is the first to sound this alarm. De Forest walks a tight rope as he attempts to answer questions from the audience, “Is there room in the field of the silent drama of screen versions which are not all merely pantomime?” His answer: “If you ask whether the ordinary silent drama to which we are all so familiarized can in general be improved by the addition of the voice, the answer is unquestionable ‘No.’”38

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He explains that most of the current film actors are not trained first on the stage, therefore their voices may not be adequate. He rightly compares what may happen with sound in movies with the beginning of movies themselves – that they had to break away from the old media and find their own language. Movies moved beyond just photographing plays and events into a dramatic art form, something he predicts for the sound film. So while he obviously is appeasing those in the industry by suggesting that his invention will not make the silent film obsolete, he does predict a future for the feature film using sound: “I claim that an entirely new form of screen drama can be worked out, taking advantage of the possibilities of introducing music and voice, and appropriate acoustical effects, not necessarily throughout the entire action, but here and there where the effects can be much more startling, or theatrical if you will, or significant, than is possible by pantomime alone, no matter how cleverly such may be worked out.”39 He tells the SMPE attendees that his Phonofilm can be used to bring great music to small towns, as well as other educational uses like the preservation of the voices and pictures of famous people and major events, but he cautions them that the silent film may not last in its current form: “There are many instances where the silent drama, as it actually exists today, can be improved by the addition of spoken matter.”40 As to the state of the silent in the mid 1920s with its over-reliance on dialogue intertitles, de Forest sees a problem that Phonofilm could solve, “where the action and sequence of so many silent dramas are today badly interrupted by the necessity of reading long and elaborate titles and explanation on the screen.”41 He understands that there will be new possibilities which “lie entirely out of the range of the silent drama.” He leaves this movie industry audience with some advice: “It is for the progressive and imaginative producers and scenario writers to act on these hints to evolve something which the public has for a long time, in an inarticulate and half-recognized manner, been expecting.”42 Seen in de Forest’s paper, delivered live before the film engineering group and published in their journal, is an early and gentle salvo fired at the film business as it is currently configured. Some of his ideas are less than fully formed, as is the case with any evolving body of knowledge, but there is a strong and sincere desire to use Phonofilm in some greater service. He sees sound for entertainment films in the future, but that is for the creative Hollywood community to ponder. What Lee de Forest will do next is suggest uses for Phonofilm by producing and exhibiting more examples. He will write a booklet and a business plan, and he will continue to get press coverage for additional public showings. He will continue to submit patents for his process, making the sound and the picture good enough to convince

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the critics and the audiences to embrace his system. By doing all of this now he will know in a few years whether this invention can be translated into new wealth, and whether or not his name will be in the annuls of history as the inventor of the “talkies.” He understands the stakes. Interest by the Hollywood technical fraternity remained low and the use of synchronized sound in a film was still a theory, a curiosity. In the first half of the 1920s the SMPE featured only four papers on sound-onfilm, and three of them were by Lee de Forest. The only non-de Forest paper was presented on the same stage immediately after the May 1923 de Forest reading. University of Illinois Professor J. Tykocinski Tykociner’s paper was “Photographic Recording and Photoelectric Reproduction of Sound,” a reprise of the same paper he had delivered on June 9, 1922 before the IEE, the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He is basically saying what de Forest had said before him, “The leading idea in the recording experiments was to modulate a source of photographically active radiations by means of telephonic currents in such a manner that the actinic (radiation that causes a chemical effect) rays concentrated upon a moving photosensitive film shall leave after development of the film a record of the variations of light intensity.”43 Tykociner describes several systems of recording sound on film, one using a carbon arc for the light source and a microphone connected to a galvanometer to vary the light falling on the film. This is an early example of what would later be called a “light valve.” He explains that a film recorded with the de Forest modulated light as variable density and one using the light valve for variable area will both play back on the same projector. Professor Tykociner explains why the original modulated flame of de Forest’s system worked better than an incandescent lamp, saying that there is a thermal lag with a filament lamp, “The conditions become more favorable when discharges of electricity through gasses are used as the source of the actinic radiations to be modulated.”44 de Forest must have also discovered that in his original 1919 experiments with both flame and tungsten light sources. In this presentation Professor Tykociner has explained more than one way to record sound-on-film, one of them like Phonofilm. All of them will be improved upon and be in use by the end of the decade. Tykociner’s presentation is more of a lecture in the theoretical physics and chemistry of the sound film than a plan for a practical system. You could say that he was the theoretical “Hertz” to de Forest’s practical “Marconi.” And while Tykociner did construct and test his recording and playback technology, it seems to have been confined to his university laboratory. De Forest will go beyond the classroom and scientific groups for Phonofilm. He will go directly to the public.

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Phonofilm, the Booklet Following the Rivoli Première and the SMPE paper, de Forest begins a larger publicity gambit, making himself available to newspaper writers, inviting them to his New York Laboratory to see the Phonofilm devices and studios. First he creates a booklet, which is part explanation, part pitch, and part pages of positive press clippings based on several months of public showings at the Rivoli and elsewhere. Many of the same ideas from his earlier SMPE paper were contained in this 1923 booklet called “De Forest Phonofilm.” This booklet is designed as part of a public relations campaign, with the goal to give the potential investors he so desperately needed the facts on Phonofilm. He also includes several testimonial letters extolling its virtues: “Your speaking picture is the greatest contribution to education and entertainment which has been made in more than a decade.”45 Most of the book is a nontechnical reiteration of what he delivered to the engineering group, and it is divided into sections detailing how the Phonofilm can be used for scenic effects in drama, news weeklies which are now silent, and comedies, but with sound, and the preservation of “great men” on film. The second half of the book is titled, “Commercial Possibilities of the Phonofilm” and it is written by a W. E. Waddell, a former manager of the Edison Kinetophone studio and American Talking Pictures. Waddell, who will become the manager of the Phonofilm Company, attempts in his presentation to talk about his experience with the 1912 Kinetophone, but with the usual caveats of its poor sound quality through earphones and the inability to maintain synchronization in playback. It was a phonograph system and he explains: “All talking pictures were merely a phonograph and a motion picture. The distracting scratch of the needle, the objectionable phonograph tone quality, the uncertainty of synchronism, and the ludicrous situation occurring when the film broke and the phonograph continued, all tended to give the general idea of talking pictures a black eye.”46 Waddell was the designated “straw man” of the old and obsolete way of sound film. Waddell does believe that, “today the public has been educated to motion picture pantomime and the time for talking picture features has not yet arrived.”47 Phonofilm was actually in no position to replace anything currently on the screen, and in this presentation it is being touted as a way to add musical and comedic features to the usual program of silent films now in theaters. Said Waddell, “The Phonofilm will be limited to single reel lengths containing one, two or three subjects. Try to visualize a fifteen minute film (a single reel) containing a singer who audibly sings, a dancer who keeps perfect time with the music supplied by the film, and a jazz orchestra in

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which every tap of the drum is seen and heard. Don’t you see that such a reel would add ‘pep to the program?’”48 It is a realization by de Forest and Waddell that they will never have the resources of the big studios, or the theater ownership, the stars, or the financing to ever compete. The idea settled on for Phonofilm as a business was to package a collection of short subjects and sell them to the theater owners to play before or after their usual silent features. The Phonofilm as Prelude. This plan may work and more important, it will not immediately threaten the position of the major studios in any discernible way. It is a safe choice.

The Press Is Invited to Learn About Phonofilm De Forest puts on quite a show for the press. He dons the stereotypical white lab coat and invites reporters to interview him in the context of his laboratory and studio. An Atlanta reporter headlines with “Think Speaking Film at hand,” and asks de Forest: “Witnessing a perfect synchronization of voice and action and experiencing an uncanny feeling as though in the presence of some magic, the question naturally arose, if this process can be so successfully applied to a single speaker or a singer, why cannot spoken drama be thrown upon the screen?” The uncharacteristic answer from de Forest was that he, “is feeling his way step by step by step and refuses to paint rosy dreams of the development.”49 He must have been pleased with the next story “Gas-filled Lamp that Photographs Sounds.” Writer Theodore Edwards describes well and colorfully a visit to the de Forest lab in NYC: “Probably the most curious photographic studio in the world is to be found on east 48th street, New York. One goes up two flights of stairs and enters a large chamber which looks like a combination of a motion picture plant and a radio station. Pale greenish illumination from tubes in the ceiling makes human flesh look strange and ghastly. Walls, floors and roof are covered with heavy felt matting which deadens every sound. All about one are projection machines, cameras, screens, horns, wires, Audion tubes and valves, coils and dials. Over it all presides a crisp, middle-aged man with a gray mustache and a brusque, but kindly manner. He is Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the radio vacuum tube, and he is taking pictures of sounds.”50 The writer makes this conclusion in 1923 about the change this invention will make on film production: “An amusing point is raised by the future use of the ‘Phonofilm’ for singing or talking movies. When the picture of scene and sound are being taken, the director in charge will no longer be able to vociferate his instructions and admonitions through a megaphone. He will have to maintain perfect silence, while the actors and musicians do all the noise making. He will probably be driven to the use of wild semaphore gesticulations.”51

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Thinking beyond the uses of Phonofilm that de Forest is promoting, a reporter presents what it calls “Odd uses of talking films,” listing those beyond the drama, the talk, the educational film, and the short subject: “1-to make political treaties and commercial agreements by picturing the contracting parties and their verbal commitments on the same film; 2-To make an uncontestable will by picturing the testator as he dictates his bequests, proving legality by appearance, action and voice; 3-To preserve for future generations the simultaneous voice and gestures of great statesmen, actors and singers; 4-To broadcast campaign speeches, propaganda, etc.; 5-To preserve speech and appearance of children at various ages; 6-To teach foreign languages by bi-lingual conversation and objects.”52 In another editorial, “The Talkies,” a writer predicts, “Thus the movies, which have been at a standstill lately so far as important development of the art was concerned, take a sudden, big step forward. Hereafter the movie art may be twofold, appealing regularly to the two most important human senses instead of one, and rivaling the ‘legitimate stage’ more than ever before. The only serious thing the films lack now is depth, and that can be supplied, though at considerable expense, by a stereoscopic device already used in New York.”53 This is the unspoken side of the coming of sound, that perhaps the silent film was tired and in need of change. Might it be sound? (Fig. 7.8).

Figure 7.8 De Forest poses with the Phonofilm playback adapter that would be attached to the popular Simplex silent projector in use in most theaters. The heart of it was the Case Thalofide photoelectric cell. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

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What did one writer really think of the talkies: “Let us have peace! This machine will not only interfere with the conversation of patrons of the movies but it will drive the tired businessman to the cemetery when he wants a little quiet to soothe his nerves. Besides it is going to make it harder for the girls to break in and become stars. The owner of a pair of very soothing legs – declared by a Los Angeles writer to be the prime essential in the work – might have the effect of filing a saw if she opened her pretty lips to speak and the voice that came forth did not match in charm and culture to her other equipment. The motion picture theater is, since the invention of radio, about the only place in the world, inhabited or uninhabited, that’s quiet most of the time. Leave it that way.”54 Besides the sexism that likely characterized the “old days,” the writer is misstating part of the story for effect. The movie theater was not a quiet place, but he is correct about the radio. In a few years the “silent” film business will try to figure out a way to get its audience back after the explosion of interest in staying home for the nightly radio programs. De Forest continues to be one of the top “go to” personalities for answers about radio, as “Inventor Claims Radio, Movies, Unpractical.” In 1923, with the radio rapidly becoming a mature medium, there was talk about using radio to broadcast the sound track for movies. The idea discussed was that in each theater, and especially those in small towns, a radio receiver tuned to the big New York station would be located behind the movie screen. The same movie shown simultaneously at a big theater in New York would have its major orchestra accompaniment “broadcast” using a radio transmitter. In theory the small theaters would have the benefit of a loosely synchronized musical soundtrack, from the big city, delivered by radio. This idea was actually tried a few times but it required too much attention by the operators in the theaters who had to tune in the radio, and run the film in some synchronization with the larger theater. But de Forest is also talking about television: “Broadcasting moving pictures by radio will be impossible during this generation due to prohibitive costs and other impractical considerations, Dr. Lee de Forest, commonly called the ‘father of radio broadcasting’ and perfector of the new ‘talking movie,’ the Phonofilm, said today.”55 There is much significance in this 1923 opinion. First, for most of the population the radio in 1923 was still a crystal set with a tube for an amplifier and headphones for personal listening, like a large and primitive iPod. The television was in its theoretical infancy, with some beginning of electronic television experimentation by Philo Farnsworth and others, and while some may believe de Forest to be prescient, he did miss the coming of practical television by a few hundred years: “Moving pictures can be sent by radio just as still photographs are now sent. But it will be many years – I’m not afraid to predict centuries – before

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radio movies will be practical. Modern science today is absolutely in the dark as to any discovery which would make the broadcasting of motion pictures anything as practical as the broadcasting of sounds.”56

The Business of Phonofilm A de Forest letter to Theodore Case on March 31, 1923 bears for the first time the new “De Forest Phonofilm Corporation” letterhead. He is explaining the business to the younger inventor: “We have secured very advantageous office space on the 42nd Street front of the Candler Building and all things are now in readiness to go ahead with the financing and operation of the company, actually producing films for market, manufacturing equipment for theaters, and undertaking to interest theater owners in taking the service.”57 Case solicits advice from a local manufacturer who is also a long time friend. E. D. Clapp is owner of an Auburn automotive company who has been approached by de Forest to invest in Phonofilm but he declines: “The whole proposition is too jug handled so that Dr. de Forest will get the lion’s share of whatever profits the company may make. Under the circumstance I think you are wise in having decided upon royalty rather than a stock basis.”58 Case is getting advice from those close to him while he distances himself from the de Forest Phonofilm business. The contract between Case and de Forest is finally formalized in April 1923. It specifies how royalties will be paid to Case based on the rental price of the films. These prices depend upon the size of the theater and its market. It is a 5-year contract beginning in October 1923. Case’s attorney does not originally agree to the contract and its royalty terms, believing that Case has developed and patented the cells and “more substantial recognition of his work in connection with the sound pictures should be made than you propose.”59 Nevertheless the negotiations continue and in the end the arrangement is close to what de Forest had proposed. He is suggesting that it may take a while to equip as many theaters as originally thought: “You appreciate that it will take many months to interest the theaters generally in the Phonofilm proposition and it is altogether too much to hope that even by October 1st there will be anything like 100 theaters equipped – probably 25 or 50 by that date.”60 He is telling Case that the initial contract specifying 200 Thalofide cells may be too ambitious for the first year and is asking for a contract modification, “so that to have the 200 per year period begin at this time would be a very great and unwarranted hardship upon us.”61 The two men and their lawyers meet several times at the Yale Club and the contract is formalized.

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Attorney John Taber proposes this: “I am authorized by Case Research Laboratory, Inc. to say that it is prepared to furnish you the Thalofide Photo-electric cells and the alkaline earth oxide (AEO) lights under a leasing agreement for the purpose of taking and reproducing sound pictures for commercial use in connection with the motion picture industry only, the oxide light for a manufacturing charge of one hundred dollars each, the Thalofide cells for a manufacturing charge of fifty dollars each, provided however, that a rental charge shall be paid on all photo-electric cells used on the following basis: Where films are rented for $200 and over per week seven dollars per week; where films are rented for $50 per week and not over three dollars and fifty cents.”62 A form of this agreement will define the de Forest and Case relationship for the next few years. Again Case was asked to join the Phonofilm corporation but he declined, preferring the sure income that a royalty-leasing agreement should provide. In May 1923 de Forest writes to Case regarding the final agreement, “I hereby agree to the arrangement, except that the exclusiveness of the use of the Thalofide cell should begin with the beginning of the contract and not be deferred until we shall have or are paying royalties on 200 cells.”63 He is concerned that his company will not be able to sign up as many theaters as originally hoped for and does not want to be stuck with unused cell inventory. He tells Case that there is now a new microphone in the recording studio, one he describes as “electro static,” and “I trust a good speaking record has been made, proven good in the Rivoli Theater, is now on its way to London where I planned to be about June 3rd.”64 This begins the formation of de Forest Phonofilm LTD in London under the direction of an old de Forest friend from his Palo Alto days, Cyrill Elwell of Federal Telegraph. By now Case is also modifying the Bell and Howell camera for use in Phonofilm. De Forest is in London and he tells Case, “Big Mistake suspending production altering camera before Bell and Howell perfected. Explain fully by cable. Leaving for London about first.”65 This is a third party request, first sent to Phonofilm manager William Wadell and relayed to Case. Wadell seems a bit cowed by de Forest and tells Case: “Will you out of kindest of heart address a letter to the Doctor explaining why this delay, in your estimation, was necessary. By doing so you will probably save me from a difficult situation.”66 Case confidently responds to de Forest: “I therefore recommend that they fix up the mechanical end before trying to produce anything, as there would be no more quicker way to kill this proposition than to put out bad stuff.”67 This shows the reasonable and practical Case trying to keep de Forest from shooting himself in the foot. In this relationship de Forest was the impulsive one, while Case was the

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careful one. There is also correspondence between Case assistant Earl Sponable and de Forest cameraman Freeman Owens. In later years both of these men will also claim that they made important discoveries leading to successful sound-on-film, but they will remain in the shadows.

New Enemies There is a new change in the talking pictures situation and de Forest feels he has to warn Case: “I am informed that the Western Electric is now at work on talking moving pictures, and it is highly important that we do not disclose to any of their force just what we are doing.”68 For his original premier at the Rivoli he was able to borrow a Western Electric amplifier from Edward Craft of that company but now that they are working on their system such a loan will no longer be possible. It is about this time that Craft developed electrical recording for the phonograph, thus creating suitable technology for the yet-to-be invented Warner Bros. system of Vitaphone. It was also at this time that George Squier, Chief Signal Officer of the Army Signal Corps asked de Forest for the loan of a Photion tube for defense purposes and de Forest replies:“I trust you will regard this device and its construction as strictly confidential, and be particularly careful that no information concerning same gets into the hands of the Western Electric or General Electric engineers.”69 The new enemies are now those companies that are noticing de Forest whose highly publicized Phonofilm showings are causing the industry to accelerate their own sound movie experimentation.

The Phonofilm Corporation Is Promoted Later in 1923 there is an attempt by de Forest to attract the business and film exhibition and distribution community to Phonofilm. A brochure called “Getting Ready,” begins with a newspaper quote, “Filmed vaudeville, concert and dance numbers will be ready for distribution by autumn, according to an announcement made yesterday by de Forest Phonofilm Corporation.”70 The company now has a name and the advertising for it is cleverly called,“Eight Giants,” described as “8 leading uses for the Phonofilm, 8 businesses combined in one, 8 separate sources of Enormous Revenue, any one of which should net more than dividend requirement, 8 reasons for investing in the marvelous Phonofilm.”71 The promotion emphasizes uses for the Phonofilm beyond features: “Feature pictures are fully 100 per cent more enjoyable when accompanied by high class properly selected music played by some fine orchestra.”72 Here again is the de Forest appeal to class for an industry that just wants profits and will give the public whatever it wants to sustain those profits. But in this marketing publication he is clearly touting the short subject and the educational film as the content

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Figure 7.9 Dated October 1925, a stock certificate for ten shares of Phonofilm stock. It was not a successful company, and like all other de Forest companies, it was undercapitalized and the businessmen de Forest selected and trusted to run it were often unsavory types. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

for Phonofilm. A letter is sent asking for stockholders to participate, and the company is said to be registered in the State of Delaware (Fig. 7.9). Following the stock offering and the Rivoli showing of the first Phonofilm-for-the-public, de Forest sails to Paris to meet his wife and child, and to both demonstrate his device and attract a foreign distributor and audience. He tells a reporter: “Not only is there perfect synchronization but the sound production may be of any volume necessary. I am working on the idea of having orchestra accompaniments on the films, thus doing away with the expense of music in a theater, a boon for the smaller houses.”73 A few months later the de Forest Phonofilm company is demonstrating in London and Cyril Elwell, now with Phonofilm, is there to get a distribution contact with a British film company. In November the British Phonofilm Ltd. operation under the direction of Elwell was underway, and there are new issues which de Forest raises with Case: “The Admiralty of course will only purchase equipment outright – they never lease – so Mr. Elwell is very anxious to know what you would do in the way of outright sale of the Thalofide cell, to be used only in this and similar work, where the equipment must be sold outright and cannot be leased.”74

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A Tenuous Relationship Begins to Deteriorate It is New Year’s Eve and de Forest writes to Case about the Thermophone microphone and his recent conversation with the press: “I took particular pains to tell them that this form of Thermophone was your creation. I have not read any of these newspaper accounts as yet, but trust that they contained the interview as I actually gave it, giving you full and proper credit.”75 This was not quite the way it was published and when Case saw the wording of the article he asked for clarification: “The thermophone was perfected to a great extent by T.W. Case at his research laboratory at Auburn NY, although the original idea was Dr. de Forest’s. May I inquire whether you were correctly quoted?”76 De Forest responds “I regret that the printed accounts of my interview did not more distinctly state that the thermophone in its present form was the invention of Mr. Case.”77 This is another fissure in the de Forest-Case relationship caused by issues of credit for the inventions surrounding Phonofilm. What the press actually knew was this: “Talking over the telephone by means of a flame is the latest idea in speech transmission. The telephone flame microphone is an invention of Lee de Forest and does away with the drum of the telephone mouthpiece. It is a gas flame burning more or less brightly by many thousands of times a second. The purity of the sound is improved upon since there is no metal weight to be moved by the vibrations.”78 This rings true as he did experiment with a “singing flame” as a detector of radio waves, a radiotelephone transmitter in the form of an arc, and a flame for his original sound-on-film lamp. De Forest did write to the New York World to clarify:“The Thermophone, the invention of Mr. TW Case, is used in the Phonofilm studio for recording anything from the lowest to the highest sound frequencies. In a diaphragm-less microphones, the action of sound waves upon heated air or gases was the basic principle involved. In the thermophone it is the alternate condensation and rarification of the air immediately surrounding the extraordinarily fine heated filament, producing corresponding and instantaneous changes in the resistance of the fine wire, which modulates the current.”79 Even though there are continuous complaints by Case concerning his lack of inventing credit de Forest is still corresponding with him over technical matters: “We find we have only one useable AEO light now, and if anything should happen while we are filming a production, we would be very much up against it and under very heavy expense. Could you please send us another by return mail with the hair-pin filament and identical with the one we are using.”80 Imagine that a film production including talent and technical support could be stopped for several days while the mail delivers the tube used to write the sound on the film. It is clear from the evidence that the de Forest-Case relationship, while largely technical, was

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important because Case was really the only supplier of perhaps the two most important pieces of the Phonofilm system. Other companies, Western Electric and General Electric, were experimenting with sound for film, but unlike de Forest they did not have a production schedule to meet. Alone among sound film suppliers in 1924 de Forest had deadlines to meet. He had contracts with theaters and he needed to supply them with both technology and new sound films on a regular basis. He needed Theodore Case (Fig. 7.10). De Forest is already planning ahead, “We are half way thru with

Figure 7.10 Three views of the Case AEO Light. This device was used to record the variable density sound track on the films made by both Case and de Forest. Even though these were Case’s inventions, the evidence shows that Case and de Forest collaborated weekly in the improvement of both the AEO recording lamp and the Thalofide photoelectric cell for reproduction. Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

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the Abraham Lincoln Episodes, and the negatives we have listened to thus far are very satisfactory. We believe this picture should prove very successful the week of Lincoln’s birthday.”81 He offers Case a bit of business information too, “As you know we have had two weeks’ showing, one in Proctor’s Mt. Vernon, and one in Keith’s Palace Theater, Cleveland at $250 each. We are enclosing herewith check for $14.00 and wish it were a hundred times as much.”82 Clearly de Forest needs Case for Phonofilm to continue and he wants to show good faith when possible by sending him checks as specified in the royalty-lease contract. Cyril Elwell also praises Case: “Dr. de Forest told me in May and September how you had helped him with the Phonofilm, and I quite agree that your efforts have been appreciated by Dr. de Forest.”83 Elwell, working under de Forest to manage the London Phonofilm company, is establishing his own relationship with the Case labs as he too will need cameras and projector attachments. So after four years of almost weekly correspondence de Forest remains highly formal in his relationship with Case. He does not call him Ted or Theodore, but “Mr. Case.” As the senior scientist and a Ph.D. to Case’s B.A., de Forest generally sees Case as a subordinate in the service of his Phonofilm. But there may be another element to this relationship. Case may represent the son that de Forest never had, the person he would teach and nurture to carry on the de Forest name. There may be another reason why Case is the only de Forest colleague ever who was publicly lauded in speeches and in the press and that is the Yale connection. Case graduated from Yale. Beyond that Case was a talented scientist and he did develop and manufacture the “missing links” in the de Forest sound-on-film system. In the end Case will tire of working with de Forest and even turn on him. Nevertheless Case continues to work to improve the de Forest system, “We have a light made up with a filament either four or two thousandths and use a lens to get the image of desired dimensions through the sound record. Very much better results, especially on high notes, quality greatly improved.”84 Both men valued laboratory work over all else. Both were professionals. But the larger question remains: How will Theodore Case be recognized for his important contributions to Phonofilm? Several times he has asked for some credit. De Forest does not disagree: “Confirming our conversation I cheerfully agree, in consideration of the fact that so many of the devices and methods we are using in the Phonofilm are of your design or improvement, to use the terms DeForest-Case System or DeForest-Case on all our literature and advertising, or wherever the system is mentioned so far as it is in our power to control.”85 In the titles of the earlier Phonofilms, there is the designation, “DeForest-Case Patents.” On the de Forest letter Case writes in the margin: “Mail this to laboratory Earle Sponable when done

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with it, T.W.C.”86 This is a continuation of a long quest by Case to get the recognition he believes he deserves for his contributions. But the already well-known de Forest continues to get all the credit for Phonofilm. An editorial writer for the New York Herald suggests that the talking picture may not be accepted by the public: “They feel that the use of spoken words will inevitably detract from the appeal of the motion picture. Perhaps they are right. I hesitate to commit myself, because I have a vague feeling that some day the talking movie will become a fact, and when that day comes I don’t want to have any printed words hurled in my face. I don’t want to share in the derision which had been lavished upon those poor boobs who told Columbus he was crazy. The skeptical attitude toward the talking movie is well illustrated by James R. Quirk who observes in the current issue of Photoplay, ‘talking pictures are perfected, says Lee de Forest the inventor. So is Castor Oil.’”87 On this news clipping scrapbook page de Forest underlines the words of Quirk, draws a hand with a finger pointing to it, and writes in the margin: “Recall these words 2 years from now! Quirk is right – and if anything on earth needs a good dose of castor Oil it is the present photoplay and ‘moving picture art.’ May the Phonofilm prove to be just that needed thing”88 (Fig. 7.11). Credit for Case on the theater marquees and in the printed programs may never happen. Phonofilm company manager Waddell writes to Case: “Dr. de Forest has, with some caustic remarks about my failure to carry out instruction, presented to me your letter of the 25th. At his request, I wrote an article of 125 words for the Rivoli Program giving you due credit. Mr. Ryskind, the publicity man of the theater, promised me to use the article, but it seems that he was unable to do so for the reason that Paramount naturally wants to use all the space for advertising their own pictures. Dr. de Forest feels much chagrined and with some reason blames me for the omission.”89 De Forest has assigned Waddell the task of getting the name and story of Case into the publicity, but there are problems: “I sent him over to the Rivoli to make an urgent request that your name be set up in lamps on the Broadway sign, but Mr. Mayer refused point blank to do it on the ground that they were not interested in any way in giving credit to anybody, but merely in securing the greatest amount of advertising for their features, that the name de Forest appealed to the radio crowds and that was the only reason they were using it.”90 He tried to get the theater manager interested, but he told de Forest that the public would not be interested in technical matters, or who invented what: “the theater management’s attitude is entirely selfish, they want merely to advertise what in their opinion will draw patrons.”91 Rivoli manager Hugo Riesenfeld told Waddell: “You surely understand that all our

Figure 7.11 This New York Herald story about Phonofilm and sound movies has de Forest’s hand-written comments, “Recall these words 2 years from now!” From the Seaver Center de Forest collection, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

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publicity has been exclusively ‘de Forest’ which we consider a valuable asset on account of the great popularity of the radio.”92 To his credit de Forest does spend much time trying to get the name of Case into the public eye but the exhibitors only want de Forest because of his history as an inventor of radio. By the end of March de Forest had ordered new Phonofilm titles: “We have arranged with our title manufacturers to use the wording ‘DeForest-Case Patents’ on all future titles.”93 Money mismanagement problems continued at Phonofilm: “Early last week I learned from our landlord that he had not received the rent check for the past five weeks although so far as I knew these were paid promptly.”94 He blamed these problems on a Phonofilm board member, a Mr. Tichenor, and after investigating he believes that Tichenor was out to discredit the Phonofilm company. He has him removed from the board. Problems with payment of royalties continue: “We are in receipt of your statement of April 4th covering your invoices of October 10 and February 19, 1924. There seems to be no record on our books showing unpaid balance for 1923.”95 Technical progress letters also continue to be exchanged between New York City and Auburn. Waddell writes to Case: “I presume Dr. de Forest has written you that we are recording the Covered Wagon music. We produced our first experimental test yesterday morning in the Rivoli Theater, and the result shows very great promise. Two phonograph men who were present stated that the quality was superior to that of anything ever done by wax recording.”96 De Forest tells Case: “We had had great luck lately in recording music. Wednesday we made four records of the Roger Wolfe Jazz Orchestra of eleven experienced players, using the German Camera. The negatives sound wonderfully well.”97 And several weeks later: “I have been trying very high resistance in series with the Aeo light, up to 10,000 ohms, and find that this very greatly reduces the blasting – not only from piano but from voice.”98 He tells Case that he is now using a new Western Electric four step amplifier and he plans to install it in the Rivoli theater, his largest venue. Case responds with a drawing, “We find this by far the best yet, perfect for piano and everything else.”99 He discusses his latest filming at his Auburn studio and his use of resistors with the Aeo light: “We have not had any blasting of the piano from these, as the arrangement and light acts very much better this way. There is more range allowed to the actor with this resistance in, as they can talk louder without shoving the light too much, and still drop down to a much lower tone and have enough on the film”.100 You may believe that the events leading to successful sound-on-film were easy, but what the evidence proves is that the act of inventing is often very routine. The very tiny steps to creating the pieces of Phonofilm are reflected in 5 years of correspondence just between

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de Forest and Case. We do not know as much about what went on in the de Forest film studio.101 De Forest explains to Case how to connect the various devices for sound playback in the theater in Auburn, “The amplifier went by express yesterday and the projector head and horns go this afternoon.”102 On June 11th he tells Case, “I believe it would be a fine idea to test out the straight filament lamp and slit-less arrangement in the Auburn Theater. You can do this very easily if they will suspend their Phonofilm show one week, giving us ample time to put on a special lamp holder and insert the small lens you use in place of the one now in the attachment.”103 What this seems to show is twofold: First, that Case and de Forest still have an active scientific and technical relationship. But second, the fact that de Forest is both equipping the theater in Case’s home town and making suggestions on the setup indicates that Case may have spent most of the development time in his lab while de Forest was visiting theaters and trying out the equipment manufactured by Case. He asks: “I would really be very interested in having you do this, and receiving a report as to the results obtained during the ensuing two weeks while the show is on.”104 It appears that de Forest is still the lead scientist in Phonofilm as he makes most of the movies in his New York studios. Case is Finally getting some recognition, “I have read over, with interest, the article published in the ‘Yale News’ on your talk at New Haven and note that ‘praise was given to T.W. Case, 1912 (Yale class of), for his photo-electric cell which has aided in the success of Phonofilms. I hope that in your next lecture you will not make it quite so evident that the Thalofide cell is our only contribution to these talking pictures.”105 But tepid praise will not be enough for Theodore Case. He believes that he has quickly moved from an inventor and supplier of lamps for de Forest Phonofilm to an inventor of a complete patented system for sound movies. Will the Case system be different enough from that of de Forest to stand on its own, to compete with Phonofilm? Or will Case remain in the background, undercredited, in tiny Auburn New York and continue to make photoelectric cells while de Forest owns the Great White Way? Within a year the de Forest-Case relationship will finally fracture forever. In 1923 and 1924 de Forest files a group of patents on Phonofilm clarifying the type of lamp used in recording and playback, a device to clean the slot which the film passes through while recording and playing sound, an amplifier and speaker system, an adapter for an existing camera that records sound, an attachment for the theater projector, a film printer for making copies, a printer that adds sound to existing films, a screen for sound movies that is “opaque to light waves and yet one that is highly transparent to sound waves.” He also received a patent for a Binaural

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Recording and playback device, his version of early stereo with the sound recorded from two microphones onto two soundtracks. For playback the two sound tracks feed two amplifiers and two speakers. He talks about using two or more microphones to better record all the sounds of an orchestra. During this period he files numerous patents, many of which would not be granted for years, and others would not be sustained because of interference claims. According to de Forest 79 patents were filed and granted for Phonofilm.106

Case Enters the Phonofilm Distribution Business A restless Theodore Case is now looking beyond just the manufacturing and leasing of his cells. Following a showing in the Case home town of Auburn, a small theater chain contacts him and wants installations in their theaters, all of which are nearby. Case writes to Waddell for advice, “We do not know except in a general way, what your selling policy is at the present time and would like very much if you would send this to us in complete form so that in cases like this we can work more intelligently.”107 Case also asks Waddell if he could line up more local business, would de Forest be interested, and how would it be handled. Likely because of the first and recent showing in his home town, he sees the interest in Phonofilm and begins to think beyond the technical and manufacturing. “The show is running very nicely in Auburn this week and the reaction from the public is very favorable.”108 He tells Waddell that there are some new movies being made at the Case studio and that he would like de Forest to see them. By the end of June there is a proposal by de Forest to the Famous PlayersLasky Co. for exhibition of Phonofilms in 30 theaters in the east and Midwest. There is a rental agreement and the costs for weekly use. He has also prepared a proposal for Case for the ten theaters in rural New York State. He is attempting to help Case with the exhibition of Phonofilms, something Mr. Case has never done. During the now 4-year history of their relationship, Case wants to learn beyond the technical. De Forest explains the film business to Case: “For example, if the cost of equipment and installation of a certain theater was $800, and you were receiving from that theater $100 per week you would receive your capital back in eight weeks, and would thereafter have 26 weeks or more during the ensuing year, 20% on your $800 investment.”109 This is the economic picture of sound movies in 1924 as seen by the tiny de Forest operation. Meanwhile, the Case organization is still confused about the sloppy billing and payment system used by the New York Phonofilm Company for their use of the Case lamps. They ask for a more accurate account and a table listing how much and when their items were used: “We call your

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attention to the fact that such a record was contemplated in our license agreement being mentioned in the last part of paragraph two.”110 By now Case has worked out an agreement with Elwell for the lamp lease and royalty for Phonofilm UK, and he is also supplying other equipment to that operation, such as his modified Bell and Howell camera and printer. Case is profiting from his arrangement with Elwell, as “the Bell and Howell camera fully equipped for taking Phonofilms, fitted complete with two and three inch lenses, tripod, and necessary auxiliary apparatus would cost you about five thousand dollars.”111 He sells him the printer for several thousand more.

Case Builds a Phonofilm Studio Theodore Case is now in the movie-making business and he will try to make some Phonofilm pictures that he and de Forest can show in their contracted theaters: “We will try not to overburden you with pictures but will go slowly and try to make only the best.”112 The Case Research people are now adding the production of films to their main mission of developing and selling the Aeo light and the Thalofide photocell. Case constructed a studio where today it remains in almost original condition at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn, NY. Suggests de Forest about the Case production plans: “You will have a good chance to try these out first in Auburn, and can readily judge there as to their entertainment quality. If the Auburn Theater will not take them probably the chances are we would have difficulty in marketing them elsewhere.”113 He is trying to put a good face on it, encouraging Case to make movies but to try them first. There is not much remaining evidence of Case successes as a producer-director other than the Gus Visser Singing Goose film. This comedy short is a film of a vaudeville act in which the comedian Visser asks questions and the goose answers by honking, a response elicited by Visser’s “goosing” of the goose. There is an agreement that allows de Forest to install equipment in the new Case studio,“and to your proceeding to the making of such Phonofilms as you can in your judgment best make in that location, selecting of course, numbers which you believe the theaters will demand.”114 He tells him that he will purchase prints from the Case studio and if they can be placed in exhibition he will pay him 50% of the amount received from the exhibitors. This is the second agreement between the two, the original one for the lease and royalty payments for the Thalofide cell and the Aeo light, and this new one for actual films made in the Case studio in Auburn: “I am sure you would not wish to saddle us with the cost of your experimental work in the studio, neither would we ask you to make pictures which we did not think we could use. We will, in fact, doubtless be glad to get from you all the

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acceptable pictures which your studio can turn out during the ensuing year.”115 De Forest is looking ahead to a possible increase in demand for short sound pictures and he cautiously sees Case as an eager but inexperienced producing partner. He is trying to tell Case that some of his small town acts may not be upscale enough for the big city audiences where the Phonofilms are shown. He is politely trying to encourage Case to deliver higher quality acts. Phonofilm distribution is now spreading to Chicago, St. Louis, and Pennsylvania, and de Forest is in production of more new Phonofilms to meet the demand, “We have our Bell and Howell camera working now and the preliminary tests show a marked improvement over the results obtained with the German camera.”116 De Forest continues to keep Case informed about both the business and the technical progress of Phonofilm. Whether he regards him as just a supplier or a colleague is hard to tell, but he has treated Case as a valued member of the Phonofilm effort while quietly asserting his leadership of the project. This is unusual for the lone inventor Lee de Forest, and there is very little evidence that he had any similar relationships before and after Phonofilm. Case responds with more technical advice: “We have not had any piano blasting for quite a while in the bass notes. I believe that you are getting this because of your taking such a weak negative film and consequently in order to get a strong positive you are over amplifying.”117 He encloses a sample of what he calls a “dark negative,” one that allows a better positive. There is much of this pioneering laboratory work being carried on both in New York by de Forest and in Auburn by Case and Earl Sponable. There is an agreement drawn up in July 1924 between de Forest and Case for a Phonofilm installation in Case’s home town and now the issue of credit is raised, “I notice in your contract with the theaters that you have a clause which says that exhibitor, if he advertises, shall use the name de Forest in said advertisements. I believe I have a letter from you which states that wherever you controlled, literature or advertising, that you would include the name of Case. Would you mind inserting this, as per your understanding, and send me a revised copy?”118 Soon this becomes the primary issue that strains their relationship, de Forest believing that he is the primary inventor and that his name will help “sell” the Phonofilm to the audience, and Case, believing that his contribution has been minimized so far as the public is concerned. Meanwhile Case has sent de Forest several films from his studio, a harp and sweet potato film and a Russian dance. Case is using three different microphones for his recordings, a carbon, an electrostatic, and the thermophone: “We have found that the electrostatic microphone is very touchy and

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if overdone the slightest bit will cause a lot of trouble whereas with the carbon and thermo microphones there is a much bigger range of over amplification permissible providing the negative films are fairly light.”119 Even as Case loses patience with de Forest over the credits in Phonofilm advertising, he still updates him about technical progress, telling him in detail all he is learning. de Forest responds: “The harp and sweet potato record sounds very good in the theater, but of course, on account of the limitations of the picture itself we cannot expect Mr. Riesenfeld to run it. That act might be taken in a larger studio and made commercial.”120 Was he saying that the act was too small town for the big New York theater? How would Broadway and the Times critics react to a sweet potato and harp film?

Filming the President In the summer of 1924 de Forest is still using under a lease agreement the Case-invented and patented Thalofide cell and Aeo light, and appears to be on good terms with his important colleague: “Just returned from a day’s visit with Case at Auburn. The comedy’s the thing for the small town audiences – that and the dances. I think unquestionably the ‘straight filament’ lamp and slit is the thing for all small and medium size theaters. I have at present no doubt as to whether this will give sufficient volume (using the 3 step amplifier at least) for the larger metropolitan theaters.” He now involves Case in his next major project, the first sound film of a United States President. But this is more than just a presidential address. This is a filmed debate between the three presidential candidates with Coolidge the incumbent the first to be filmed. There is also a bit of secrecy surrounding this filming and he tells Case: “Please do not say anything to the newspaper people or others regarding our plan to Phonofilm the President, as preliminary stories leaking out might seriously embarrass our plans. We are very careful down here to say nothing about it”121 (Fig. 7.12). De Forest and the Phonofilm crew will go on location with their technology and later edit the three candidate statements together and show them in theaters on the East Coast. De Forest narrates it for his diary: “Case had brought his Bell and Howell camera and amplifier down in an auto from Auburn. After due formalities in the executive offices we set up the camera and amplifier under a wide spreading tree near the south side of the White House, where everything would be pleasant and comfortable for our president. He walked out alone, in a business suit at 12 o’clock. While Case and Blakely, my cameraman were there alone, I was much peeved that we had set the camera up in the full sunlight, where doubtless he would have suffered a sunstroke before he finished his 9 minute address. However the camera was left in that position and promptly at 2 pm after sundry cops and secret service men had

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Figure 7.12 Two frames from the President Calvin Coolidge Phonofilm. The title frame shows the result of what Case had been demanding, that his name be attached to the films they had both worked to perfect. In the title frame of many of the surviving Phonofilms, at the bottom of the frame it reads, “De Forest-Case Patents.” Case wanted more, including his name alongside that of de Forest on the theater marquee. The frame on the right is President Coolidge in the White House Garden reading his speech before the camera. From the Zouary and Pointer collection, DVD, “First Sound of Movies,” 2003 and the Library of Congress Zouary Phonofilm Collection.

stationed themselves about the landscape, an awful silence reigned on the earth. And after an audience had collected – of people of all ages and sexes and (he) read off his speech with the greatest gusto – so much so in fact, for the best results on the carbon microphone. But I think he won a number of votes right there. We had him speak twice and will use the better of the two. So our one day’s stay was very brief but very successful.”122 The negative of the president has not yet been previewed at the de Forest studio, “I do not wish to risk running the negative through the projector. The print will be in tonight or tomorrow and I will let you know the results.”123 The President’s talk is back from the lab: “We have listened to the first ‘work print’ of the President’s speech. We have matched the two together as well as possible and there is a slight unavoidable jump in the picture but the speech runs right along and I do not think therefore, this jump will be very much noticed. Every word is perfectly clear and characteristic but there is all the time that characteristic ground noise which, I believe, is absolutely inseparable from the carbon microphone. I will never use the carbon microphone where it can be avoided.”124 This mid1920s realization marks an important break in an important piece of the technology of sound recording and radio broadcasting. The carbon microphone dates to the previous century as the microphone used in the

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telephone, and the microphone is one of the pieces that needs to be improved before the public will fully embrace the talkies. The next candidate was Davis and de Forest reflects for his diary: “today we took our studio outfit in a big truck out to Locust valley, to the estate of J. W. Davis, the Democratic nominee and with the electrostatic magazines made, I believe, a better picture than either of the others in Washington. And our Bell and Howell camera makes more noise than Case’s on account of the gears, even with ‘spark plug’ on the camera – I had forgotten to put in a felt ‘gobo’ to shield from the noise of the camera. Davis is by far the most pleasing personality of the three – a fine face, frank, clear honest style, cordial and sincere.”125 This is Lee de Forest as an early news reporter. Coolidge will appear again on Phonofilm in the next year following his 1924 reelection.126 This foray into political journalism occurs 1 year following the Rivoli showing and even though there was much publicity surrounding these events Phonofilm is not financially successful: “I am now nearing the end of my financial resources for carrying out the Phonofilm. So far contracts or promises from more than a sufficient number of theaters are paying the present expenses. But to finish all this, to continue the studio, to turn out the kind of quality of pictures that can keep these theaters showing and contented – I must urgently look elsewhere for assistance. Why such an initiative as I have now from the Phonofilm to be – unique in its appeal, its earning power, languish for want of abundant support – is hard to explain. It surely shows that most men today are devoid of all imagination or initiative or daring. But if necessary, I must once more ‘burn up my house to keep my furnace going.’ I have no fear of final outcome.”127 It will only get worse. In the next year he will spend many thousands of dollars on Phonofilm and not raise any significant outside money.128

Cash and Credit In August the theaters in Case’s part of New York are running Phonofilms and returning profits and de Forest asks him: “I would appreciate therefore if you can send us a check for $5000 to cover these five installations under our contract.”129 There is an expense claim covering the Case people for the Washington trip and de Forest pays it promptly. De Forest sends a check for the Thalofide cell rentals and both parties are satisfied but guarded. There is some money being made with Phonofilm but not enough. Case writes his concern that Phonofilms are not being shown on a regular basis in Philadelphia and New York: “You have not been able to sell contracts in these two cities for any length of time at the price you feel you are entitled to because they may object to the quality of the picture that you can offer them at the present time. Would you be kind enough to let us know what

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the plans are for operating in Philadelphia and New York during the fall and winter season?”130 This is a good question to which de Forest answers that their contract with Famous Players prohibits Phonofilm from exhibiting in the vicinity of Times Square. Case complains again about the “considerable laziness in payment of rentals and other invoices due us.”131 Apparently there are many unpaid under the lease-royalty payment agreement and the bookkeeper at the Case company accuses the de Forest operation of confusing if not poor record keeping, and although he presents a number of past examples of unaccounted for Thalofide cells it is done in a respectful way. “Considering the several past due invoices, the invoices that will be due for payment the fifteenth of September and the balance that you will own us to meet the minimum requirements of our contract, the total will amount to about $6500.00.”132 De Forest writes to Case at the end of August 1924 and tells him frankly that the Phonofilm installation is six months behind the original schedule. He predicts that the royalties will start to come in but he needs time to pay the Case bill: “I do not want you to be hard on me on October 1st and I am writing now to suggest that you agree to extend the time for the payments specified by six months. Under all the circumstances I really believe that you should grant this extension.”133

De Forest Diversions While the latest start-up business of Phonofilm occupies most of de Forest’s time in the early years of the 1920s, there are always other issues facing the busy scientist, many of them happening concurrently with his race for the talkies. There is family life and the birth of a second daughter, there is the sale of his radiotelephone company, and there is to be another trial with Edwin Armstrong. Also, he is becoming a critic of the present state of radio programming and advertising. But before all that, revisit Christmas 1922. He has just returned with his family from Germany and he is feeling charitable. He donates a radio to his boyhood school, “Radio Christmas Gift to School for Negroes,” and the 600 students of Talladega College were able to listen to radio for the first time: “This centered around the desire for closer communication with the outside world. Radio is the new golden key for which the students of this school have been searching”134 Lee de Forest donates a radio and connects it for the College where his father Henry de Forest was once was president. This was a big deal in 1922, as many outside of the big city did not yet have radio. De Forest also receives yet another science award that will document his life, this one from the prestigious Franklin Institute in Philadelphia,

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“recommending the award to you of the institute’s Elliott Cresson medal for your invention of the Audion, adopted by the committee at a meeting held on the evening of September 4th.”135 Following this announcement of the intention to award him and a lengthy confirmation process, there was a ceremony the next year, at which de Forest tells the audience: “The Audion has been deemed by many scientific historians to be the greatest contribution to a great scientific era. It has revolutionized communication; it made possible long distance telephony and is the basis on which the entire art of radio broadcast and reception rests.”136 He meets the greatest inventor of all time in 1924. Thomas A Edison, inventor of motion pictures, the light bulb, and the phonograph, was also the discoverer of the so-called “Edison effect,” which was the basis of the Fleming Valve and the Audion. De Forest owed more than he realized to the now aged genius. He was asked to introduce Edison at a birthday luncheon for the man in February and after detailing his work on the motion picture and the light bulb, he cleverly bypassed any reference to Fleming: “I refer to the original discovery in 1888 of the phenomenon known today as the electron discharge, which for many years was simply as ‘The Edison Effect.’ On this discovery, a mere incidental byproduct of his epochal work on the incandescent lamp, depend all the subsequent developments of the electron tubes by which our entire system of communication, by wire and wireless, have been revolutionized.”137 Edison wrote a letter back to de Forest saying, “I am much obliged to you for sending me a copy of the remarks you made at the luncheon last Friday. Of course, you realize that I could not hear a single word of anything that was said by the speakers.”138

Family Life While Lee de Forest would have absolutely zero time for his family, he seemed pleased by the current state of affairs. After the initial work on Phonofilm, including the premiere, the speeches and the attempts to make it a viable business, he does try to get back to Riverlue in the evenings: “These are exceedingly busy days and nights – but filled with two vast, all expanding joys – my work is at last succeeding, in big things. I am at last creating this new and wondrously joyous and prolific art of which I have so long cherished dream and determination. The other is the new found sunshine and understanding of Mary, sweet and deeply loving – deeply loveable, wife and mother … She is once more the kind and sympathetic one of 1920-21 – before that ill-fated, ill-starred European year. And more, for now, for the first time, she is truly becoming the keenest friend in my work, and relishing with me, more than I myself, their triumphs which are one by one, coming to the phonofilm”139

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A second daughter, Marilyn, is born: “I am pleased to be the father of two lovely little daughters. How natural it seems now to be such. Yet one week ago I could not by any stretch of the imagination picture myself to be here, nor possibly to be content with this outcome. And for months past Mary has respectfully declared she did not want this baby – that ‘I could have him!’ How she would forfeit her life rather than have harm befall the tiny stranger. What a mothers’ heart is here!”140 Mary, having taken the kids on a post-birth cruise returns, “Mary, my beloved wife, now speeding on the sea back to me and your babies – tonight I have re-read all your old letters of love, yours and mine to you. Tonight my heart throbs anew with that old love and adoration – deepened by the realization of all those far, far dreams – intensified beyond all need of words, with a depth, and measurably beyond expression, by the two darling daughters asleep in their rooms. Come back to me, my sweetheart, beloved and longing as of old – Let us renew those fervent vows, and re-live, with a deeper happiness of heart’s devotion, those first dear days of our love. Let us live again.”141 And the joy of Christmas: “happiest of Xmases since I was a lad in Talledega – made so by my two sweet little daughters – for the first time gathered together about our Xmas tree. What joy to watch their joy. O joy of parenthood!”142

The Sale of the de Forest Manufacturing Company Of greater significance is the November 1922 expiration of the patent on Fleming’s valve and de Forest is once again free to use his invention, and to manufacture “legal” tubes. Previously, under the American Fleming patents owned by the Marconi Company, de Forest could not manufacture or sell his Audions easily. Said Charles Gilbert, the president of the De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company: “Now after many years of litigation and other hindrances, Dr. Lee de Forest will finally receive what is due him. He will be able to manufacture his own invention for the first time in many years.”143 The De Forest Radio Company issues its annual report for the year ending December 31, 1922. Stockholders were given the good news: “The first five months of 1922 was marked by a phenomenal and totally unexpected demand for radio apparatus which exceeded greatly all estimates. The story of how the radio receiver jumped from an instrument of comparatively limited use to one practically of necessity in all homes, fulfilling Dr. Lee de Forest’s constant and firm belief in their ultimate widespread use, has been too well known through the columns of newspapers and magazines to require repetition.”144 In the included spreadsheet, stockholders received in 1922 two payments of 50 cents per share and the profit for the year is $288,532.58. While the Phonofilm business is not be so fortunate, it seems that there is gold in radio broadcasting and the radios themselves! (Fig. 7.13).

Figure 7.13 This 1923 ad for radios by the company that bears his name shows de Forest’s hand-written notes in the margins. While de Forest sold control of his manufacturing company he did hold stock and so it provided some income. De Forest always said that all of the money he made from selling control of the De Forest radio Company was used in a futile effort to make Phonofilm viable. From the from Seaver Center de Forest collection, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

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He sells control of his company. The announcement: “Auto men buy out de Forest radio company” was made public in April of the next year, as Edward Jewitt of the Page Motor Company and the Jewitt Radio Company of Detroit and his partners bought the de Forest radio telephone company for a price not announced. Said Jewitt: “It is our intention to make the name de Forest as significant to the general public of the best and most advanced in radio, as it stands today among the experts.”145 De Forest will use the money from this sale to help finance the Phonofilm.

Rail Against Radio A common de Forest diversion is his dissatisfaction with his “first child,” radio. He wants advertising to be barred from the radio, believing, as David Sarnoff did in 1916, that the way to make money on radio is to sell radios, specifically the ones manufactured under his name. Obviously this plan would have a finite life when everyone already had their radio set. In a speech to a New York Rotary club, de Forest spoke against, “any monopoly of the air in the radio field. The normally Conservative and Libertarian de Forest urged government control as not only for its best interest, but an absolute necessity.”146 He said: “We are glad also that the American Telephone and Telegraph Company is restricting advertising by radio and now we only wish that WEAF would refrain from it. The newspapers, billboards and magazines are the proper places for advertising – not the ether.”147 He also told the group that his Phonofilm was today where radio was in 1920. He outlined two uses for the Phonofilm, one the recording of immortal men for posterity, and the other the distribution of music with feature films. Of course de Forest did not like the type of entertainment now commonly found on the radio, and as with his Phonofilm, if he had his way the country would be listening to commercial-free opera on the radio and seeing it in the theaters. He still believes that it is his mission to raise the cultural acumen of the American People.

Enemy Armstrong The patent battle of the century continued, the multi-decade legal nightmare of De Forest v. Armstrong over the rights to the feedback or regeneration feature of the Audion, a discovery that allowed it to amplify and oscillate. Both de Forest and Major Edwin Armstrong claimed that they discovered this in their labs in late 1912 and early 1913. Two years earlier the circuit court had awarded Armstrong priority for regeneration, but de Forest will not give in so easily. In the middle of Phonofilm development and in the face of overwhelming odds, he finds himself in the midst of another trial: “After 2 weeks more or less awaiting my turn to be witness in

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the suit to annul the pesky patent of my hated enemy Armstrong I finally finished my three days on the stand Friday. Time alone will tell the outcome. What joy ‘twould be to at last see that patent which has cost me (and the radio public) so much – annihilated and the rude egoist put back where his real achievement belongs”148 To say that de Forest had some enmity for Armstrong would be an understatement – he really, really hated him! The outcome of the trial was headlined, “De Forest granted Priority on Audion,” “De Forest made ‘Radio Baron,’” and “De Forest wins seven year suit,” and while he can claim victory this time, it is a hollow one: “Although a half million dollars will be the annual gain of the De Forest Radio Company as the result of the recent court decision declaring Dr. Lee de Forest, the inventor of the all-important radio oscillating Audion, his own share will amount to but $15,000 yearly.”149 De Forest had already sold most of the stock of the company he once controlled to Jewitt and his group from Detroit. Then 50 years old, de Forest savored the victory as a moral one more than anything. This latest court decision was based on a single scrap of paper, witnessed by de Forest lab assistant H.B. van Etten, and dated August 6, 1912, showing that de Forest had drawn what is called “feedback,” although at the time he was not aware of its potential. This had been, and will be, the crux of this ongoing battle. Said the court, “It is generally conceded, indeed it must be, that this drawing and the notes not only disclosed the invention, but disclosed it in a clear, workable manner. It matters little whether the case be disposed of upon the theory that what was done in August, 1912, amounted to reduction to practice or merely conception of the invention. In either event, de Forest must prevail.”150 A few months later, in September 1924, Lee de Forest returned to the SMPE and presented a short paper called “Phonofilm Progress.” He told the technical members of the film industry that “Over thirty theaters have been equipped for Phonofilm, and this work is now progressing at the average rate of two theaters per week, while more than fifty additional houses are under contract awaiting equipment, as fast as the necessary apparatus can be built and installed.”151 The number of theaters equipped and under contract may have been an exaggeration, as the evidence does not really support that large number. He explained one of the ongoing problems: “The weakest link in the whole project is in the reproduction by means of loudspeakers and the necessary horn for amplification.”152 When he first began Western Electric had loaned him some of their newer amplifiers, but the horn speaker used in early radio was still the major speaker in use and it could not have been of high enough quality to carry an entire feature. It would have been difficult to listen to the tinny sound of the horn for a long period of time. It would not come close to the sound quality of

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the live music typically played for a silent film. Nevertheless what de Forest was doing before others was all of the trial and error experimentation for the talkies, most for live audiences in real theaters, thus paving the way for the major studios to begin their sound experiments knowing what had worked and what had not. For the industry he draws a bright line over which he will not cross, promising: “The Phonofilm will never attempt to tell the same form of story adapted for pantomime nor will it draw its talent from the regular motion picture field.”153 He is trying to reassure the industry that their way of life will not change, as his idea for sound movies is the short subject, the comedy or musical short. He did not tell the SMPE audience that day that he was experimenting with longer form drama without synchronized dialogue, really a silent film with music accompaniment as Warner Brother’s would do in a few years with “Don Juan.” He shares this only with his diary: “Now we have virtually finished recording the movie for the ‘first reel’ (2400 ft) of the ‘Covered Wagon’ first of the great feature films which will hereafter go out into the small theaters (and large ones as well) carrying with them the well-arranged and properly played music of this feature presentation. This is indeed an epoch-making achievement in the field of motion picture entertainment, one undoubtedly destined to have a profound influence upon the popularity of the cinema – And more than that, I have shown the way for educating the masses, indirectly, unaware of the uplift (and therefore the more effective) of better and more worthy music in a way that the radio can not, for a long time to come – follow. For the Phonofilm music is not distracted by static, nor distorted by poor amplification, regeneration, heterodyning or bad loudspeakers.”154 Delusions of grandeur?

What the Phonofilms Say Following the première showing at the Rivoli Theater, an explosion of production was reported at the de Forest New York studios, “Among the Phonofilm productions being made this week in the de Forest studios are a series of dramatized soprano solos, a series of Indian dances, a comedy turn from vaudeville with singing and dancing and the ‘Celeste Aida’ number from the opera. In the list of performers are Gladys Rice, soprano, and Lillian Powell, classical dance. The Phonofilm contains and reproduces the entire action, both pictorial and audible”155 Most of the Phonofilm story has concentrated on its science and some discussion of how it might be used, with the majority opinion being that it

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is better suited to short subjects than as a replacement for silent features. This did not have to be so, but lacking any connection with the giant film industry, Lee de Forest really only had two options. One was to attempt to make feature films. This proved a priori to be impossible as a creative endeavor as the major studios had contractually tied up the reasons for its successes in silents, the major actors, writers, and directors. Features were not an option because of this lack of talent. That was only one reason. Among his many talents de Forest was not an experienced producer, director, or knowledgeable about any of the creative talents needed for moviemaking. Another reason was that in order to compete in sound feature film production, an entire new infrastructure would have to be built to write, film, edit, and complete features of competitive quality. There is also the “theater problem,” the relationship between the producers and distributors. In the 1920s the film business was mostly “vertically integrated” meaning a single company owns and controls the production, distribution, and exhibition in their theaters. This left de Forest with a single choice, best described as the short subject of music, comedy, and vaudeville, and later the talking news reel and the educational and advertising film. What do Phonofilms represent as an art form? Do they in any way advance the art and language of the film? The short answer is no. By studying examples of the Phonofilms films in the context of the film in 1923 you can get some idea about how the public might react to them and why. There exist a number of surviving examples of Phonofilms, with most of the known survivors being housed in the Maurice Zouary Phonofilm Collection in the Library of Congress. Mr. Zouary and colleague Ray Pointer put a number of the best of these restored by Zouary into a documentary called, “The First Sound of Movies.”156 On this documentary are thirty restored Phonofilms. By watching these films it is obvious that there is no artistic imagination behind the presentations. Their only goal seems to be to record a technically proficient performance with its sound synchronized with the visual (Fig. 7.14). The de Forest Phonofilm studio was a crude affair with a backdrop of heavy drapes and artificial greenery on one end and a fixed camera in a sound-proof box with a microphone mounted on top at the opposite end. Most of the films are one take only, meaning the camera was started, the act performed or sang or talked, and when it was over once the camera was stopped. This one take was a long shot and the camera did not move. If there was to be any editing, it was just the joining of two of the best parts of these long shots rather than any sense of montage. Phonofilms were recordings of a staged event, more like a home movie. As a scientist de Forest apparently and rightfully cared more about the synchronization

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Figure 7.14 From a later Phonofilm patent drawing, de Forest shows his simple studio. At one end is a camera in a sound-proof box with a microphone mounted on the top. At the other end is the performance. While de Forest had many theaters signed up to show his short movies, they were never “films” as much as they were filmed performances. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Figure 7.15 A montage of frames from Phonofilms, All were of the popular vaudeville and music acts of the day. From the Zouary and Pointer collection, DVD, “First Sound of Movies,” 2003.

and the audio quality, and volume than any film art. By making this choice he will forever be known to most film scholars as an “amateur” film maker. But he did what he promised: he brought the stage and vaudeville and music talent of the time to the small town; he preserved on sound film the entertainment and political voices of the mid 1920s. But as a film maker he was a minor player (Fig. 7.15). Through his diary entries you can visualize him at work in his laboratory, making suggestions on technical improvements, then walking down

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the hall to the set of a production: “Work at studio – jazz band, Adolph Zukor, Frieda Humphrey and tenor from Gridiron Club of Washington. Installing synchronizer between number 2 camera and projector machine, recording German Band Comedy and testing out the first 2800 ft of ‘Covered Wagon’ picture music. Now at Famous Players Lasky dinner at hotel. Today begin work at Rivoli.”157 And the press is always welcome on his set: “Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of talking motion pictures, is busy making a new ‘Phonofilm,’ in which there are twenty persons in the cast. This is the first time that so many players have been employed in this type of production. The story of this picture deals with life on the east side of New York, and among the novelties introduced is a little ‘German band,’ which gives the sort of music for which such bands are noted. Dr. de Forest gives many sounds, including the roaring of the elevated trains, the cries of the street vendors, the voices of children playing in the street and the noise made by boys on roller skates. The present title of this film is ‘East Side, West Side.’ J. Searle Dawley is the director and W.W. Waddell is responsible for the story.”158 He is beginning to go beyond the short subject and use synchronized sound in a way that the entire industry would embrace in a few years, a hybrid of silent art and sound effects. Although not synchronized voice as in dramatic dialogue, the de Forest company was beginning to use sound and music effects, and in the process discovering the new language of film audio. This film sounds interesting in the Times review but it does not exist as a restored film in the Zouary collection. Most Phonofilms remain static camera records of music presentations: “De Forest to Film Chauve Souris Story,” is another example of de Forest’s passion for high culture as he plans to film a major stage show: “Probably no imported production in the history of the American stage has created the furor that has attended the yearly presentation of the ‘Chauve Souris,’ and the 1925 edition will be phonofilmed under the joint direction of Dr. de Forest.”159 It was reported that he would film the entire production and then try to sell it abroad as well as in the United States. This is a large-scale production for the tiny de Forest company, but he is still filming staged events, not making films. He also films on location: “Fortune and nature smiled on us yesterday. Six lovely girls, of Mme. Savora’s classes came with two musicians, violin and cello and in costumes of the flimsiest gauze, fair tresses flying wild in the breeze, garlanded with clusters of flowers, they posed and pirouetted on the stones and on the stone bridges, gracefully danced here and there to the strains of Grieg’s ‘Spring Song.’ So skillfully directed were they, so perfect that I saw in actual life, in color and motion, the essence and ‘Spirit of Spring’ here in my garden at Riverlue. I have never seen anything so completely, perfectly beautiful as was that dance to spring.”160

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A few days after filming the dance at his Hudson River home he returns to his studio with the processed film to evaluate the results. It is obvious he is more concerned about the sound than the picture: “Last Friday here at my studio I listened to the reproduction of the two dance pieces played the preceding day to the dancers as seen on the screen – ‘Scarf Dances’ and ‘Spring Song.’ Never have I heard from any form of Phonograph record music sounding so realistic, so true to the original, as these two numbers. There was an entire absence of ‘phonographic quality.’ Here the orchestra seemed to be again present. Involuntarily, I starred at the screen to assure myself that the musicians themselves were not actually in the room, playing! I feel reasonably pleased and encouraged at such results. These are unquestionably the finest recordings ever made. I begin to feel confident now that I shall actually, by this Phonofilm method, reprise all the old dreams of mine, to actually reproduce, recreate fine music as it was played in all its excellence, its purity and clarity of tone volume. So that a movie, with its musicians, real critics, (myself among them) can have at home, at their command, the best of the world’s music, as played by the master musicians of the world.”161 And while he is impressed with the quality, he knows it has to be better: “I realize that there are many voices, many instruments which will for a long time baffle our efforts to reproduce. But I already have proven that we can record well-nigh perfectly, fine orchestral numbers, far better than can any phonograph, after all, years and millions spent on its development.”162

Phonofilm a Friend Most of the de Forest Phonofilms are of the familiar vaudeville and music stars of the 1920s. Some feature the President of the United States at the time, Calvin Coolidge, and there is a later one of the return of aviator Charles Lindbergh from his historic flight. But then there is the curious case of the Country Fiddler Charles Ross Taggart, a seeming anomaly in the de Forest film repertoire. Here is the antithesis of the de Forest taste, a man dressed as a hillbilly playing a fiddle on an old farmhouse porch. But things are not as they appear. It seems de Forest knew Taggart from his Mount Hermon prep school days. Wrote Taggart years later: “I wrote to Lee de Forest who, as I have told you, was a classmate at Mount Hermon, to congratulate him upon his success in the scientific world. De Forest asked me to visit his laboratory and make some tests for his new Phonofilm invention upon which he was working. The first picture was ‘The Old Country Fiddler at Singing School’ and it was shown for the first time for a week at the Rialto Theater in New York City.”163 Old school ties never die. Cue the sweet potato and harp.

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De Forest had promised to send his company manager to Europe to make Phonofilms of some of the great operas and screen them in the small town theaters. This was a passion of de Forest, his promise to bring great culture to those far from New York, and he believed and told others that this would make the Phonofilm viable. In the end, the idea of great moments in culture probably ran into the same reality that all commercial media must face: How big is the market? How many non-New Yorkers will pay to see opera from Europe or the big American cities? Is the potential audience large enough to sustain the manufacture of Phonofilm equipment, the supporting staff to operate it, and the actual production, distribution and exhibition of those films? This is essentially what Lee de Forest gambled on beginning in 1923, that enough citizens would share his decidedly eclectic taste in entertainment, one heavy on traditional opera and dance and light on pop and jazz. Ironically in a few years the public will vote by embracing a movie about a young man who goes against his background and his Cantor father and becomes a singer of jazz. For this, his family vilifies him, just as de Forest would do many times in his long life, his particular rant focused on “jazz and boogie woogie” on the radio. In de Forest’s world view, unlike that of the Warner Bros., it was not give the people what they want, but rather, give the people what is good for them. In the end the Phonofilm, as demonstrated by de Forest, was the Opera, the Broadway Stage and Radio with pictures, but not the Cinema. De Forest will continue to make short films, Theodore Case will continue to make photocells, and both scientists will soon agree to disagree. Radio broadcasting will become decisively established as the first new media of the 1920s. And while all these are taking place, Hollywood is awakening from its silent slumber and the era of the talkies will be ushered in by an unlikely technology – that of the often discredited phonograph!

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Work and plenty of reading, and de Forest radio problems also – all keep me from being lonely – or from worrying too much about the depleted treasury, or the Warner Bros. competition. Oh, why did I listen to the advice of others to let others handle the business management a year ago! Inventor that I am I have more clear business judgment as to how to manage Phonofilm or its finances, in one minute than these “businessmen”, bankers, lawyers, managers and what not have shown in a year of futile or dishonest meetings, deliberations and “conferences.”1 A Deaf Ear to Phonofilm Death by Vitaphone The End of Mary Sound-on-Film Technology Wars The Industry and the Public Adapt

Phonofilm will not go quietly. In spite of the odds, Lee de Forest will continue to make and distribute films in the Phonofilm format to those few theaters equipped to show them. There is limited success, but the field for sound movies is getting crowded. Yes, Phonofilm is finally a mature technology, but now it is not the only sound-on-film system. As a result of rapid progress in the past few years, the quality of the audio that can be recorded and played back has improved in a way that the public just may embrace it. The electrical recording and playback of the phonograph record has been one of the science success stories of the middle 1920s, and while this will be good for home record consumers, it will also form the technical basis of the Warner Bros. Vitaphone sound system for the movies. So Lee de Forest, one of the first inventors to develop and demonstrate a sound-on-film system, falls farther behind. The signs are ominous, and as he continues to promote his system and sign up theaters, his influence is waning. Even with the production of hundreds of little films of singers, dancers, and vaudeville acts, it will be Al Jolson, not Lee de Forest, who will be the voice of the movies. This is the beginning of good times for the movie industry. This is the beginning of bad times for Lee de Forest. The Lee de Forest–Theodore Case relationship is now 5-years old and rather than one of strength and trust, it is unraveling. As Phonofilm struggles M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_8, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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for profit and primacy as the technology of the talkies, Case has gradually moved from a small and struggling research lab owner with a single product to an inventor of sound movies. Not only does he not need Lee de Forest but he seems to no longer respect him as a businessman. The younger Case has arrived late to the invention of and patents for sound-on-film, and he has obviously found some of his ideas as a result of his collaboration with the senior de Forest, but his confidence is gaining. He believes his version of the original de Forest variable density system is better and unique enough to patent as his own invention.

A Deaf Ear to Phonofilm It almost seems like Phonofilm exists in a separate world. While de Forest and Case are making films and improving the technology of the talkie, and are actually signing up theaters and installing their equipment, few notice or care. Meanwhile, others in the film technical community are coming alive. Western Electric has been developing their own system with better microphones, amplifiers, and loudspeakers. There is finally a growing realization that someday and somehow the movies will have to talk and sing in synchronization with the performers. Another change is taking place in the relationship between de Forest and Case. It is no longer just de Forest ordering the Thalofide cell and the Aeo light from Case the manufacturer. While Theodore Case may have begun as a photocell inventor and manufacturer, he now sees a greater purpose and is filing patents on a complete film system. Will it be enough of an improvement over Phonofilm to stand on its own?

Can the de Forest–Case Agreements Be Saved? Theodore Case is having problems with the New York Phonofilm office on two familiar fronts, money owed and credit for his work. These are now familiar issues and it seems that they may never be resolved. Case has not involved his lawyer in this latest problem, but soon he will tire of the constant battles with de Forest and seek legal advice. In late 1924, there are several phone conversations between de Forest and Case but an agreement cannot be reached on payment as agreed to in the contract. A telegram from Case arrives at the Phonofilm office, “since our conversation on telephone this morning have decided you had better come up here if you wish discuss change of contract, it involves so many things that we need a personal conference together with Taber (Case attorney). Otherwise we expect payment first October”2 (Fig 8.1). Case is still upset with de Forest over the issue of title credit on the Coolidge film: “We took it with a camera of our own design and that we used a new type of Aeo light and different circuit arrangements and that your

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Figure 8.1 In this telegram of September 2, 1924, Case wants de Forest to meet in person about their contract. This time Case has invited his lawyer John Taber to attend. Over the several years of this working agreement, de Forest encouraged Case to not get the lawyers involved, and Case did spend a year at Harvard Law, but this arrangement between the two inventors was getting too complex to avoid legal advice. In the margin a Case office employee has marked, “sent.” From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

cameraman could not have taken the picture if he had wanted to as there are certain technical adjustments on our design camera which he knew nothing about and that we further have an understanding with you that all pictures which we take with our apparatus are to have in large title letters, ‘taken by Case studios.’”3 Case complains about lack of credit for his work, he complains that the Phonofilm company has not paid its bills, and now Case believes he has a better camera, different from that used by de Forest. But what really angers Case is the issue of credit: “I will not accept any excuses or letters from theater owners for the failure of having this title on the film.”4 Case has had enough. He wants recognition and he wants to be paid for the use of his cells. He is also chiding de Forest for his apparent transfer of the Thalofide cell license to Phonofilm Canada. He tells de Forest that he did not have that right. The attorneys will have to sort all of this out. There is a handwritten scrap of paper in the Case papers that is undated but based on its contents it must have been prelude to a conference with

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his attorney. Case lists what he wants from de Forest prior to the conference: “1, want right to take pictures anywhere; 2, want credit for all our pictures; 3, want reasonable assurances you will show our good pictures.”5 This and the late payment of money owed are the major issues that now divide de Forest and Case. There is also negotiation between the Pathe News group and Case over the licensing of his Aeo light and his camera. Case is now driving the improvements in the recording system of camera and microphone while de Forest and his company must spend their time signing up theaters and keeping them happy by supplying films. At the conclusion of this make or break year for Phonofilm, the outlook is unclear. At the end of 1924, de Forest is unable to pay Case under the lease contract, and Case wants to be a film maker and license his technology to others. De Forest tries in vain to solve the title credit problem: “We placed your credit title in the picture at the Rivoli and Rialto Theaters and Dr. Reisenfeld instructed his operators to cut them out after the first show.”6 With the October 1st date passed de Forest does send a check to case for $2,000 and tells him he will send the remainder in 30 days. But it is too little too late. In a long letter to Phonofilm manager Waddell, Case details problems with theater owners who complain about the prints they receive, and about the bad quality of projection. Case no longer believes that the Phonofilm company can ever carry out the terms of its contract with him: “The whole show is being run so poorly that I am sick of it. I have never seen anything so mismanaged or bungled in my life as this has been and still is.”7 De Forest answers personally: “You must try to be a little more patient with us. We are working with an inadequate force and under great difficulties. You must realize we started entirely too quick, that is in making a large number of installations.”8 The Phonofilm business is under-funded but the Case company book keeper wants satisfaction: “You should advise us in what manner and at what time you will be able to complete payments covered by these agreements rather than to let it drag along the way all of these are dragging because it is not going to be possible to complete payments on any of these loans within two weeks.”9 There is now the realization that the Phonofilm company, absent adequate resources, may not recover and may not be able to pay its bills. Waddell of Phonofilm is partly blaming the actual theater chains, “Famous Players are very lax in their payments. It is sometimes a matter of six weeks before we receive a check covering our rentals.”10

Can the Phonofilm Company Be Saved? De Forest has now borrowed money from Case with the agreement that it will be repaid when the theaters pay him. But as repayment seems less likely Case writes to de Forest in an attempt to cancel part of the contract: “As this agreement has not been kept we wish to cancel it as far as making any further loans

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on this basis is concerned and would like to have payment on all the moneys sent you on this basis as soon as possible.”11 Case believes that the amount loaned is $7,000 and tells the de Forest company to borrow it anywhere they can. He just wants his money.“Will you please advise us immediately how you will handle this as we are entirely sick of this continued wrangling and never having any matters of this kind handled as agreed to.”12 Case solicits the advice of friends in the business community on the condition of the Phonofilm business and receives this telegram from a businessman named Osborne: “Talked with firm today, they have been consulting with de Forest for some time and are much interested but consider him poor business man are now looking for someone to take on business end and will then go ahead.”13 Case is seeking opinions about the state of Phonofilm and a recurring one is that de Forest is not good in business and that he surrounds himself with like people. After receiving this telegram from Osborne he writes to de Forest, “I understand that you are negotiating with Hayden and Stone. This is the best news that I have heard in quite a while because if you can get them to take over the management of the company and run it on business lines there will be a splendid future for the Phonofilm.”14 Everyone wants Phonofilm to succeed but de Forest may not turn over the company, even though he too seems to understand that it is poorly run: “Negotiations are proceeding with Hayden and Stone and we must have an able Director General of the company before they proceed to put up money. We have found such a man and he is considering whether or not the Phonofilm offers sufficient future to justify him giving up other business. If he does our problem is solved.”15 But de Forest is a stubborn man and he ultimately refuses the offer of Case and Osborne to turn over the running and re-organization of the Phonofilm company to a more clear-headed group of professional businessmen. De Forest prefers a publicly-owned company based on the sale of stock. Case is pushing hard for payment and a resolution. There is trouble ahead. On what should be a joyous Christmas Eve de Forest is privately discouraged: “At the studio we have finally finished our Xmas picture – most of it is good. The voices of the choir are thin and unsatisfying at the start of ‘Adeste Fidelius.’ I hope it is the last Phonofilm I will record with the Case Aeo $100 lights. These, I’m convinced, cost us in poor recording many times what their exorbitant price has cost. Now for the Hg-Neon.”16 This film was not well-received: “The Xmas film is finished. Riesenfeld’s verdict when we showed it that first night at the Rivoli was extremely disappointing – really unfair. Financing Phonofilm is now nearing a crisis. We are seeking now to interest Jesse Lammingore who just took over the sale of de Forest radio so successfully. If not him then Harold Bolster when he returns this week from California.”17 He does find a glimmer of interest from Canada: “Yesterday our Canadian friends came down, and after a very satisfactory demonstration

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of the Phonofilm at the studio, gave the second payment of $15,000. This greatly encouraged me to continue – last week we demonstrated to three groups with reference to financing the U.S. company.”18 Phonofilm is not catching on with the public or the potential investor, but de Forest tries to put on the best face possible for the press. “Since February of this year, De Forest Phonofilms, Inc., has been making and releasing to theaters east of the Missouri River, this new form of entertainment. At the present time we have scores of contracts that we are unable to fill because of lack of proper facilities. The Phonofilm is now past the experimental stage and, having created a tremendous demand for our productions, it is our intention to make more elaborate one – full length features in fact – and to convert into Phonofilms famous Broadway successes of the dramatic, musical comedy and operatic stages.”19 By March of the New Year, a reinvigorated de Forest tells Case: “The company has entered into a contract for the public sale of its stock and a very vigorous campaign has been inaugurated.”20 Rather than take the earlier advice of Case and hire a good management company he instead decides on a familiar plan, the sale of stock. He believes he is going to be made whole again, “It is a great satisfaction to me to know that the public is my partner instead of a bunch of Wall Street bankers, whom you would have to watch day and night to prevent them from taking the proposition away from me as soon as it became really valuable.”21 He tells Case that a man formerly with AT&T is going to takes over the studio operations and while he has not made any new films in 1925, he is waiting to sign up new theaters, “but are not seeking them until we have some really worth while productions so that we can keep the theaters supplied with good entertainment after they are installed.”22 And while the relationship has been strained by matters of money and credit, the two continue correspondence: “You neglected to state in your letter what you learned from the Western Electric Company regarding their plans with reference to talking motion pictures. Please let me hear from you on this point.”23 What Case must have learned is that that company is developing a new system based on the phonograph record and that it will appear in less than a year under the name “Vitaphone.” But Case replies, “I did not ask them anything at the Western Electric regarding their future plans with reference to the talking moving pictures.”24

Presidential Repercussions Re-elected President Coolidge was Phonofilmed again in 1925 and said about this experience: “The march of invention is faster in our days than ever before. He who would assume to keep fully abreast of it would have no time to do more than note its accomplishments and marvel at them. So let me admit than in helping to make the amazing record which is to be

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produced of this scene I have only the most general idea of what it is, mechanically and scientifically, that is being done. But I am assured that a Phono-Film of this scene is to be produced, combining a record for both eye and ear; a record that may be described as a ‘speaking-moving-picture’ message to this gathering of newspaper editors and publishers. For the purposes of demonstrating this latest wonder of invention, I have chosen to say something as old and familiar as this process is new and novel.”25 The remainder of his speech was about responsibility to the world community, the economy, reducing the heavy burden of taxation, a discussion of how to remedy the economic ills of the people through public expenditure, and the problem of the national debt. Little has changed in the past 85 plus years. But it was not the act of filming the President but its ultimate use that caused the next problem for Phonofilm, a temporary halt to their stock sales ordered by the State of New York. De Forest did not realize it but this legal setback was a direct result of the President of the United States interceding at the New York Attorney General level. De Forest had made another bad choice. He had hired as the head of the Phonofilm sales force James Elliot, a previously indicted but later cleared stock promoter. At his direction, the Phonofilm Company sales personnel were showing the film of President Coolidge to promote their stock sales: “This action quickly caught the attention of the White House – Coolidge was decidedly unhappy about his image being used for such commercial purposes. The White House ordered the Department of Justice to investigate the reports, and the New York Attorney General’s office seized the books of the Phonofilm Sales Company and de Forest Phonofilm Corporation, subpoenaed employees and ordered the Coolidge film withdrawn from demonstrations to prospective stock buyers.”26 There were no indictments issued but it was a setback. It was another poor choice by Lee de Forest.

Case Terminates the Original Agreement with de Forest Even though his business advice is not followed, Theodore Case tries to understand that de Forest’s company is struggling and again he gives them more time to pay the money owed. But a year later payment is still not forthcoming: “In view of this situation we have no alternative but to notify you formally as we hereby do, that we regard the agreement and license as terminated by reason of your defaults under the agreement, and we request you forthwith to deliver to us such appliances, lights or cells as are in your possession.”27 How will de Forest be able to continue if he is forced to return the Aeo lights and Thalafide cells to Case? Those have been the basis of his system. Case reconsiders and offers an alternative agreement under which de Forest can continue to operate, but in return he is asking for licenses to the slit under de Forest’s control, a large amount of

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cash, the right to see the books kept at the Phonofilm company, and specific titles utilizing the name Case. In de Forest’s opinion, Case is asking for too much. In October 1925, a meeting took place between the two men at the Yale club but no agreement was reached. De Forest had asked that Earl Sponable come to New York and be in charge of the de Forest lab for Phonofilm but Case did not agree. De Forest offers to share Phonofilm dividends with Case but that cannot be resolved either. The de Forest offer to Case includes a $2,000 per month payment, four percent of the gross after October 1926, 200 Thalofide cell and 150 Aeo lights, exclusive use of the slit patents, and publicity for Case. According to de Forest, the board agreed to this, “a decision with regard to the conditions which should govern the future relations between your research laboratory and the corporation.”28 It is very clear that Phonofilm needs the continued participation of Case to be able to operate. This agreement was discussed in a visit to Auburn by de Forest and Harold Bolster of the Phonofilm Board. De Forest attorney Sam Darby has some concerns about patent infringement over the slit used in recording and has done some research on it. He finds that there may be conflict between the 1924 Case patent and the Fritts patent granted in 1916 called “variations of sound and other phenomena.” Like the Case patent it too shows “a minute slit through which light rays pass over a light sensitive cell. The moving film passes over the light slit.”29 What was such a clear field of experimentation in 1920 now seems crowded with claims and counterclaims. It may not be possible for Case and de Forest to create a new agreement under these restrictions and the likelihood of future patent problems. Case responds that he is pursuing his slit patent in other countries and that de Forest: “accept the license as given by us to you in our new agreement which we are completing at the present time.”30 Case wants a new agreement signed. It will not happen.

The Real and Final End of the de Forest–Case Relationship It is remarkable that the two scientists, rival inventors really, managed to keep their relationship going for a full 5 years. From 1920 until the end of 1925, the two men collaborated on the science leading to Phonofilm, the first successful sound-on-film system using the variable density soundtrack. During this time, there was optimism and there was continuous technical improvement, and there was fortune hoped for and fortune lost. But there was also a basic agreement that kept the Case lab in Auburn New York busy manufacturing the two most important pieces in the Phonofilm system. Those were the lamps used for recording and playback, the tiny bulbs that convert sound waves into light waves, record them on

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film, and play them back using a photo cell. This was Phonofilm and both de Forest and Case were continuous collaborators. It was the business arrangement that was the problem as it has been for de Forest in all his attempts to bring inventions to market. He always began with an idea, then a patent, then promotion, then hoped for profits. At the end of 1925 and the fifth year of Phonofilm development, de Forest and attorney Sam Darby are trying to work out one more agreement with Theodore Case. De Forest had shrewdly purchased the rights to the older slit patent of E. E. Ries, one which he believes will invalidate the slit patent of Case: “In view of this disclosure there is absolutely no chance in the world of your getting any broad protection on either the photographic slit image or the glass over the slit.”31 He also tells Case that he is using a replacement for the Thalofide cell, a so-called P.E. cell, and his own Photion tube he now believes is better than the Case Aeo light. He seems confident that he can continue Phonofilm without Case: “In view of these facts there will be not the slightest justification for me to recommend to the Board of Directors that they now enter into a new contract with you.”32 He is saying a final farewell to Theodore Case: “I think you know that we all appreciate what you have done in the past and your efforts to help the Phonofilm proposition and we regret that you cannot give us patent protection which we were led to expect. Under these circumstances and your having elected to terminate the old contract it seems to me that there is nothing more to be done in the matter. I sincerely hope however that our cordial and friendly relations may be continued.” Case concludes otherwise: “Having spent the last two months in a fruitless endeavor to come to any kind of a satisfactory agreement with your concern we are now forced to cease all negotiations and withdraw all offers made by us and reject all offers submitted by you.”33 De Forest offers a one year limited proposal to Case who does not accept: “We are getting together any of your properties that we have here and will forward them to you immediately upon receipt of shipping instructions from you.”34 Case has been erased. For a 1925 speech on Phonofilm progress before a technical group, de Forest had planned to say what he had said in past speeches: “I wish here to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. T. W. Case, not only for his contribution of the beautifully suitable Thallafide cell, but for many very valuable suggestions in connection with photographic recording, as well as practical laboratory assistance in the latter course of my experimental work (Fig 8.2).”35 He continues to praise Mr. Case, explaining how the cell was used for secret signaling in WWI. This was the speech he was going to give, the final time he praises Case and gives credit to another scientist for collaboration on his Phonofilm technology. But this

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Figure 8.2 A diagram of the Case modification of the Bell and Howell silent camera. This is different from the earlier modification done by de Forest. This Case version shows the AEO recording light cell mounted inside the camera where it would be standardized with the sound recorded after the picture. In the de Forest version the sound recording cell was mounted on top of the camera so the sound track was recorded before the picture. Later, in Patent no. 1,761,619, filed in 1927, de Forest would also move the sound recording cell to a location following the picture. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

speech was not the one given on that day by de Forest. In the original copy of that portion of the speech in which he praises the contribution of Theodore Case, the above quotes were crossed out by de Forest and he has hand written in the margin a technical qualifier about the Thalofide Cell of Case: “However a certain lag, which impairs to a degree the clarity of reproduction,”36 and as a result he announces he has abandoned the Case device. And Case is crossed out of the speech. Just like that. Phonofilm continues to struggle. It is late in 1925 and while there are a few good audiences and the money is running out, de Forest retains a glimmer of hope: “Last funding was used. Still the audiences liked the program. In years to come, after Phonofilm entertainment has become thoroughly standardized, I wonder how the glimpses of its possibilities as exemplified by last Sunday’s shows will then appear. From this program we are now

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forming our first ‘road show’ which opens October 5th at Burlington Vt. My heart stops at the thought of what the publics’ response there will mean to my enterprise and me! Recalling the sad fiasco at Albany of nearly one year ago, I am entertaining wild hopes of S.R.O.!”37 He takes his technology and his films to New England for the winter: “Mary and I returned from our auto tour to Burlington Vt to the opening of our first Phonofilm road show. Its success, despite the scariest snow and blizzard in these parts in 60 years, shows again that the present public likes Phonofilm vaudeville. It will support us.38 He is spending money on improvements to Phonofilm, like a loudspeaker to replace the nasal-sounding metal horn typically used in 1925: “The Audalion is now in manufacture and ready for marketing. It has already cost over $15,000 (Fig 8.3).”39 It is from this kind of necessary spending that he will never recover, as his non-New York venues are not attracting audiences, “New Boston show lost $4000.”40 It is the end of 1925 and de Forest is finally finished with Theodore Case and he writes about it in his diary, again blaming Case for faulty technology,

Figure 8.3 De Forest poses in his lab with the Audalion Speaker, a device patented in 1925, no. 1,736,035, which probably contains a modified cone speaker in the upright tube. In his application de Forest writes: “One of the objects of this invention is to produce a new and novel sound reproducing device having a vibratile (his word) membrane to which the vibrating device or motor is applied tangentially.” This sounds like the mid-1920s version of the early cone speaker. In the photo the speaker is apparently connected to what looks like a Western Electric amplifier and “A” and “B” batteries. See the Appendix for the complete patent. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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and adding him to the de Forest enemy list: “The replacement of the perfectly cut sprocket is our attachment – the war of the Kuntz P.S. cell as against the lagging and moiré sensitive Thalofide of Case – the employment of Photion lights in place of the sputtering short lived Case ‘Aeo’ – the improvement of our camera (in contrast to the Case Bell-Howell). Finally the use of 2 synchronized cameras, one for sound alone, permitting the separate appropriate development of each negative as it individually requires – all these make an improvement in Phonofilm. It’s immeasurably better than it was one year ago. How happy I am that I am through with T. W. Case.”41 With Case now seemingly out of the picture, de Forest puts his film failings into some perspective by identifying other enemies and reflecting on his entire inventing life. It is Christmas, 1925: “In reaping the rewards of my labors, my inventions, how shamefully about had I fallen! Chiefly because I failed in my business as well as in my inventive work that … nay, too late did I realize that my assassinators were as not as clear, as honest and selfsacrificing as myself. And in Phonofilm, in 1925 I am harassed constantly by ‘friends’ members of the board who in countless ways seek to block or blotch the clear straight forward progress of my latest invention – to saddle it with needless salaries, useless expenses, meaningless obligations for years to come. To foil them teaches me patience, but it is all a wrongful waste of time and efficiency. Now if my heart will hold out until I have freed this company and my soul from the menace of Bolster and his gang of robbers, parasites, leeches who are still making my life a nightmare – I can yet see the final triumph of this last child of my brain, my determined energy. This time I have gambled with my life. In 1897 when I decided to struggle on at Yale rather than to seek a job as my classmates were doing; In 1900 when I had a position of slow progress in the Western Electric company. In 1906 when I abandoned my first company to create a radio-telephone system. In 1913 when I threw away my $300 per month with the Federal telegraph Company to build a third enterprise based on my Audion. In 1921 when I forsook radio to work on a new success in Phonofilm. In this last I have struggled for 5 aging years – have plunged my fortune so dearly bought – have risked my place in radio for this later reward. Now, at last, it seems accursed! But also this proved the fatal throw – my abysmal error.”42 With few exceptions like the earlier Coolidge filming, the creation of a successful company out of the Phonofilm invention was doomed from the beginning. In the mid-1920s, an independent inventor who was not really a film maker could never compete with the established film trust. The studios owned the talent, the means of production and the distribution of their films for their theaters. If the big companies did not want it, it did not happen. To the film companies, de Forest would always remain an outsider.

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And when de Forest saw potential profits in sound film making, at heart he is more interested in the hardware that records and plays back the audio: “This afternoon I sat alone in the old studio and heard reproduced for 35 minutes Seigfreid, Mme. Valtron, wonderfully good – no pictures, just the music.”43 And “Pleased with the Phonofilm we did in Havana. The deep sonorous tones of that old cathedral bell, striking slowly its solemn strokes, is perhaps the most convincing piece of realism Phonofilm has yet produced.”44 And “The Rivoli opened at last again, with ‘Rudio’s Franks.’ Thanks to the equalizer in the new panel, the reproduction is by far the best yet heard – I stood by (nervously always) for the first two shows, then left the balance to Reynolds.”45

Death by Vitaphone It is the summer of 1926 and the John Barrymore film “Don Juan” is getting plenty of press. This would not be unusual for a Barrymore picture, but the papers are calling it a “sound” movie, and they are touting the “first ever” sound movie system called Vitaphone, a Western-Electric designed technology that is a throw back to Edison, one using a phonograph record synchronized with the picture. Don Juan was not lip-synchronized – it still had intertitles for the dialogue as all films will continue to use for the next few years. But it did have an original orchestra track, and it did have the sound effects of the sword fighting for which Barrymore was known. It is a hit and the Warner Brothers, especially Harry Warner, was preparing for more. Lee de Forest becomes ill when he learns the news: “Last week the flashing posters of Vitaphone gave me first a shock, like a blow. Why and how have we wasted the last two years? Its backers have spent millions on it, energized as it is by the A.T.&T co. – are now advertising it in a nationwide campaign.”46 But in typical de Forest fashion, he attempts to rationalize the reality of Vitaphone: “But now I feel really glad that they have done this, as it must finally awaken the big film companies to the possibilities of Phonofilm long before we alone could do it, and rapidly annihilate this rock-ribbed consciousness, the skepticism which took so long to succeed at Phonofilm.”47 In his opinion Vitaphone is starting too big, “at the top” and he believes they will lose money on it in a few years. He also seems oddly upset that “Don Juan” is the first major picture with the orchestra on record when it should be live: “They aspire to exclude all musicians from even the finest theaters. I believe this can’t be done, should not be done. But we know we can put the best orchestras in the small theaters, devoid of good music, along with canned vaudeville, comedy reels, etc. , all of which the great American

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Public, low class and amusement-seeking, principally demands.”48 While he vilifies Warner’s for using recorded music in the finer New York City theaters, in his mind it is acceptable to use Phonofilms of orchestras for the small towns that lack access to quality live music. Publicly he does not give up. In the month after the news of “Don Juan,” he reports to the stockholders about the state of Phonofilm, and while he attempts to paint a rosy scenario about the business, anyone can read between the lines: “Frankly, this is the kind of a report I am proud to see go out about Phonofilm – and for several reasons it means quite as much to me as if a big dividend had been declared on our stock.”49 Good news, no money? He talks about the obstacles Phonofilm has faced, but tells the shareholders that the company is turning a corner: “it becomes apparent that every prediction made as to the great value and profits of Phonofilm is shortly and through the years to come to be fulfilled.”49b In other words, ignore the elephant in the room, the interloper that is Vitaphone (Fig 8.4). It is Warner Brother’s October 1927 release of “The Jazz Singer” that cements the future of the sound movie forever. The “Jazz Singer” was a partial talkie that followed the earlier success of “Don Juan.” This newest sound picture still used intertitles for most of the dialogue, but some of the speaking and singing by star Al Jolson is actually synchronized with its sound. The synchronization is perfect on the DVD restoration, but accomplishing that feat in the theaters, night after night, would have been a formidable task. It was ultimately impossible, leading to the Vitaphone system being made obsolete by the various sound-on-film systems. But the audiences did not care what technology was in the projection booth. They only knew that “The Jazz Singer” was a good story well told, and they loved Al Jolson and his way with a song. Then as now, the box office success of a film is always as a result of its star-appeal. What Warner Bros., and especially Harry Warner, who died the night before the “Jazz Singer” premiere, did for sound movies was to be in the right place at the right time with the right film. First, the right place was a major Hollywood studio with top tier distribution and exhibition, not a de Forest second-tier rented theater. And the timing was right. After nearly a decade of experimentation to get the right microphone, amplifier and loudspeakers to support sound films that will be more than a novelty to audiences, the audio quality was now good enough. And film historians will give credit to Al Jolson, a popular star, coupled with the production values expected by the film going audience. The “Jazz Singer” is a coming-of-age story eerily similar to that of the early biography of Lee de Forest. The elder de Forest wanted young Lee to follow several generations of ministers, and in the Jazz Singer, the father says through an intertitle about his son Jakie: “What has he to say? For five

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Figure 8.4 The Vitaphone influence. In this 1928 Radio Craft, a Gernsback publication, there is featured a cover story on a speculative home technology for showing movies with sound synchronized with the phonograph. Taking its cue from Al Jolsen and the Warner Bros. success with the Vitaphone phonograph system, the picture projected features Minstrels in Blackface, an obvious nod to the “Jazz Singer.” Unlike recording the sound right on the film, using a common phonograph record to record and playback sound for the movies was something the public could both understand and replicate with the available technology. From the Paul Bourbin collection.

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generations a Rabinowitz has been a Cantor – he must be one!!”50 This film has only partially-synchronized sound, but there is a complete music score and loosely synchronized ambient sound effects, as in the early bar scene featuring Jakie as a boy singing with a piano player. Scolded again by his stern Cantor father, he runs away and becomes Jack Robin, Jazz Singer. This introduces Al Jolson who is told by his girlfriend Mary Dale that he “sings with a tear in his eye.” Hearing about Mary, his mother says in a title, “Maybe he is in love with a Shiksa!” The major theme of the film is that his dad has disowned him for not following in the family tradition as a Cantor. This is a “Generation Gap” picture for all times, a universal old world vs. new world, parent vs. child. If you can get past the blackface, Al Jolson is a very convincing actor, and he does have “the cry in his voice.” But the Kol Nidre in blackface?51 In another irony, if you look carefully at the street scene at the end of Jazz Singer the exterior of the Rivoli Theater where Phonofilm premiered in 1923 is shown. “The Jazz Singer” is an effective film, an excellent choice deserving the title of “first successful partialsynchronized sound feature film.” But think about why audiences love the movies: None of the de Forest Phonofilms ever made an audience tear up like the reunion scene of Jackie with his mother, or with his dying father.52 Even though it is promoted as a sound film, the production values of the silent film are retained in “The Jazz Singer,” with the sets, the lighting, the acting, directing, editing, and story all above average for the era. And while intertitles are used for 90% of the picture, there is sound throughout, making it an ideal example of a transition film. The major synchronized parts were of Al Jolson songs and some of his dialogue. When this happened the picture really slowed down, going from the usual crisply edited film to longer static long shots much like a Phonofilm short. In this first experiment, the synchronous parts drag down the pacing of the film. When there is synchronized dialogue, it is mostly a single shot, usually medium. The editing is minimal when the sound starts adding a noticeable change of pace to the film. Hollywood is now learning how to use sound in the movies. So far with Al Jolson they used it well.

The End of Mary While all this Hollywood-level excitement is taking place, Mary is pregnant and expecting the third de Forest child. Lee is hoping for a son. He has spent a painful 5 years and most of the profit from the sale of his radio company on Phonofilm, a venture that he still believes promising, even though it is not yet close to profitable. And while de Forest works hard in the lab and the studio, he tries to be supportive of Mary, now in her final

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month of pregnancy: “My Mary has concluded another hard week – she looks wan and thin, is becoming frailer day by day. Dr Telfair is quite puzzled by her condition and today brought in another specialist. May the long expected event occur soon, I fear she needs her strength necessary for the ordeal.”53 Her “condition,” as feared by de Forest and the doctor, is alcohol, and while Lee was in the lab producing little Phonofilm pictures and courting the press, Mary was at home in bed dealing with a difficult pregnancy, apparently using her own “medicine” (Fig 8.5). “To us a son was born! He appeared to be a fine perfect body of 8 ½ lbs, well-formed, fat, a fine-shaped head, good nose, a pretty chin – he showed

Figure 8.5 Wife Mary in a March, 1925 New York Tribune story poses with Eleanor, the first de Forest daughter of that union. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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the de Forest upper lip. He should prove to be strong and healthy judging from all exteriors. But alas, the little fellow passed peacefully away at midnight of the 17th – only 2 days old. I was summoned formally while the doctor was also called, I stood by aghast and helpless, while the two nurses worked feverishly hard, hypodermics and manipulation. It was all futile and all helpless. The doctor said it was a Thymic condition, an enlarged and poisonous gland. Unquestionably, it all came from the poisonous alcohol which his mother had taken throughout pregnancy, specifically during the last few days. Another innocent victim. I had already named him ‘Lee de Forest Jr.’ But it is a cruel blow to me, after waiting and hoping all these years for a son! … How great the loss I’ll never realize. I had for years dreams of an heir, my son. These dead hopes had only recently become re-awakened. So now I can steel my heart to bury him once more, in the little casket.”54 Following the death of her baby, Mary became hysterical, then morose, and the doctor remained concerned over her condition. But almost-fatherof-a-son Lee is more concerned about the boy he would not have, now a little depressed himself: “Like a little aviator, this baby flashed across our heaven – then vanished, leaving only a fleeting memory, trailed with grief. The sky is blacker for the brightness is gone.”55 It is now 3 weeks later and Mary is still suffering: “Mothers’ Day. My Mary had three roses given her, one for each of the children – one little bud for ‘little brother’ who faded so sadly soon. She weeps a great deal these spring days. Her heart is so heavy. It is but natural that one who is so fond of little children, of all living things, as she always has been, would be heart broken beyond the measure of many mothers, one of her own children in death.”56 He reflects on the sad condition of life at Riverlue: “What measureless pity that the little flower which blossomed into our springtime two big weeks ago should have faded so suddenly away. How gloriously glad would have been springtime had our baby boy lived! Poor Mary looks so sad and wan as a gaunt Madonna. A new sweet beauty looms on her pale face – an unexplainable tenderness in her wide eyes – dulled with weeping.”57 He suggests that the family might recover sooner if they leave the house of tragedy and take a cruise, but the problems with Mary go far beyond the death of their child. They are not a happy couple. The love is gone and soon it will be the end of Mary as wife number three (Fig 8.6). Lee de Forest does have problems at home and in his various business lives, and they are only going to get worse. More lately than in the past he unburdens himself of his true feelings in the only way he is able, writing in his diary: “But work and plenty of reading, and de Forest radio problems also – all keep me from being lonely – or from worrying too much about the depleted treasury, or the Warner Bros. competition. Oh, why did I listen

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Figure 8.6 Happier times in the de Forest family. Lee and two children, Eleanor and Marylyn, circa 1925, a year before the death of their third child. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

to the advice of others to let others handle the business management a year ago! Inventor that I am I have more clear business judgment as to how to manage Phonofilm or its finances in one minute than these ‘businessmen,’ bankers, lawyers, managers and what not have shown in a year of futile or dishonest meetings, deliberations and ‘conferences.’ If I had $100,000 I’d, even now, repeat their work and rule their destinies and ride to triumph.”58 If Only. There is also an ending to the tense relationship between de Forest and his radio manufacturing company, the one in which he had earlier in the decade sold his controlling interest. In June 1926, he announces plans to re-take control of the company, but first he has to obtain an official receivership and reorganize. In August, de Forest sues the company for $1,250,000, alleging the top four company officials Theodore Luce, Roy Weagant, Hiram Lanphier, and John McKinnon of “wrongful, illegal and improper administrative acts.”

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The story in the New York Times explained the history behind this: “He was in control of the de Forest radio Corporation until August, 1923, when he was said to have sold control of the concern for $1,000,000 to Mr. Luce and others, but to have retained stock in the corporation. He announced then that he had relinquished control in order to devote his time to his inventions.”59 He did profit some from the sale of most of his stock in the company, and while he no longer controlled it, he was acting on behalf of his “fellow stockholders” alleging “that excessive and unwarranted salaries, fees and charges were paid during the period of the defendants’ incumbency and that the assets of the company were squandered.”60 At least the Phonofilm company while incompetently run and bereft of money did not show any sign of illegal activity.

Sound-on-Film Technology Wars In 1926, de Forest’s Phonofilm is headed toward an uncertain future. Vitaphone had delivered the first knockout blow, and soon former colleague and collaborator Theodore Case will sell what de Forest believes is the Phonofilm system to William Fox. There will be money in and money out, but in the end it will be the lawyers who will reap the benefits of the de Forest invention. In a few more years, the question most asked will not be whether there will be sound synchronized with the picture, but rather which system will be used to make it happen. Following the early positive public opinion of the first Vitaphone films, there emerge a number of competing technologies, all recording sound on the film, leaving only Vitaphone using the Edison method of the phonograph record. But the public will not know when they are in the movie theater which technology is being used for the sound. They won’t care at all. Until 1930, there will be several sound systems for the movies, and for a while theaters will be equipped with more one than one system. It will resemble the BetaMax vs. VHS video war of 1978, competing technologies that essentially do the same thing. Estranged colleague Theodore Case changes the playing field once and for all for Phonofilm. While de Forest tries to interest one of the major film companies into investing in or buying the Phonofilm system outright, other events beyond his control are taking place. Since the Warner Brothers announced their first sound film, this news has some of the other studio heads believing that they too should have a sound system ready, just in case their movies will actually need it. They do not know it yet but the movies will need to talk and quickly. Case as an independent inventor believes that he has now patented a complete system, and while it is similar to the one he

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worked on with de Forest, he is convinced that the ownership of it is his to sell. After all, some of the most important pieces of Phonofilm did come from Case, including the Aeo light used to write the sound onto the film and the Thalofide cell used in the projector to read the sound track. Case does have a case. He sets up his device for a demonstration for William Fox and following an analysis of the patent situation a deal will be made.

The Case Patent Situation Before a deal can be reached with Fox both sides will need to clarify their legal position. The firm of Gifford and Scull had earlier in 1926 presented Case with a detailed analysis of the Case slit patent and how they believed it could not be successfully attacked by either the Ries or de Forest patent. As they understand the Case system, “the speech record is produced by passing a low voltage direct current, varied by a microphone to which the speech is addressed through a gas discharge lamp, the light from which is varied by the impressions of the microphone upon the current. This light is passed through a slit in a silver coating upon glass and thence through a thin glass cover to the film which runs in contact with the cover.”61 The attorneys describe the so-called “prior art” and suggests that only Case actually designed a working and practical system, although there are patents on photographic recording beginning in 1907. He believes that the Fritts patent applied for in 1880 and the Ries patent now owned by de Forest had limitations that have now been overcome in the Case system: “I think the court would limit Ries so closely to the arrangement shown in his drawing as to not be infringed by the Case structure where the cover glass interposed in front of the film has a thickness at least as great as the width of the slit and has material advantages.”62 As to the de Forest patent he believes that he is limited to an alternating current and high frequency oscillation but Case uses neither. He concludes “I have reached the opinion set forth at the outset that there is no valid claim in either the Ries or de Forest which is infringed by Case.”63 This will allow Case to move to the next step, his alliance with William Fox. De Forest attorney Sam Darby counters with a letter to William Fox saying that he is aware of the pending agreement between Case and Fox and advises Fox that “the de Forest Phonofilms, Inc. own and control the basic patents for talking pictures or Phonofilms, said patents having been issued to Lee de Forest and Elias Reis, and that the apparatus and films being exploited by the said Theodore Case or his company infringes upon these patent rights.”64 Darby lists the patents to which he refers and tells Fox, “We know it is not the desire of your company to become involved in patent litigation over the above matter, and therefore trust that in view of the

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above facts you will notify us immediately that you will not proceed with any further negotiations regarding the use of the Case apparatus and films.”65 Darby is attempting a bluff. The attorney for the Fox Company sends the Darby letter to Case and requests another copy of the Gifford patent evaluation letter, “I know Mr. Gifford personally and have great confidence in his advice.”66 Documents are generated by both sides covering the evaluation of seven de Forest patents and the Fox–Case side again determines that there is no infringement by Case in most of the patents: “in conclusion then, five of these patents are not pertinent references to our work and the other two are covered fully by the attached report.”67

The Theodore Case–William Fox Agreement On July 23, 1926, the first of several agreements are made between Case and Fox. Based on the analysis of Case’s patent attorney, Fox was convinced that Case had made enough improvements to the process that he and de Forest had partnered on since 1920 that he could call it his own. He assumed that the Case process was enough of an improvement over that of de Forest that it would withstand infringement claims. The agreement also assumed that “the patentee is the sole owner of the inventions, improvements, patents, formulas and processes.”68 The agreement stated that Case had ownership and the rights to the sound-on-film process that he had evolved out of Phonofilm. Case agrees to sell everything to Fox, all patents and improvements to his variable density sound-on-film process. He also agrees that for a period of 3 years, he will operate his research lab in the service of improving the process. Fox as the purchaser agreed to “defend at its own expense and to hold the patentee and inventor harmless of all costs, damages and expenses of all suits or notices which may be brought to test the validity of patents.”69 Case would immediately receive 74,995 shares of stock. There was also a supplemental agreement filed, and this stated that Case and his company will not manufacture parts of the sound film process for any competitor of Fox. The contract would be for a period of 5 years. The Fox–Case system will be called “Movietone.” War is declared! De Forest believes that he owns the basic patents for the Phonofilm system and while it used pieces of the Case technology, he believed that he owned the essential patents needed for the complete system. So in August 1926, de Forest attorney Sam Darby files a suit for patent infringement against Fox Films. He claims that four patents, including the slit patent he had recently purchased from Elias Ries, are being infringed by the Fox–Case agreements. De Forest claimed that “Six years of hard work and more than $1,000,000 have been spent in developing and perfecting the method of photographing sound waves on a narrow portion

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of the picture film through a narrow slit and by means of a gas-filled tube which is electrically controlled by the sound waves.”70 He will argue that because Case had unlimited access to his laboratories and studios that he used what he had learned to develop a system under his name for Fox. Until the Fox lawyers could sort it out, it was suggested that Mr. Fox should have options on the de Forest patents in the event that the Case patents prove not viable. As a film company head, money was no object. Fox agreed to give de Forest $100,000 as an option to buy for several million all that de Forest controls.71 It temporarily stops the suit. De Forest and his company were elated. Buy now and avoid the rush. That is the message in a long and breathless letter to shareholders from Lowell Brown, President of Phonofilm. In October 1926, he tells the shareholders that this is their chance to get in on the profits about to be showered onto Phonofilm: “$100,000 in cash was paid by Mr. Fox on Thursday of last week (October 7th) to Dr. de Forest as good faith money pending the closing of the transaction which is expected to take place on or before November 7th.”72 This was accurate information at the time, but that it would not last was unknown to the newly energized inventor who had earlier bragged to his diary: “So it appears that I’m about to cash in handsomely on this 6 long years of struggle, sacrifice, hard work and dogged faith in an idea. This idea is a good idea (and I seem to be able to pick good ones!) – and stick to it long enough, and hard enough and intelligently enough, and even if one does wobble about a bit, and makes some miserable blunders, and has no comfort from his wife, nor any abiding faith in him or his plans – and is severely and consistently criticized for his methods and his slow returns – yet in the long run I have health and sufficient friends to continue his fight, and enough strength.”73 He was patting himself on the back, always a mistake for Lee de Forest. In yet another twist, Fox was informed that perhaps de Forest did not really own Phonofilm, that the real owner might be Western Electric because in 1917 they had licensed most of de Forest’s Audion patents for use in radio. This did not make sense. The first Phonofilm patent was filed in 1919 and Western Electric had nothing to do with it. And the Ries patent on the “slit” through which the sound recording light is focused on the film was recently purchased by de Forest for Phonofilm. Based on this inaccurate information about the legal position of Western Electric, Fox promptly sued de Forest for the return of the $100,000 option, alleging it was obtained under false circumstances. This was, said the New York papers in early 1927, the beginning of a “talking movie war.” So while a year ago no one wanted any system for sound movies, all of the sudden its parentage is an issue for the courts to sort out.

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Meeting of the Big Companies Meanwhile there was some attempt to standardize and to make sense of the emerging sound-on-film systems, some of which were already in production, and some yet to emerge from the laboratory. On October 14, 1926, a meeting was held between the Case Company, General Electric, Westinghouse and the Radio Corporation for a “discussion of the subject of talking pictures.”74 Each party was asked to describe its system. Dr. Alfred Goldsmith of NBC explained the purpose of the meeting as an “exchange of information and determination of immediate procedure.”75 Standards were discussed and General Electric believed that their system was similar to Case, “except that a vibrating mirror is used for recording. Also General Electric records the sound about 15 inches above the picture, or about 20 frames, where Case records below.”76 Westinghouse admitted it had no complete system but was working on parts such as amplifiers, cells, and microphones. There would be others. Stone of General Electric stated that all systems used tubes, amplifiers, and speakers, and these were the most important pieces in terms of patents. On the contrary, he regarded the photocell as an old device, subject to slight improvements for patenting. This is likely the major similarity between Case and de Forest and others, as all used tubes or cells to read and write the sound on film. The attendees agreed that the patent situation needed further study. It was complicated and involved the German TriErgon company along with de Forest, Case, and others. It was agreed at the meeting that tests be made in the Fox–Case studio and the results reported back to this de facto committee through chair Alfred Goldsmith.

What the Boys and Girls Knew If arcane court battles over exotic names like Vitaphone, Photophone, Movietone, and Phonofilm were occupying the time of inventors and their lawyers, their children were learning about the sound movie from the usual source. In 1928 that would be Tom Swift and his Talking Pictures. If this was about sound-on-film he was about 10 years behind de Forest. But this was not actually a sound-on-film device as much as it was a television. “Tom had conceived of making a radio machine, both sending and receiving, that would enable a person or any number of persons not only to hear a distant person in their own home, but also to see those taking part.”77 In this invention, Tom was once again ahead of reality. There were many articles and experiments about sending voice and picture into the home, and this book describes it as, “radio with pictures.” And ironically, while Edison and de Forest had publicly stated that the problems to be solved for the synchronization of picture and sound were mostly those of the sound, how

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to record it, and how to synchronize it, Tom Swift had the sound right: In 1928, the radio and its amplifiers and microphones and speakers were about perfected while the sending and receiving of the picture by radio waves was in its infancy. What young Tom Swift wanted was to “make it possible for a man to sit in his easy chair, smoking a cigar in his library, by the turn of a switch, not only to hear the latest opera but also to see each and every performer and witness the whole play.”78 While the cigar smoking was probably bad advice for his young readership, Tom Swift was pushing the idea of opera. He must have read about the de Forest Phonofilms! And how would this work? “On an electrified screen attached to his radio receiver by which he listens to the songs and music.”79 He erroneously called the invention “talking pictures.” He got it wrong.

The SMPE Joins the Sound Revolution The Society of Motion Picture Engineers will get it right and quickly. After ignoring sound-on-film in the first half of the 1920s, there was suddenly great interest on the part of the technical film community. This was likely caused because of the interest shown by their bosses, the producers, and studio heads. If you were a member of the Hollywood production community, you suddenly realized by 1926 that your job could be dependant on your knowledge of sound recording and synchronization. You could sense by the press attention that there would be some retraining in your future and you know you need to be ready. If you are a member of this prestigious organization, you will be listening to papers being read about Phonofilm, Movietone, Vitaphone, and Photophone at the twice yearly meetings of the Society. Lee de Forest was a major participant in the SMPE, having presented three papers on Phonofilm between 1923 and 1926. Now he is joined by many others as news of the success of Warner Brother’s Vitaphone has energized the membership. Change is in the air. Sadly, the one person who seems to understand the significance and the technical challenges of the sound film is the very person who may never profit from it, Lee de Forest. In October, 1926, he will present his final SMPE paper, “Recent Developments in the Phonofilm.” While he does reprise his 1923 paper and its detail about how Phonofilm works, this time he is more philosophical about the coming changes in the motion picture. He uses the platform to praise Vitaphone and Western Electric’s high audio quality saying, “they represent the nearest approach to perfection of recording and reproducing voice and music which has ever been reached in the phonograph art.”80 This is a bit of a back handed compliment as he explains that the all-electrical process of Phonofilm will prove to be the system that is standardized in the long run due to the mechanical nature of Vitaphone’s

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“wax” recording and playback. He tells them that when the film breaks and has to be spliced a phonograph record can never again be in synchronization with that film. He talks about the ease of editing when the sound and picture are married on the same film, and how the operator will only have to worry about one thing – the film. Throughout this speech, he employs a familiar rhetorical device, that of first praising the competition, Warner Brothers, for their foresight in adopting sound, but then denigrating their system for its lack of a practical way to maintain accurate synchronization. In this he is correct. Whichever system is finally adopted, de Forest understands what changes will have to be made in the production environment. From his Phonofilm experience, he knows the sound stage must now be “silent,” its cameras and arc lamps must be silenced, and the director has to work in a different way – hand signals like the radio play director uses: “The usual hammering, pounding, and general bedlam which has heretofore distinguished the moving picture studio must be completely eliminated while recording.”81 He talks about the productions taking place in his studio, the music, comedy, and vaudeville shorts, and he tries to make the case that what he is producing will work with the public because of the success of Vitaphone. He fails to understand that the artistic quality of his un-edited, unimaginative shorts do not speak well the language of the motion picture in the way that a “Don Juan” does, or even in the way that Warner Bros. short subjects are doing. As a big city sophisticate de Forest still does not make the creative leap between his naive “amateur home movies” and those that have been written, produced, directed, and acted by the best Hollywood talent. He does seem to understand how a tight close up has to have bolder sound than that of a person speaking in long shot, demonstrating that he has learned something of the evolving language of sound for film, “A giant face must not speak with an ordinary human voice; nor must a long shot representing a man of only normal size speak with the stentorian tones of a giant.”82 He says a measure of acoustics with applied psychology is needed to maintain the illusion. He is early in thinking about the language that must be developed when using sound with the film. He believes that the full orchestra will forever replace the organ, piano, or mediocre small orchestra, whatever the system of sound on film used. In this presentation, the Hollywood technical community is learning something from the observations of the inventor of Phonofilm based on his years of trial and error. He hesitates to alienate the film industry and whether he believes it or not, he tells them that the coming of sound may best be used for preludes, short acts, musical numbers, and vaudeville. He is writing this article in

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1926 after watching “Don Juan” with its orchestra sync only, but before the “Jazz Singer” with its lip synchronization and an audience reaction that surely tipped the industry toward the talkies. He reprises his opinions on “can sound improve the pantomime of the silents” as he wrote in his booklet in 1923, using the same words, but seeming to understand that a new form of picture will have to be worked out, not just talking “silents” but genres that use music and other sounds as well as dialogue. And he raises a familiar issue: how Phonofilm can be used to “elevate” taste in movies, the audiences of which he insists are ignorant and lowbrow. As in past presentations he talks about Phonofilm’s role in educational films, travelogues, adding spoken word to newsreels, recording the voices of famous people, as he has done with President Coolidge. In these final days of Phonofilm, he is really flailing about for answers. In public he is optimistic while in private he believes he may fail. Now there is a rush to explain the newest sound movie technology emerging from the laboratories. P. M. Rainey of the ERPI, the Electrical Research Products Division of Western Electric presented on Vitaphone in April, 1927 after “Don Juan” and before the release of the “Jazz Singer” in the fall of that year. Rainey’s presentation was more of a basic introduction to sound recording and reproduction, explaining the similarities between the already mature recording of picture and the new techniques needed for sound: “You must have certain conditions as regards light intensity, focus, etc., otherwise the recording of the scene will not be faithful in very detail. In the recording of sounds, there are analogous limitations.”83 He credits the invention of the vacuum tube and the progress made in its uses as making the sound film possible, and he cites better microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and electrical recording of the phonograph record, much of which was developed by his company, Western Electric. Beyond just a presentation on Vitaphone, it is more of an updating of all the technical improvements that made Vitaphone possible. In the new electronic age of the 1920s is the condenser microphone, the magnetic cone loudspeaker, the magnetic phonograph cutter and playback head that are the stars here, those innocent-looking behind the scenes pieces that when put together allow the directors and actors and musicians to create their illusion for the screen. He only briefly explains the Vitaphone system saying that the projectors use an 18 inch disc running at 33 1/3 rpm, geared to the film projector to maintain synchronization. He concludes by explaining that the Vitaphone projectors are going to be equipped to read the Movietone sound-on-film system as well, so a looming compatibility issue already has been resolved. Movietone, the Case–Fox system based on the de Forest Phonofilm, is still the subject of a lawsuit. What this presentation does is

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Figure 8.7 Case associate Earl Sponable poses with an early sound camera. Sponable worked with Case in his Auburn New York research laboratory, and just as Case would be said to have been overshadowed by the better-known de Forest, Sponable might have felt the same about Case. After their relationship ended, Sponable continued to work for Fox Films as their technical expert, and continued into the 1940s as a scientist in the Hollywood technical fraternity. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

bring the assembled up to date in sound movie technology as applied to all systems, disc, and film. A few months later at the fall 1927, SMPE meeting Fox–Case technical Director Earl Sponable delivered his paper, “Some Technical Aspects of the Movietone(Fig 8.7).” Sponable, like Rainey, takes the assembled through the entire process of sound film making, paying particular attention to the construction and acoustics and ventilation of the studio now required for sound. He acknowledges that in the movie theater, “the audience must hear the reproduced sound over a period of time, and that any distortion will cause a tiring effect upon the listener.”84 He describes as the heart of the system, the Case “Aeo” light, saying it flickers analogous to the sound waves, thus “writing” the audio on the film. Like the de Forest system, the Fox–Case Movietone sound write and read device is near the supply reel, so the sound is recorded ahead of the picture. This will change quickly to the current standard of having the sound on the film after the picture is recorded. Either system assures perfect synchronization as the distance

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between the intermittent motion of the shutter for the picture and that of the sound is always the same number of frames, whether before or after. Sponable is a good soldier in the Fox–Case company, and he never ever mentions Lee de Forest’s name in this presentation. He does, however, invoke the oft-said de Forest ideas when he says of Movietone, “Short numbers recording the stars of the stage are made for showing in the smaller cities and towns where the stars themselves never appear in person.”85 At this moment the major studios of Fox and Warner Brothers are in charge of the future for movie sound, and it is beginning to seem that Lee de Forest has been erased! Other SMPE papers delivered in 1927 and 1928 add pieces to the understanding of sound recording and reproduction for the movies. Some of these are theoretical and may seem to be almost basic today, but remember that most of the society members are practicing film technical support people with little practical understanding of sound. There are articles comparing the two optical systems of variable density, like Phonofilm and Movietone, and variable area like RCA Photophone, and papers detailing the minutiae of speaker systems and mechanical vibration in the projector, but all seem to be presenting a similar message: that there are now sound film systems good enough to support a quality expected by the public for their film entertainment. This is how the engineers of the SMPE serve the creative and capitalist of their industry. The SMPE fellows are largely trained in Physics and Chemistry in support of the art and business of filmed entertainment. The technical movie folk are less concerned about a “war” of competing sound film systems and more interested in understanding sound and giving their movies the best quality ever. In 1928, there are at least four or five competing systems, but most projectors will be equipped to play all the systems, just as Mr. Raney of ERPI described of the Vitaphone projector, and by 1929 most theaters were equipped with dual systems, disc and sound-on-film. This has always been an issue in the projection booth, as years ago some theaters had both 35 and 70 mm systems, some 16 mm, while today theaters must be equipped for traditional 35 mm film, have a video projector and a 3D adapter, maybe even IMAX. Give the film going public whatever it is willing to pay for, a motto that has worked for the film business for 100 years. The entire 1928 volume 12 issue of papers presented to the SMPE was on sound, a definitive way of saying that it is not if but how and the conversion will happen. These presentations are the last word in sound-on-film and disc systems, presented by the main lights of the industry, each representing a company that serves the film business, including equipment makers, critics, journalists, exhibitors.

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The Industry and the Public Adapt While most of these September 1928 papers were of a technical nature, there were a handful that tried to add some perspective to what the transition to sound might portend. Invited to give their opinions before the Society are nontechnical speakers in an attempt to place the purely equipmentoriented nature of an all-sound program into a practical perspective. Terry Ramsaye of Pathe opened the session: “Because something new has happened to the motion picture industry, this gathering is full of new faces.”86 This sets the tone for the entire week of papers to follow, as the audience of mostly film “engineers” learn a future about which no one knows the outcome: “We have to start all over again and elaborate a new art, meanwhile trying to continue to do business at the same old stand.”87 This is now the big challenge, how to take advantage of what the public seems to want at a time when all the films being made are silent. Ramsaye holds the majority view: “I believe that the developments now in the progress with the coming of sound to the screen are going to improve tremendously the status of the motion picture, both as an art and as an industry.”88 Imagine being present at the birth of an entirely new entertainment form, but not really knowing what to do with it, or how quickly to move, but nevertheless sensing the excitement in the air. More than simply the anticipation of sound from a technical invention perspective was the practical nature of sound vs. silent, and the stakes were high: the health and survival of the movie industry. Jobs were on the line. Also present to opine about the new reality were members of the press. William Johnston of Motion Picture News told a story that in the next few years would be oft-repeated: “A few weeks ago, ‘The Patriot,’ one of the finest motion pictures ever made, opened to an audience of barely three hundred people. In a rival theater, ‘The Perfect Crime,’ a sound picture with little else to recommend it had a packed house and lines before the box office.”89 This was but one example of what happened to the industry after the success of “The Jazz Singer.” At this moment in the history of film the industry is being turned upside down, and more worrisome was that “the business has several hundred million dollars worth of its usual product on the shelf and the customers are asking for something else.”90 He is speaking to the future practitioners of sound and telling them that there are rumblings from the audience as well, about poor sound quality, synchronization problems, and he compares the early sound systems to the first radios, both crude in the beginning, but that “there is no more chance of the talkies passing out of public favor than there was the radio going into the discard.”91 Minor technical glitches did not stop the public from fully and rapidly embracing the radio, and at the end of 1928 everyone knows that the film

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will follow a similar path, and that the technology problems will be solved quickly. Johnston traces the development of the movies from the one-reel short subject of whatever the camera operator was able to shoot that day, like the streets of New York or the train arriving, and how the audience embraced it all. Film grew up as stories were told, first in two reels, later the feature. He believes that between the Edison invention and the mature silent industry of the 1920s, that “we passed out of the mechanical novelty era into a socalled era of art.”92 He sees a public that will complain about the sound quality just as they did about the poor pictures and projection at the turn of the twentieth century. They will complain, they will demand more, but they will pay their money and watch and hear the new films. He states what many have believed for the past few years: “The plain fact that silent pictures have subtitles shows that pantomime at its best cannot fully express itself.”93 By the end of the silent era approximately one third of the screen content was the intertitle, and it must have been frustrating for the audience to follow the dialogue and read the lips and titles, “silently” hoping for a Lee de Forest to come to the rescue. After a decade of listening to the radio, with the sense of hearing entertainment more fully developed, it had to have caused the silent movie to suddenly seem primitive to the evolving audience. Johnston gives credit to Warner Bros. in 1926 when they answered the question always asked by the public, “What’s New?: “They plunged, staking everything, stopping at nothing. They put the show into the Vitaphone and the Vitaphone into show business. Even so, nothing revolutionary happened until ‘The Jazz Singer’ came along. That is the picture that turned the industry talkie. Al Jolson and a song did the trick.”94 He makes the case that the public liked seeing Jolson in silent pictures, and liked hearing him sing on the radio, but loved Jolson when they could both see and hear him. In this history focusing on de Forest, the emphasis has been on science, but clearly it is the art that will drive this transition from all silent to all sound. The public, seated in the darkened theater, will never know or care if the sound comes from a phonograph record or is written on the film. Johnston is almost seeing the future but like many others in 1928, he was not seeing the whole picture of how sound would be used, as his major reference was still the partial talkie by Jolson: “We don’t want too much sound, just as we don’t want too much silence. And in making the talkies we must not lose the rhythm of the picture. Action on the stage, animation in the picture, give the body of the narrative. Sound supplies the exclamation points. There should be talk only when there has to be, or singing, or sound of any kind.”95 On one level, he is correct – that sound should not slow down the picture, as the synchronous sound scenes did to “The Jazz Singer,” but he stills sees the talkie in a limited way. That too will change quickly (Fig 8.8).

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Figure 8.8 A movie poster advertisement for a Fox Movietone Film, “All Singing, Dancing, Talking Revue presented by William Fox.” From the Case Papers.

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New York Times motion picture writer Mordaunt Hall is a bit more cynical about the talkies telling the SMPE that so far the use of sound has not improved films, “so far, in a number of instances, the vocal end has weakened the acting.”96 Like others of the film press, he exhorts Hollywood to apply the highest art to the use of sound, and he believes that when the talkies are good enough the audience will no longer see them as a novelty, but just as a film. The industry is rushing toward sound, but he believes that it should be studied. He is also of the same mind as most critics of this early transitional period that, “the idea of giving characters a chance to articulate when they have been silent in the early chapters, and then so suddenly depriving them of speech, may be a novelty, but in a really worth while screen vehicle it is a mistake.”97 He may be referring to the “The Jazz Singer,” as Al Jolson’s character’s dialogue is first in intertitles, then synchronized sound, then back to the titles. This will be done for the next year out of necessity as fine silent pictures are withheld from release until a few sound scenes can be added. Hall tells what he wants from movies: “Copying ideas from life is always what is wanted in either a silent or an audible picture. Being in character and natural is the art of acting.”98 This will happen, he believes if producers select the best scripts and tell compelling stories. But he thinks this will be difficult: “In the search for stories the producers through the fault of the star system are more or less bound in most instances to buy novels or plays that suit their particular highly paid performers.”99 Others continued to present the same message that sound was inevitable, and it must be done right. H. B. Franklin, President of West Coast Theaters believed that “advocates of the silent motion picture will make every effort to hold their place with the public. All this will result in a higher standard of entertainment, be it silent or with sound.”100 He sees what is happing in a realistic way, and his thesis is that we must adapt with different scripts and actors, that the talkies are a new art form, not just silents with talking added: “Just as radio developed a talent all it own, it is likely that sound motion pictures will develop personalities recruited entirely apart from the stage or the motion picture.”101 For him, it is a different industry, but of course it is not as the movies will continue to be controlled by the trust of a few with their big stars, their distribution practices, their theater chains, and in fact they will grow even more prosperous under the sound model. Frank Woods of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences talked about the cooperation between the Academy, representing the creative people, the SMPE, the technical, the producers and owners, and the universities, from which voice and speech coaches have been recruited. And to reinforce the industry opinion, that the existing structure of studios,

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stars, and theaters is immutable, he invokes the opinion of William de Mille: “The talking picture of the future will follow the general line of treatment heretofore developed by the silent drama. They will be motion pictures in which the characters will talk by audible speech instead of printed titles. The talking scenes will require different handling, but the general construction of the story will be much the same.”102 The message from the Academy to the Engineers was “let’s keep what works and make a few necessary changes.” The studio press agent was represented by Warren Nolan of United Artists, who gives an insider’s prediction: “I consider the present all-talking production schedules of all major film companies as a certain indication that we shall have but one form within two years: the legitimate recreation of actuality, the simulation of a reflection of life, this to result from the fusion of sight and sound.”103 In the Fall of 1928, it was believed to be a foregone conclusion that sound movies soon would be the only form of film fare produced and presented.

AMPAS Advises Now that film with synchronized sound is the new Hollywood language, AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, joins with the SMPE in setting standards for the new sound film. In 1931, the Academy published a series of writings as a book edited by Lester Cowan who offers this post-conversion conclusion: “Science then began to adapt itself to the requirements of the art, and instead of the engineer telling the director what he must do, the director began to tell the engineer what he wanted to do, and the engineer began to make it possible for him to do it.”104 The transition is complete and Hollywood’s business and creative people have defined the terms. The movies will talk, the engineer will supply the technology, and make it support whatever creative vision of whatever story in whatever location is needed. As Cowan sees it representing the Academy: “When sound came to Hollywood, it brought a fundamental change of the job of every man in the industry. The motion picture the public sees is the work of a number of closely interrelated crafts in studio, photographic laboratory, and theater.”105 The Academy in the beginning of the theoretical phase of sound film was behind the SMPE but in this publication is now attempting to set the tone for the entire film community. The Academy now leads the way. AMPAS creates the “Academy School in Sound Fundamentals,” with the goal of retraining current technicians and new hires in sound for the film. This leading group also begins to collect all the information of best practices for recording and reproducing film sound in a common textbook, a lecture series, and a library. This was to build on the initial pioneering

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efforts of the SMPE and set standards agreed upon in advance by the heads of the industry. The 1931 book, Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, was to be a merger of physics, chemistry, acoustics, psychology, and physiology for the sound film. It would provide the reader-learner with details needed on the chemistry of the film for sound recording, and the psychology of how sound reinforces the telling of the story and adds to its meaning. It is engineering placed in the service of art. This landmark book is divided into these sections: historical prelude, sound recording equipment, the film record, studio acoustics and technique, and sound reproduction. The Academy asserts its influence. In the historical overview, ERPI vice president H.G. Knox traces the history of sound movies, and explains how it evolved out of both the very early film work of Muybridge and Edison and the radio, the telephone and phonograph. He understands that sound film while conceived and “invented” decades ago, was unable to reach its full potential until today because of the lagging technology of the amplifier, the microphones, and the loudspeakers. Knox understands why the sound film had to wait so long, waiting for the technology to catch up, “Thus we find three epoch making marvels – the phonograph, the telephone, the radio – all willing tools, but in the most literal sense, ‘powerless.’”106 He calls this several decade period between the invention of the silent film and the possibility of sound for that film, the “powerless era” of the science of communication, and credits the vacuum tube amplifier of de Forest of being the missing link: “Our orchestra, having thus far played soft music, will now burst forth in a blare of trumpets and the crash of brass, because on the stage there now appears the principal actor of the modern sound picture – the amplifier.”107 This was well said by Knox and is the point of this book – that the coming of sound, whether or not you give primacy to Lee de Forrest – has evolved out of two of de Forest’s passions, the amplifier based on his Audion, and the radio, of which he was its earliest proponent. Knox believes that the year 1925 was a turning point for the possibility of sound film because of the perfection of the electrically-recorded phonograph record coupled with the cone loudspeaker, a truer-sounding reproducer than the amplified earphone of the horn speaker. In that year he believes that the system of promise was de Forest’s Phonofilm and the General Electric Pallophotophone. But the science does not matter to Knox: “Posterity is never so much concerned with research and scientific demonstration as it is with commercial success.”108 He defines this success as “Don Juan” and “The Jazz Singer.” So while the remainder of the book is devoted to an education in sound pictures provided by the Academy, it is launched by this prediction from science to reality: “One day, and one day

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soon, a great sound picture will be made. The loosening shackles of the machine will be completely thrown off. In that film dialogue, music, dramatic silence and effects will combine to make an imaginative and enduring tale.”109

The Public Embraces Sound, the Silent Film Is Doomed Meanwhile, what of the many silent pictures already in production, films that had already had millions committed to nearly complete but unreleased fare? This surplus of films led to a group of cleverly called “transition” pictures that were obviously made for a silent market, but to release such a film in 1929 would have meant disaster at the box office. So sound was added when possible to release these transition films. One example was MGM’s “The Mysterious Island,” an underwater science fiction silent picture based on a Jules Verne story. The star is Lionel Barrymore and unlike some actors he does have a perfect voice for sound. But to advertise this picture as a “talkie” some last minute work had to be done and quickly. And it shows. There was a music and sound effects track added – nothing new here, but just to show that it was a sound film, there was a very long and painful dialogue scene added between Barrymore and his evil nemesis, almost all in a wide shot with very little camera movement. This minimallyedited static shot, at the very start of the picture, lasted for 8 minutes, and was designed to set up the underwater science story of Barrymore. And while this gave viewers a chance to hear the Barrymore voice, it really slowed down this action picture. Part of this very long all-talking scene did include several over the shoulder shots of the other speaking, but otherwise, no real cutting to any action, just the faces talking and those mostly in medium-wide shot.110 The remainder of the film was well shot and well-edited, using the developed film language. It also used all the silent conventions, like lips moving in silence but with intertitle cards. With only two more brief lip synchronized sound inserts for the rest of the picture, “The Mysterious Island” should have remained as a silent vehicle. But the studios believed, and they were likely correct, that to release this as a silent would have doomed the picture in 1929, as the conversion to all talkie was nearly complete. In many cases the audiences did understand and embrace the “transitional” picture. There were other personal disasters as the careers of some were wiped away by the introduction of sound: “It had been estimated that some ten thousand musicians lost their jobs between 1928 and 1930 and that approximately half of those worked in movie theaters.”111 It was the Depression which added to the already uncertain position of the major studios as they

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quickly had to convert their facilities to sound stages. It was a time when some film industry workers would have to retrain while others were forced to consider a career change. And while the silent film as an art form held on for a few more years, “There was a glorious kind of fatalism in the last days of the silents. The films were being produced purely for the moment; in a year two, they would be dead for all time. Producers, directors, stars, and studio heads all seemed united in an unofficial and unspoken mass conspiracy to create one great Last Stand of the silent film, to show what it could do before the ultimate death at the coming of the microphones and sound tracks.”112 It is believed that most of these final silent films were either not released or modified with some sound to make them marketable. By 1930, it was reported that only 5% of the films made were silent.113

Quiet on the Set! It is a monumental task to convert the Hollywood production infrastructure from all silent to all sound, all while continuing to make movies and keep hundreds of thousands employed during hard financial times. It is not as simple as it may appear. There are a number of changes that must be made, including the studio stage itself: Historically, it was a large and cavernous space, the size of a high school gymnasium with the acoustics to match. The stage also included power tools. While one scene was being filmed before the silent cameras, it was highly likely that carpenters were building the scene for the next. At times the director of such a picture had to yell above the hammering and sawing and the echo it created just to be heard by the actors, who of course were used to this environment. It was believed in the beginning that all you had to do was bring a microphone onto the stage, tell everyone to be quiet for the time it took to film a scene with the voices of the actors, but this was overly simplistic. There were many other unwanted sounds on the film set in addition to people moving, talking, and building. You could quiet the people on the stage, but then you hear the passing traffic, the airplane overhead, the trains coming and going. Any small noise was amplified as it bounced off the hard surfaces of this cavernous space. This familiar film stage would not do. It will either have to be rebuilt or somehow soundproofed with hanging drapes and other methods. This will raise the issue of ventilation. For if you close all the windows and doors and totally soundproof the recording stage, how do you get fresh air without the noise of 1930s-era air conditioning fans?114 Sound presents problems in the recording process: The microphones used in early filming were not at all sensitive, meaning that to pick up the voices at all, the microphone had to be as close as possible to the speaking voice, and this meant compromises in the framing of the visual. So now you

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are ready to record in the newly soundproofed and air conditioned space, and the director calls for “quiet on the set.” The sound operator with his headphones says that he can still hear a “noise,” and because this is something that has been a part of the movies for decades, it is not really noticed by anyone else. Listen. What you are hearing is the “sound” of the lights. That’s right, the considerable amount of light needed to get a proper exposure has meant the use of high intensity arc lights, and they make enough noise that the sound person hears it in the headphones. They even generate electrical interference. If the sound recorder can hear it, so will audiences. One solution is to move the microphone even closer to the speaker, but ultimately for sound films the studios had to switch to large tungsten lights, totally quiet, but more costly to purchase and operate. So far this one scene has cost several million dollars in renovation of the stage and new lighting. Oh, and another soundproof room had to be built for the power tools. And all of this had to be completed in less than a year (Fig 8.9). So “quiet on the set” is called once again, and after the command to roll camera, the sound person again interrupts the production. This action, by the way, is new to directors and actors, the idea that the sound engineer is such an important part of the production that he or she can call “cut.” Having solved the soundproof problem and replaced the noisy arc lamps

Figure 8.9 An early sound recording studio. Notice the curtains on the walls to deaden and manage the sound vibrations, and the microphone on the stand aimed at the piano. This depicts the early days of Fox Films foray into sound. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

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with incandescent, there is a final noise to quell: The camera. The camera has always been noisy, and while for silent filming it never mattered, the interloper that is the microphone can hear it and it is just as disturbing as the arc lamp noise. In all the history of film production, the noise of people and construction on the typical silent movie set tended to block out the softer noises, like those of the lights and camera. There is a brutal solution for this noise, and that is to literally seal the camera operator and the camera in another soundproofed room, this one about the size of a telephone booth with very thick walls to keep the sound of the camera separated from the room in which it was filming. A glass window in the front was used so that the lens can pick up the action, and the entire thing was on wheels so it could be moved as in a dolly or following shot. It was said that often the camera operator was on the verge of passing out from the combination of extreme heat and little ventilation. The camera was in a torture chamber. Eventually, the problem was solved by the use of the camera “blimp,” a large soundproof cover over just the camera, allowing the operator to remain in the open (Fig 8.10). Now the director can take charge and writer Arthur Krows was on the set to observe, “the director actually begins, he gives a warning signal by ringing a bell. At this signal, by pre-arrangement, all movement in the vicinity that is foreign to the action, must remain suspended until the bell rings again. No longer does the director exhort his players to emotion while the camera grinds; no longer does the player improvise his own lines to goad on emotion. No human prompter gives spoken cues; but cues stand ready, facing the actor, chalked on a nearby portable.”115 Krows did write an editorial for the SMPE in 1931, in which he argues about the new language of the sound film, opines about sound vs. speech, saying speech long ago has found its place in titles of silent films, “the purpose of art is not the precise imitation of life but its interpretation,”116 and he argues that the spoken word may easily appeal to any of the five senses and he also explains that later silent films used about one third of the footage in titles, which he calls speech.

The Public Speaks, the Movies Speak In a New York Evening Post article about the business and economy of sound films, the reporter quoted Daily Variety saying that “the advent of sound has already cost the motion picture industry $24,000,000” and cautioned,“with sound still an infant, figures obtainable demonstrate a marked dislike for sound and musical synchronization of pictures, while those of the all-dialogue type have at least been fairly successful at the box office.”117 You can almost see the lights being switched on: There it was, in just one

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Figure 8.10 This is the actual camera box found today in the Case studio at his Research laboratory. The camera is placed inside this box which is soundproofed using several layers of wood and horsehair, and there is a hole in the side for the lens to emerge to record the picture. The early cameras were noisy, but later they were, in industry terms, “blimped,” which is a sound proof housing just over the camera, like a thick warm coat. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

sentence, the path for probable success in this new art form. The public has voted with their dollars. It was to be the all-dialogue picture. It was that simple. What de Forest and later Warner and Fox were touting as the content of the sound film, musical numbers, and the preludes were wrong. They did not see the entire possibility of what sound with film might have been by 1929. It was the public that figured it out: “No matter how you look at it, the talkies seem to be gaining. Perhaps it’s competition. Perhaps the

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producer’s have sunk their cash, and are bound we shall listen anyway. Or perhaps people really like the talkies.”118 So why didn’t the movie studios make all-dialogue films earlier? Apparently the producers and owners had heard about and some had actually witnessed the early 1923 experiments of de Forest at the Rivoli. Some of the studios were even peripherally-involved with companies like GE and Western Electric, who were inventing promising sound-on-film systems. But even if those systems sounded good enough, there was the business problem. Silent films were profitable and successful, there were contracts with actors who only knew so-called pantomime, there were investments in studios and technology, theaters and distributors were in place, and foreign markets enjoyed our silents, which could easily be titled in any language. The idea of throwing out a sure thing that the industry understood well and alienating the audiences that enjoyed them did not make good business sense. But after the success of “The Jazz Singer” it was obvious that the public did want the talkies and so they got them. The film industry was pushed to make their way of life obsolete and invest in sound. They took a chance. They gambled that this expensive transition would result in eventual higher profits. This transition, while in some part inspired by the work of Lee de Forest, will be owned and operated by Big Film.

Figure 8.11 The Capitol Theater in New York with its marquee advertising the Phonofilm of the Lindbergh Homecoming. This was one of the first newsreels with synchronized sound. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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And where is Lee de Forest? After being in the news for most of the 1920s, has he finally been silenced by the film industry’s rush to sound? Perhaps, but there is one more small triumph for de Forest and his little studio. Return to mid-1927, before the Big Switch to all talkies, when the only unique remaining use for the Phonofilm is instant news coverage. The arrival of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh is chronicled by de Forest for the New York Times (Fig 8.11). Lindbergh is well-known for his May 1927 nonstop airplane flight from New York to Paris, and the nation’s capitol was preparing a major reception for him. De Forest’s decision to film the Lindbergh reception was a last minute one, and he explains how they had to get permission from the White House and the police, and finally at 5 pm the day before they were given the official go ahead. There is much technical detail about the installation, and how the platform on which the photographers all had to stand was not sturdy enough for film: “the strong winds which blew throughout the ceremonies made this camera platform sway back and forth, which produced a readily noticeable swaying effect as it is projected on the screen of the Capitol Theater.”119 He tells how they stayed up all night to process and dry the film and ready it for projection in the Capitol Theater, with the final installation of the Phonofilm attachment on their projector. They are able to screen the film for the public just 22 hours after the Lindbergh reception event, a film that includes the cheering crowds, an introduction by president Coolidge, and finally the Lindbergh speech. Was it worth it? “The enthusiastic applause and the unprecedented sensation caused by the combination of picture and the clear reproduction of President Coolidge’s enunciation, the applause which greeted the intrepid aviator’s first appearance, the tumultuous ovation to Mrs. Lindbergh, the playing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ which stirred huge audiences at the Capitol Theater to their feet at every performance, amply attest that this first Phonofilming of a big public event was a complete success, and marks a new era in motion picture entertainment.”120 Of course no amount of applause will save Phonofilm in the long term. As always, it is the big studios that will continue to control all production, distribution, and theater ownership. The question now being asked of the technically-successful Phonofilm has to be, “great, but so what?” It is the day after the success of the Lindberg event, and de Forest is sitting alone in his room overlooking the Hudson, writing about it in his diary, asking a sort of “what if ” the conditions for his invention were better, could he have succeeded: “In Washington. Yesterday, I’ll never forget. We made a great Phonofilm – Fate was kind and today at the noon opening of the ‘Capitol,’ Broadway’s largest theater, we showed in sound a view of that unprecedented reception of the world’s hero aviator. (Lindberg) It is a great triumph

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for us, achieved in the face of tremendous difficulties, opposition and risks of failure. The results of this showing at the Capitol must be far reaching on my success. And indeed it is fully needed! Financially exhausted, over driven, harassed by foes and friends, indifferent or incapable friends.”121 Lee de Forest will now reluctantly exit stage left, as it is shown that the giant film trust, the group that controls production, talent, and exhibition, will rush to serve the all talkie-wanting public. This will quickly and completely overwhelm Phonofilm and relegate its use to a handful of tiny houses. The Case version of Phonofilm will live large under its new name, Movietone, and its new owners Fox Film. The rest is for the lawyers to sort out. Lee de Forest and Theodore Case and all other sound film inventors will meet in court.

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I went swimming again, and she waved to me and beamed upon me – far more lovely and beautiful than she looked one year ago! Yes, since my last birthday, when I knew we met, we have both achieved great happiness. I praise the Pacific, California, and a Californian native daughter! I never felt better, always full of pep, always ready to dance with my lovely wife, at the turn of a record or a twist of a radio dial.1 The De Forest vs. Fox-Case Suit The Final Days of Phonofilm The Loneliness of Lee Hollywood Happiness Old Patents and New Awards

These are the worst of times; these are the best of times. For Lee de Forest in the late 1920s, the roller coaster that is his life will reach the bottom before soaring back to the top. He begins this ride on the East Coast at his New York home and ends up at a place where he spent time in his earlier years, a place that represents hope and happiness, California. For de Forest, the post-Phonofilm period will be one of continued invention, although none of great significance. This era will mark the validation of some of his basic patents in amplification and sound-on-film, but none will result either in fame or fortune. During this period of time, he will finally discover domestic happiness. Nevertheless, there will not exist what de Forest wants most in his mature years, and that is the total and unequivocal adulation of the public and the scientific community. But make no mistake, the public does know about Lee de Forest and they do regard him as an important inventor. It just will not be enough. Phonofilm truly faded to black following the filming and exhibition of the Charles Lindbergh picture. De Forest is out of money, having spent the profits realized earlier from his sale of a controlling interest in his radio manufacturing company. He had spent every dime on Phonofilm and now all he has to look forward to are court cases to sort out the patents. The industry has bypassed him in favor of Vitaphone and Movietone. He will M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_9, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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find a man who offers to take over the Phonofilm business but that too proves to be a loser in the end. He is also a loser again on the domestic front, as Mary and the kids will soon exit out of his life. In the early 1930s, he begins to see the results of a number of previous legal actions, the most important of which is the final battle over regeneration. He will work for a bit with Charles Jenkins on mechanical television and he will continue to do what he has done best his entire life – tell his story to anyone who will listen. You might say that de Forest offers his biography at the drop of a hat – and he drops his own hat! But can this story have a temporary happy ending? In 1930 he will meet wife number four, and she will become a wife for life. Still, he will fight Edwin Armstrong in the courts, in the press, and in articles and letters as he attempts to manage his legacy in invention. Finally, he will end the decade of the 1930s on a high note, as he is feted by friends and admirers at the 1939 World’s Fair. There he will be named the “Father of Radio.” What more could any inventor want?

The De Forest vs. Fox-Case Suit Beginning in 1926 with threats and counterthreats and ending in 1929 with an out-of-court resolution, the legal action by Lee de Forest against Theodore Case and Fox Films began almost as soon as the agreement was signed between Case and Fox. It would not matter that sound films were being made under the name of Phonofilm or Movietone or Vitaphone. And it will probably not matter in the end that neither party can feel fulfilled about being awarded any primacy in sound-on-film invention. What this long legal exercise will really reveal is that the patent system is a vague one, and even if you believe that you own a process, there is probably someone who thought about it, wrote it down, or actually patented it before you. It is complex. In this case it is never really resolved. The preparation of this case will take several years during which time the Hollywood film community will make sound pictures, apparently oblivious to what is happening in the offices of the New York lawyers of de Forest and Case. Preparation for the Fox-Case suit is under way and de Forest writes the story of their early relationship as evidence for his court case: “During numerous subsequent visits to my studio Mr. Case got full information as to the methods used in making and reproducing Phonofilms. He later developed a camera lamp under my basic patent which showed certain advantages and we entered into a contract for using his photoelectric cell and his type of recording lamp. Case became very interested in the Phonofilm proposition and at his urgent request I sent him apparatus for

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Figure 9.1 In the early years the Fox Movietone system was primarily known for traveling to remote locations to film actualities for newsreels. This is one of their equipment trucks. The Fox-Case system, sound-on-film, could travel with simple equipment and film almost anywhere, as opposed to the Warner Vitaphone system which was studio-bound due to the more fragile needle-in-disc-cutting process. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

theater projecting with which he experimented in his work shop at Auburn. Our relations were very much that of an employer and employee.”2 Case went his separate way and sold his process to William Fox about which de Forest claims in patent court: “We find that Case and Fox are infringing on four, and perhaps others, of Phonofilm patents and are making active efforts to enter the talking motion picture field. These basic patents cover broadly the method of photographing sound waves on a narrow portion of the picture film through a narrow slit and by means of a gas filled light tube which is electrically controlled by sound waves. We consider these patents extremely valuable. Six years of hard work and over $1,000,000 have been spent in developing and perfecting the method, and the de Forest Phonofilm Company proposes to defend its right to these patents to the utmost.”3 This was war (Fig. 9.1). Case had earlier submitted a statement to his attorney, “The idea of photographic sound-on-film and reproducing it electrically had its inception long before Dr. de Forest entered the field. The idea first developed in this country in 1880–46 years ago. Since those early trials it has become

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more a question of producing suitable tools in the form of photo-electric cells, taking lights and reproducing apparatus to accomplish the results desired by the pioneers in the field.”4 It will be obvious from the evidence submitted by Case and de Forest that while the recording of sound on optical material can be traced back to a group of nineteenth century inventors, it is their mid-1920s improvements to all the supporting parts that will be argued. The pieces needed for successful sound-on-film were not developed at the same time, rather they appeared gradually and were improved upon between the invention of amplification and the appearance of the Vitaphone system. These pieces are the amplifier, the microphone, the loudspeaker, the recording lamp for the camera and the slit through which the light passes, the reproducing lamp for the projector, and even the screen was redesigned with invisible holes that allowed the sound from the speakers to pass through. Both de Forest and Case and their attorneys will write many pages about this. One small difference in one tiny part of both systems, the slit, is said to be different with de Forest using the Reis patent and Case using a different separation between film and slit thus a difference in the diffusion of the light. The Case attorney stated that: “it is not believed that any court is likely to permit the Reis patent or any patent to be granted on the Reis application to dominate the Case apparatus.”5 Case believes that his patent success will be because of these technology differences: “The use of the direct current; the use of the barium cell in reproducing which was entirely new; the negative glow outside cut light; and the slit covered against dust.”6 De Forest in 1923 purchased the E.E. Ries patent, filed in 1913 but not granted until 1923 that describes the variable density optical recording system he is using in Phonofilm. The Ries patent describes it fully: “Method of reproducing a sonorous action previously recorded on a photographic film as a band the translucency (density) of which varies along the length thereof with the amplitudes of air vibrations corresponding to the original sonorous action; which method consists in moving the photographic film behind a screen having a small aperture in alignment with the record band projecting a beam of light of constant intensity through said aperture, restricting the area of the record band exposed to such light to the area of said aperture, and interposing a light sensitive, electric resistance material in an electric circuit, to intercept the light transmitted through the film whereby the variations in translucency of the photographic record will produce corresponding variations in said electrical circuit.”7 Case’s attorney Hogan claims Ries is not original or important, and cites references to very old patents dealing with writing sound on optical media with light and reproducing it. To him nothing is that new, all are “tools of the trade (Fig. 9.2).”8

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Figure 9.2 One of the many news stories surrounding the 1926 to 1929 suit by de Forest and Fox-Case. By the time these suits were heard, the movie industry had already made preparations to convert to sound using a variety of processes, most using non-de Forest, non-Case patents. This suit was too late to have real significance. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Both sides will prepare historical analyses to “educate” the court. Both Case and de Forest prepare lengthy chronologies of the recording and reproducing of sound using optical means on photographic surfaces. Case’s colleague Earl Sponable wrote, “A Brief History of Sound Recording Including Details in the Development of the Fox Case System.” Sponable writes how the Bell brothers and Tainter patented a variable area and density method of recording sound using modulated light through a small slit onto film. He makes a good argument that the Bell and Tainter patent does anticipate Ries and therefore all others. If this is the case then all that followed are not original, rather they are improvements. Sponable writes that according to Ernst Ruhmer in 1901, his Photographphon “is used in combination with the kinematograph whereby on one and the same film both motion and speech may be recorded.”9 It is the works of Bell and Ruhmer that are cited as the earliest glimpse of what the talkies could be and that work provides the basis of patent infringement claims, really showing that anything that followed was not completely original, including the 1906 patent of Eugene Lauste called, “method and means for simultaneously recording and reproducing movements and sounds.”10 Case believed that “The Fox-Case defense in this suit seems good but of course in the final analysis it becomes a matter of convincing the court. Several contacts have been made with the de Forest group to settle this whole situation and thus keep all patents valid.”11 Also submitted as part of the Fox-Case answer to the de Forest suit were writings Case apparently did about his experiments in letters to his mother while he was a Yale student: “Most of my time now is taken up in experimenting with my selenium cell with the idea in mind of photographing sound waves and using the positives as records for a new kind of phonograph or rather it would be called a lithograph.”12 But this was not the movies. The evidence suggests that Case was confining his experiments to transmitting sounds using light, and he did demonstrate this for the Navy in 1917. De Forest also prepared for the De Forest Phonofilm Corporation vs. FoxCase Corporation suit his own history book, actually two thick volumes. The first book was titled “Patents and Publications.” In this volume he added pages from Wireless Telephony by Ernst Ruhmer. On page 21 he points to the “Selenium receiver with condensing lens.”13 De Forest is using the historical scientific record to make the case for how he began his experiments using the talking/speaking arc modulated to write on film. He admits that he was long influenced by the work of others, and in his exhibit is the drawing and text on the “speaking arc” traced to its 1897 discovery by Simon at the University of Erlangen.14 De Forest presents this “history lesson” partly because he is the professor but also because he wants the court to know that

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it was neither he nor Case who discovered writing and reproducing with light, but as the Case’s attorneys also indicated, it was an old idea. Both de Forest and Case were apparently arguing the same thing. The Case patent history shows that he was about 5 years behind de Forest in his sound-on-film work. The early Case patents, 1920–1926, demonstrate that his earlier work was solely in the lamp technology of writing and reading optically. It was said by Case biographer Stephanie Przybylek that the arrival of de Forest into Case’s life gave his scientific experiments new meaning: “Case, Cushman, Steel and Sponable continued pursuing various experimental ideas, but without a central focus. They were ready for a new direction, and an earlier acquaintance, Lee de Forest, provided it.”15 An analysis of the Case patents show that it was not until 1927 that he was granted patent #1,638,392, Talking Moving Picture Machine. His earlier patents granted between 1921 and 1924 for his photo electric cell and his “Apparatus for Recording Light” did not mention any use for sound-onfilm. In fact this 1923 patent specifies the light as a test instrument. So while Case has claimed in the suit that he should have primacy in the invention of a sound-on-film system, the evidence in the patent record does not support it. It was de Forest in his 1919 filing who laid out an entire theoretical system for the talkies. The earliest Case patents did not mention the word film or specify their lights being used beyond laboratory test instruments. It was not until the mid-1920s that Case used the word film and photography in his patents. But to his credit it was Case who furnished the pieces that enabled the de Forest theory to be turned into practice. Of course all of this may be moot as neither inventor was really the “first” when compared with optical recording’s nineteenth century beginnings. Most important, it really did not matter to those in control of film production and distribution who owned the patents as money would solve any small patent ownership problems. They might have said this: “Let them play out in the courts, let our attorneys worry about it and we’ll just make pictures.” After many years Fox settled with de Forest and his patent suit of 1926 for a mere $60,000.16 In 1929 de Forest withdrew his suit.

The Final Days of Phonofilm By the end of 1927 Max Schlesinger and his wealthy brother were in a position to take over Phonofilm and attempt to reinvigorate it for what will be a losing battle with the giants. Schlesinger’s brother already owned a chain of movie palaces in South Africa and so there was a ready-made audience for Phonofilms beyond America. There was not much discussion about

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how to make pictures good enough to be competitive with the likes of the “Jazz Singer,” rather it was about licensing the technology to theaters. The British and South African patent rights were obtained and the new owners began construction of an actual studio. The Phonofilm business was renamed General Talking Pictures. Being the more conservative brother, Max “decided to wait a year to be very sure that ‘the public wanted talking pictures.’ From 1927 to 1928 he watchfully waited while his three competitors were signing up all the large houses at $15,000–$20,000 each. Finally, only third-rate $1,500 installations remained for General Talking Pictures.”17 A large number of these smaller theaters were signed up, but the Great Depression will make this marginal gamble a loser. So the strategy of the new owners was to get the “also ran” theaters, the very small houses, the scraps, and really all that was left. And as to the type of film that would be supplied for the newly installed Phonofilm projectors, a clueless vice president Schuyler Hodge explained phonofilms would not compete with motion pictures, that “pantomime is an art in itself and the public has learned to enjoy it.”18 He described how the de Forest company was currently filming the Ziegfeld Follies using an experimental color process, and that the Phonofilm will continue to film vaudeville acts and other stage-based events. Why was he saying this as late as 1928, when the “Jazz Singer” was a fait accompli? It was probably to assure the small theater owners that there was a niche for Phonofilm, one beyond the output of the large studios. He also indicated that the Phonofilm would be used to record important speeches, and duplicate and show them all over the country, and to send out Phonofilmed lectures of the great minds for projection in the schools. These were the non-Hollywood uses that in 1928 the Phonofilm company was promoting, as Hodge said, “It would be a wonderful thing for posterity if audiences could hear Paderewski or Kreisler play, and watch them at the same time.”19 Crowded out by the majors, the new Phonofilm under the name General Talking Pictures was being pitched not as a replacement for the movies, but rather an educational film service with speeches, lectures, music, and news events (Fig. 9.3). Even though he no longer controlled Phonofilm, de Forest remained its spokesperson and spoke the company line: “The public doesn’t want the actors to talk in film dramas. They want pantomime in movies and they will always have it. What my new invention will do is not change the movies as they are, but to open a new field of entertainment and education.”20 De Forest had been saying this since his 1923 pamphlet titled “The Phonofilm.” But why is he saying this now, a year after the “Jazz Singer” when sound dialogue in features appears to be a foregone conclusion? Does he still believe this: “The silent drama cannot be improved by adding

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Figure 9.3 The de Forest Phonofilm truck, like that of Fox-Case, a way to transport equipment for on-location filming. From the Case Research Laboratory, Cayuga Museum.

the voice. Movie actors are either untrained in dramatic speaking or are wholly incapable of it. In the early days the motion picture tried merely to photograph the ordinary drama of the stage, but it was a dismal failure until a new and novel type of drama was created to fit.”21 In his opinion “Photoplays must be written to fit the Phonofilm, but the Phonofilm will not be thrust ruinously upon the pantomime of photoplays!”22 He was obviously trying to put the best face possible on what was left for him, as a small, largely broke, nonaffiliated film company. Although he has effectively lost the Phonofilm battle, he refuses to give up and writes a letter in the summer of 1928 to the editor of Film Daily: “In view of the fact that the whole American motion picture industry seems to have at last gone crazy on the subject of sound pictures….”23 It is obvious that his real agenda is a plea for recognition: “The great pity of it all is that there is another instance when a pioneer who was considered at that time as merely ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’ should have ultimately to look to the Federal Courts to protect his inventions.”24 The 1926 suit brought by Fox to recover the $100,000 given to de Forest for an option on Phonofilm finally arrives in court, and the judge, as de Forest’s attorneys had always known, agreed that the Western Electric ownership of the de Forest patent rights was only about radio and was granted before sound film was developed. That same court, the Federal Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, also agreed that the Ries patent for the recording slit owned by de Forest was valid but Fox could still claim it.

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Of course since de Forest had sold the Phonofilm rights to General Talking Pictures any legal victory does not translate into cash. Like many legal actions the winner was “no one.” And what about Theodore Case, the man who would be king of soundon-film? In 1929, in a deal by William Fox to purchase Loew’s Incorporated, the patents of Case were basically given away. “Fox never got the written consent of the Case Research lab for the transaction, and didn’t even inform Case of the agreement. When Case found out what had happened, he didn’t record his thoughts, and mentioned nothing in his notebooks. But any remaining enthusiasm for the film industry seemed to die.”25 Long time Case’s colleague Earl Sponable continued with the Fox organization in a technical leadership position and continued to invent sound film improvements, but Case himself apparently did nothing else important. He basically lived on his considerable inherited wealth. He spent the 1930s, then in his 40s, living the life of a wealthy person, spending plenty of money on a lavish life style, on his yacht, the decade one long party. “Health problems, including some alcohol-related, became increasingly serious in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and in 1941 Case and his wife Gertrude divorced.”26 In 1944 Theodore Case died of pneumonia. He was only 56 years old.

Other Phonofilm Patents Resolved In 1930, de Forest wins the “arc lamp” case for Phonofilm, based on a suit brought by the German company Tri-Ergon over one of the basic patents for sound-on-film. In the original suit Tri-Ergon proved that they had filed their patent before de Forest had in 1919. On appeal de Forest prevailed and the decision was reversed in his favor. “The US Court of Appeals has rendered a decision holding that D. Lee de Forest, well-known radio inventor, is the originator of an ‘arc lamp’ which reproduces sound photographically by a process of ‘light waves.’”27 De Forest produced the paper (shown earlier as Fig. 6.9) dated October 12, 1918 titled, “Three methods for photographing sound waves on film for talking motion pictures and phonograph.” On this scrap of paper he drew diagrams and instructions detailed enough that the court saw that de Forest at least preceded Tri-Ergon with a written record, regardless of the date of patents filed. “Judge Biggs declared that although de Forest did not file his patent application until September 18, 1919, 3 months after the Germans filed theirs in Germany, the evidence in the case showed that the American inventor had his idea well underway in October, 1918.”28 This scrap of paper proving provenance of the de Forest invention explains why the original September 1919 patent application was so well thought out and detailed, and as it turns out, accurate.29 The discovery in 1929 of this “lost” drawing verifies that de Forest did begin before Tri-Ergon (Fig. 9.4).

Phonofilm, The Lawyers Figure 9.4 A 1930 news headline declaring de Forest victorious over the German Company Tri-Ergon, a court decision based on that important 1918 scrap of paper on which de Forest drew the complete variable density soundon-film process that led to his 1919 patent. This was just one of many suits and countersuits that defined the transition to sound from silent pictures. Dow-Jones News Service, February 21, 1930, from the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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In the 1930 case of General Talking Pictures Corporation and de Forest Phonofilms vs. Stanley and Company of America, de Forest charges infringement against Western Electric over their use of the 1915 Ries “slit” patent now owned by de Forest. What the court says in its introduction is: “It is not with the production of these recorded films but with their use after they have been produced, that we are here concerned. In the already made photographed film which the patent in suit uses, the sound vibrations have been photographed on the sensitized film and without entering into details, it suffices to say the photographed modulations are evidenced by differences in film translucency.”30 The court, in a mostly accurate description of a piece of sound film on which a variable density audio track has been recorded, understands and continues: “Such being the case, it follows that such a film is moved past an effective line of light, these variations in translucency vary the quantum of penetrating light and so vary the degree to which the light cell is illuminated. This results in correspondently electrical vibrations which in due course are translated by a loudspeaker into sounds which correspond to and are in reality replica or recreations of the sounds which had made the original sound record.”31 The court continues in a discussion of how the line of light pertains to the Ries patent and the type and location of narrow slit or aperture that passes the line of light: “The claims as above amended are now limited to the applicant’s specific method of moving a photographic film across a small aperture in such a manner as to limit the area of exposure to the area of the aperture. It is this restriction in this exposed area that enables the successful making of photographic sound records, and also permits operation at any desired practical speed without overlapping, blurring or double exposure.”32 Western Electric believes that the important part of the Ries patent is its combination of narrow slit and its proximity to the film. The court responds, and it is this passage that is underlined by de Forest in his papers as being important: “We will assume for the purposes of this case that even if those two elements were old, their combination with other elements made a novel combination and that the patent is valid.”33 To which de Forest writes in the margin, “good!” A discussion of elementary physics and the type of slit for passing light is clarified by a noted professor, and de Forest himself testifies saying, “In 1924 I began to introduce the optical slit … the optical slit is very much preferable to the mechanical slit; it avoids the necessity of keeping the slit clean…. I think we completely abandoned the physical slit by that date.”34, 35 Dr. Wente of Western Electric testifies that he worked on an optical slit in 1920–1922, and he testified “The optical slit which is used by the Western Electric Company at the present time is substantially the type I devised and used.36 It is in fact the only kind of a slit I ever used in

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reproducing.”37 The court concludes that the slit and its distance to the film does not infringe as it is different than the Ries patent specification. In the end, the court held that the de Forest/Ries patents were not infringed and de Forest’s case was dismissed. The various court battles over Phonofilm mostly benefitted the lawyers. De Forest would not profit whatever their outcomes. He is back in patent court in 1930, in de Forest vs. Freeman Owens, re: infringement of patent for printing positives and negatives on machine. Owens worked for de Forest as a cameraman when the patent was filed by Owens. Originally, the patent court awarded this invention to Owens, but de Forest and Darby appealed. In this interference case: “A printing machine for printing positives from negatives having sound and motion picture records displaced thereon, comprising means for printing the sound record from the negative onto the positive, and the instrumentalities arranged between the said means and mechanism for predetermining the displacement between the sound and picture records on the positive.”38 Both de Forest and Owens claim that their invention arose from construction of the device. This issue will turn on whether Owens, an employee of de Forest at the time, was really inventing or following the lead of employer de Forest. The court will ask, who invented it? “It is admitted that Owens filed his application for patent while in Dr. de Forest’s employ and without the knowledge of de Forest. It is, therefore, earnestly contended by de Forest that Owens seeks to appropriate to his own use an invention which de Forest disclosed to him and which he, Owens, was employed to help perfect.”39 This heart of the issue is still viable today resulting in documents being signed at the time of employment specifying who gets the credit in invention. When a professor/researcher develops an invention while employed by a university, there is usually an a priori contract saying who gets what. In this case the court was obviously biased in favor of de Forest, as they called him a world renowned scientist and inventor while “Owens was a experienced cameraman, but has no experience with sound on film photographs.”40 De Forest as employer had asked Owens to deliver the drawing for this contact printer to the mechanic, Kaufman, who would construct it. Kaufman testified that “He received no instructions from Owens as to the manner of building the machine, but that the idea was disclosed to him by de Forest.”41 Apparently all agreed that Owens did have some minor input as to the design, a few small suggestions, but not ownership. So the court wrote: “It is conceded that if Owens made the invention, he made it while in the employ of de Forest and with the use of de Forest’s material.”42 One conclusion made by the court was based on a number of cited precedents that answered the questions: was it made during working

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hours, was the employee being paid to work those hours, etc.? “At the time this invention was made, and we think made by de Forest, the relation of employer and employee clearly existed between de Forest and Owens. Fortunately, the law, where the relation of employer and employee exists, is fairly well settled in the decided cases.” And before the gavel sounds: “The evidence brought forward by de Forest and all the surrounding facts and circumstances show the he was the inventor.”43 After this case was concluded to the favor of de Forest, a letter was sent from the patent department of General Talking Pictures to de Forest suggesting that they use this win to “broaden the scope of the claim or secure other broader claims which would basically cover the present printing used by all producers.”44 In 1932 de Forest writes a letter and press release to the editor of the Los Angeles Times titled: “Former San Franciscan has Basic Patent Sustained.” He begins this story with his California history in Palo Alto where he developed his Audion as an amplifier of sound and an oscillator of radio waves. He describes the first public Phonofilm showing at the Rivoli Theater in NYC in 1923. “The Western Electric and the large motion picture producers of Hollywood ignored the de Forest patents, and notwithstanding his early pioneer work he was therefore compelled two years ago to bring suits of infringement against Fox Films and Western Electric Companies.”45 In this story, the de Forest patent suit concerning the Ries patent, lost in 1930 and detailed above, has now been sustained in favor of de Forest in a Delaware court. It is that pesky slit again, which is used to focus the light on the film. “Dr. de Forest states that he and his company will now proceed energetically against all infringers of the Reis patent, and enforce their adjudicated rights to the limit.”46 And in a bit of hyperbole de Forest writes: “This de Forest-Ries patent suit; the first one tried in the Talking Motion Picture art, will have far-reaching effects in this new industry, where once more the growing tendency of the Federal Courts to recognize the rights of pioneer inventors is again demonstrated.”47 The evidence suggests that he did not continue to energetically pursue perceived infringements of the Phonofilm patents. He no longer controlled the company, and by 1932 the last pieces of what was once Phonofilm were only of historical significance. The patent situation remains complex to this day. There are recent cases in which a single unknown company that makes nothing has filed hundreds of patents on every possible use of technology and then seek to make a profit by either selling them or suing to collect on them. This is also a practice of established companies. In the story, “Kodak seeks iPhone Royalties,” the company is apparently trying to gain some ground that they lost in the transition from film to digital: “Among its more than 1,000 digital-imaging patents is one Kodak says entitles it to royalties on every Apple

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iPhone and RIM Blackberry with an image preview camera feature.”48 Another patent holding company, Interval Research, seems to have been created for the sole purpose of grabbing those patents not already filed and then going to court to win awards for infringement: “Over nearly a decade Interval Research employed 110 scientists who worked at the leading edge of personal computer and Internet technologies, winning about 300 patents. Many companies earn money solely through licensing patents that they own.”49

De Forest Speaks Out Now that he has been effectively minimized by the movies, in what frame of mind was Lee de Forest at the end of the decade? Prior to the final resolution of the Phonofilm patent debacle, he had written a bit of a sour grapes letter a letter to Mr. Gifford, in which he returns to his familiar rant about the unfairness of AT&T when they took advantage of him and purchased his patents for a pittance, but also about Western Electric, and the then ongoing patent battle with Fox-Case. “The attitude of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company when it opened its transcontinental telephone service in 1915…. On that occasion Theodore Vail and Bancroft Gherardi were both quoted as actually denying that the Audion amplifier or any of my inventions, were used in the new transcontinental line. For 13 years the attitude of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company towards me has be consistently niggardly, to put it gently. In 1913, $500,000 was voted to acquire a exclusive license for wire communication under my Audion patents. Taking advantage of the then bankrupt condition of my company, the Western Electric Company employed an outside lawyer of Hebraic lineage to camouflage the deal. He succeeded in getting the desired rights for $50,000. That was doubtless considered ‘good business’ by Big Business. Those licenses have earned much over $50,000,000 since.”50 De Forest goes on to say that the RCA was largely built on the rights obtained by Western Electric from de Forest: “I am not complaining about this. I am glad my inventions have proven so valuable to the world in general.”51 He does return in 1929 to speak to a group of theater owners, and it appears he has looked over the speech at the last minute and made some changes: “In my opinion, if the first motion picture had successfully talked, it would now be impossible to exploit pantomime. (he changes it: ‘it would have been impossible to later exploit pantomime’) However, today (crosses out ‘today’) the public has been educated to motion picture pantomime and the time for talking picture features has not yet arrived. (changes ‘not yet’ to ‘only recently’).”52 He has finally realized that pantomime, like Phonofilm, may be a historical footnote. “My experience with

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motion picture exhibitors has taught me that as a class, they are easily panicked and look upon every new amusement device as a threat against their business. In very few instances have their fears been justified, and there is no reason to believe that the future holds anything but the best for exhibitors throughout the world. The first bugaboo to frighten the exhibitors was the traveling show, which has since been eliminated through the popularity of motion pictures. Next, the radio was looked upon as an evil that would force theater owners out of business by keeping people at home. The effect has been the exact opposite and those theaters that now broadcast their musical entertainment by radio are enjoying the greatest patronage.”53

De Forest Radio, Again With Phonofilm now gone, there is a brief period of success for the original company that made Phonofilm funding possible. The De Forest Radio Manufacturing Company had been forced into receivership because of the malfeasance of its managers, but it will emerge from receivership and be taken into good hands, at least for a while. The radio boom, in part made possible by de Forest inventions, should have made millionaires out of anyone involved in its manufacture. This newly emerged de Forest company is under the ownership of Wylie Reynolds and managed by James Garside, both men from Southern Michigan. Garside was an expert in the manufacture of tubes, and the de Forest brand was advertised as the “Rolls Royce” of tubes. They managed to keep this brand as a high-end one, and with Alan B. DuMont (later of television fame) as chief engineer, the company prospered for a while. Had the management been more astute, the company would have continued to do well, but eventually poor management allowed it to fall back into receivership. This company cannot get a break. While in its weakened condition, RCA managed to obtain all of the company assets and patents, with the exception of the name “Lee de Forest.”54 In October 1931 there is a settlement between RCA and de Forest over vacuum tubes. RCA paid $1 million (a sum equal to $12 million today) to the de Forest company and de Forest takes a license under the RCA patents at a payment of 5% royalty and gives RCA a license under de Forest tube patents. According to lawyer Sam Darby, there was “an option to the RCA to acquire title to the de Forest Oscillator patents. This was to avoid having the de Forest Company brought in as party litigant in suits brought on the Oscillating Audio patents. The de Forest Company did not give up any rights which it retained under the Western Electric Agreement of 1917.”55

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The Loneliness of Lee Earlier, before the Phonofilm trials, the de Forest home life in Riverlue with Mary and their two daughters, Eleanor and Marylyn, had started to unravel. The son that de Forest had always wanted, a “Lee Jr.” who would go to Yale and become an inventor in his own right, a better copy of dad, had died at birth. De Forest had blamed this loss of his progeny on Mary’s ongoing drinking problem, one that apparently continued through pregnancy. After the death Mary and the two girls are sent on a cruise to “heal” and try to move on. Lee realizes in her absence that divorce is inevitable. “Alone, as how infinitely alone tonight I sat long on my upper balcony, gazing entranced at the glory of this sunset, sweeping the Appalachians.”56 He had already decided that he too would have to get away from the intensity of the times, the death of baby Lee. He follows a familiar pattern and takes a cruise. He travels. He flirts. He fantasizes. He is absolutely done with third wife Mary. It is February of the following year, 1927, and he is in Madrid pondering a lost romantic fling with the mystery woman named Nettie with whom he apparently had an earlier affair: “Tonight I am lonely and alone. I looked around to see just one who might remotely resemble you. Upon her face I would fancy the lightness, the loveliness, the witchery and charm of my Nettie. Ah, but my lonely heart ached as she danced away and I saw, alas, it was not you, but just an ordinary, blithe, young American maiden so unlike you, as unworthy of comparison with you. Where were the fair locks of ruddy gold; where that gay, challenging poise of the head; where those eyes, luminous with amber fire, where for me the love light kindles? Alas, not here, not here, but afar, weeks and thousands of miles away from the aching heart, the empty arms of him who loves you.”57 By the end of the year he is not so lucky. “What a summer this has been. Delay and disappointment, fading at times almost to despair. Funds exhausted, and Nettie lost. Best not to recall the heart sickening story I lived again at Riverlue – this refuge of peace and loneliness perhaps saved my life or my sanity – as it doubtless has maintained my sense of youthfulness, my ambition, my ideals of the earlier years, through all the trials of the years. Unquestionably had I undergone in a city apartment what the years with my wife here brought them I would have succumbed long ago. So now loneliness and despair has ended.”58 A few months later he continues to muse about Nettie, one of those brief summer to fall relationships, but he seems to have ended his temporary depression: “If you knew how strange it seems to be again writing beautiful or beauty awakened words, you could then

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realize just what your presence has meant to me – a transformation of my soul. A little longer and I might have hopelessly damned my soul. And you have saved me.”59 Nettie now plays the part of a fantasy, and in this puppy love state he is able to get beyond his anger at the failure of Phonofilm and escape, if only for a little while, into a place he knows well, one of words only. It is the literary de Forest alone with his diary and pen: “As I walked home tonight, the moon as my companion, the fullness of silver glory my mentor my guide. In his face I saw yours reflected, for you were the sun that made glorious this day of our reunion. My heart sung once more the old songs of those summer, moon-drenched nights, when across the silent river all the waters of the boundless west your voice, your memories came back to me, to ring my hart with rhapsody. And on my life I could feel yet the soft, warm, passionate pressure of the kisses of your mouth. O my Nettie, you love me and I am rich!”60 The mostly undocumented affair with Nettie did not last. The divorce from Mary would be finalized in 1928. The next year he makes the decision to leave Riverlue, to leave his house on the Hudson forever, and return to California, this time to Los Angeles: “I tire of this riot and I yearn for rest.”61 In later years it appears that the only regret about abandoning Riverlue is that his daughters would not be able to experience the seasons and the river: “How bitterly I regret that, despite all I have done to redeem Riverlue from the spoilers for the sake of you and Marylyn, this was not to be. I had always expected that it would be your heritage and birthright, to live in and enjoy after I had gone.”62 This diary entry implies that there was a foreclosure on the estate or at least a forced voluntary sale. De Forest hopes for a semblance of closure to a disappointing decade: “Thanks to Jew Schlesinger (the person who bought Phonofilm) my achievement during 1929–1930 could well be recorded on two small pages! My presidency of the I.R.S (International Radio Society) is perhaps the one redeeming light of 1930s accomplishment – that and my resolve as last awakened, to shake from my feet the dust of that hideous city which had fastened its strangling, loathsome tentacles around me. Its ceaseless burden kept me penniless, that plus my continued indulgences to Mary Mayo and that other vipress (Nettie?). For sanity and sleep fullness of night let me pass un-chronicled the evil events of ’29 and ’30 – until the last week of August, when after 6 weeks of fetid humidity, that is New York, I again returned to Hollywood, to attend the last of the Bowl’s symphonies under the stars, as I had the first concert of that memorable summer.”63 Yes, he is angry but as in the past he finds solace in music. He has left New York for California where he will remain.

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Angry at His First Child This child is neither Eleanor nor Marylyn, but “radio,” an entity that he has always called his “first child.” Ranting against radio will become a common theme in his life, and one of the issues that he will speak about often is the over-commercialization of radio broadcasting. It was over the 1920 objections and predictions of de Forest and Sarnoff that radio became advertiser supported. Sarnoff had believed radio would be used to sell the devices used to listen to its programming, and for a few years that may have been the model, but very soon it was apparent that most broadcasters wanted to sell something to their audiences. In a 1930 interview, de Forest warned the broadcasters that their programs of good music are too often interrupted by the loud product pitch: “From the ecstasies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, listeners are suddenly dumped into a cold mess of ginger-ale or cigarettes, while softly fading notes of an opera’s finale emerge into a discourse on sanitary plumbing or whole-wheat bread.”64 He believes that broadcasters should follow what we refer to today as the Public Broadcasting model, a simple announcement at the start and ending of the program mentioning the product. But does he like the radio pitch men even a little bit? “Such advertisers are not clever salesmen; they are stupid, uncouth ‘sandwich men’ who have found the door of the home or to the dinner table.”65 If this were today, you might say that he needs a release for his obvious anger. What about another wife? A good one.

Hollywood Happiness The year 1930 is a tipping point. He begins the year depressed, and with practically nothing and ends the year a happy man. He is free of Phonofilm, a disaster that is now in the hands of lawyers, and the film industry is doing just fine with sound pictures using both the Vitaphone disc and several variable density and variable area sound-on-film formats. His move to Hollywood was turning out to be an excellent idea. He meets and dates silent film star Marie Mosquini and by the end of the year: “Today, to celebrate how we met, Marie Mosquini and I again went down to the shore, to a cozy home for the day. And although Marie could not (alas) go into sea we just sat and spoke to each other on that Sunday afternoon.”66 He begins living the California Dream: “I went swimming again, and she waved to me and beamed upon me – far more lovely and beautiful than she looked one year ago! Yes, since my last birthday, when I knew we met, we have both achieved great happiness. I praise the Pacific, California, and a Californian native daughter! I never felt better, always full of pep, always ready to dance

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Figure 9.5 A Hollywood publicity photo of a young Marie, autographed for her cousins. Maries was a silent film star beginning in 1919, and like de Forest, she had just left an unhappy marriage. He was 59, she 31 when they were married, and they did live happily ever after. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

with my lovely wife (to be), at the turn of a record or a twist of a radio dial.”67 They will marry in 2 months (Fig. 9.5). Like de Forest, Marie Mosquini led an interesting but troubled life. The silent screen actress was a teenage film star. Born in Los Angeles in 1899, she had her most prolific acting year in 1919. According to IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Database, of the 202 films she appeared in during a brief career from 1917 to 1920, 40 of them were made when she was a 19-year old in 1919 alone!68 This must be some sort of record. The 1927 Los Angeles Times article, “Screen Comedienne Must Self Support,” is a story about her divorce

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from Roy Harlow, “The salary of $150 a week which Marie Mosquini gets as a comedienne at the Hal Roach Studios when she works ought to be enough to support her, Judge Paul Burks ruled yesterday,”69 in the alimony suit brought by Mosquini. Said the current Mrs. Harlow, “No, I don’t love my husband anymore, but I intend to contest his suit.” Said Mr. Harlow, “I do love her, but I can’t stand her mother.” Replied Mosquini, “The whole trouble is he is a drinker and a gambler.”70 So it seems both Lee and Marie are made for each other, each having survived uneven careers, and each having survived previous marriages to spouses with a taste for the grape. Wedding bells rang and the organ played “O Promise Me” in October 1930 when Lee de Forest, age 59, married Marie Mosquini, then 31. The headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “De Forest Marriage Verified.” Apparently it was a Hollywood secret: “Rumors current in Hollywood that Dr. Lee de Forest, noted inventor known as the ‘Father of Radio,’ and Marie Mosquini, screen actress, had been secretly married at Tijuana were confirmed yesterday in dispatches from the border town.”71 Notice that in the article, it does refer to de Forest as an inventor, which he surely was, and the “Father of Radio,” a title he wanted for himself. It does not say, “Lee de Forest, the Father of the Sound Motion Picture.” The company town newspaper does not mention film at all.

Old Patents and New Awards The 1930s will see the final results of several patents filed years earlier, most of these relating to Phonofilm technology. The problem with some of these patents is that between the time they were filed and the time they were issued, an entire sea change had taken place in the film industry relegating the de Forest system of sound for film to a minor supporting role in the movie business. Now there are competing variable density, variable area, and light valve systems, and there is the final gasp of the phonograph system, Vitaphone. But the courts do not take their cues from Daily Variety, and these patents are granted when the patent office completes their vetting process. Also in the 1930s, there will be a final, final, absolutely final resolution of de Forest vs. Armstrong over the now decades-old invention/discovery of regeneration as it applies to the Audion as an amplifier and oscillator. One of those earlier patents applied for was truly inspirational, and while related to sound-on-film, it was not about the movies. It is really the first introduction to the multitrack recording of audio, a process that eventually would be used in a different and more useful form by the film studios. De Forest seems to have viewed this multitrack sound device for

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continuous background music, like the Muzak service heard in stores and elevators. The patent was applied for in 1929, issued in 1931, no.1,802, 595, called “Automatic Photographic Sound Reproducing Mechanism.” This interesting device allowed the recording and playback of four tracks of variable density sound on a reel of 35 mm film (with no picture) and a reversing mechanism so that audio could be cued up and played back when needed. This was not a visual film system, but an optical audio-only recording device. Each of the tracks would play independently, and when the first track ended the film reels would reverse, immediately playing the next track. Apparently, the light sensitive pickup device would mechanically be moved right or left so that the pickup photocell would focus on the next track, as in the patent, “so that the structure may be moved to bring the slit in alignment with each sound record in succession as the film travels backwards and forwards through the machine (Fig. 9.6).”72 Obviously, this would have application when continuous playback was needed, as the length of the phonograph record in 1929 when this patent was applied for was only a few minutes and this system could play for an hour or more using one reel of film. This is an example of an unintended outcome of a process, sound-on-film, leading to a possible way of making a longer recording of higher quality than was possible with the phonograph technology of the era. In the patent, it is suggested that: “This invention relates to improvements in Phonofilm or sound reproducing apparatus adapted to the purpose of reproducing sound without reference to any motion picture on the film for use in ‘legitimate’ theaters, restaurants, dance halls, and the like or in the production of incidental music accompanying motion pictures with which it is not necessary to synchronize the sounds; also in connection with amplifiers at radio stations, etc.”73 De Forest logically believed that his sound-on-film technology could be used for a stand-alone industrial recorder of sound only. It is a very Rube Goldberg-like device, and with its many wheels and gears and brackets and alignment issues, its maintenance would be a problem.

Figure 9.6 Page one of patent no. 1,802,595, a multitrack optical recorder, filed in 1928 and granted in 1931. Hollywood would use a similar system of multitrack audio recording, but de Forest wrote that his system might be a way of playing, for example, uninterrupted background music. Muzak? For 15 years leading up to this patent de Forest had searched for a way to get around the limitations of the phonograph record and its 3–5 min per side. As a fan of classical and opera he hated the record because of the interruptions to a movement or aria. The public was content to buy their 3 min popular songs on a 78-rpm record, a format that dominated until 1948. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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Later a practical version was patented, for “Talking Motion Picture Apparatus,” patent no. 1,843,972, a four channel sound audio recorder, to record and reproduce synchronous sound separately from the film, using four light sources and four photoelectric cells. With this device four channels of sound could be recorded at once to be mixed later into a single monaural sound track for the film. This precedes the similar system the industry would eventually adopt, that of multiple channels of audio recorded on separate films for editing to be combined later with the picture. But this system of de Forest was not quite that system. In the industry, recording the sound and picture on separate reels of film that are synchronized in what is called “double system” is different from that of de Forest’s: “This invention contemplates a simple and convenient method and apparatus for placing the picture on one film and the sound records comprising several separate tracks on a separate film and winding both films on the same reel. The two films are then simultaneously run through the projection machine of this invention, always keeping the two films in perfect synchronization with a minimum of mechanical complications and also greatly simplifying the operator’s task in threading up the two films through the projecting and sound reproducing portions of the machine.”74 The uniqueness of his patent is that it anticipates early the need for more than a single channel of audio in film production. The industry will use several discrete films for recording the audio separate from the visual but those tracks would be mixed onto a single monaural track for playback in the theater. In the de Forest system the two films are adjacent and touching each other on the same reel, and then are separated and threaded in the camera or the projector. This 1928 patent is a fascinating one, demonstrating the slow march toward the film sound recording processes of the 1930s. The system described solves the problem of having the sound and picture recorded together on one film during the recording process. If you look at the Phonofilms themselves, you see the limitations of recording the film and sound at the same time on the same film. Doing this makes editing more difficult and limits the versatility already learned in the silent era. As early as 1930, the technical apparatus in film making would move from a single sound track on a film or a phonograph record recorded with a film, to multiple sound tracks recorded optically but separately and later “resolved” with the picture when needed for the synchronized sound parts. Tracks recorded separately can be mixed, replaced, deleted, added to, and equalized/sweetened to be edited into a single final audio track that is printed onto the film with picture as a negative for making the release print copies for the theaters. In 1928, de Forest filed a patent for “Soundproofing Picture Recording Camera,” no. 1,929,626. A major problem in the transition from silent to

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sound was that the camera had always been noisy. In the transition period from silent to sound, many changes were necessary to make the set as quiet as possible. The early sound cameras and their operators were forced to operate in small enclosures with the camera lens behind heavy soundproof glass. This de Forest patent recognized the need for what came to be known as a “blimp,” a soundproof housing on the camera itself, as opposed to the early method of placing the entire and operator camera in a soundproof box. What de Forest said in this patent was simple, “One of the objects of this invention is the location of a picture recording camera within an evacuated chamber in order to prevent the audible generation of sounds that would be picked up by the microphones and recorded on the sound film.”75 In this improvement, only the camera and not the operator was enclosed in a soundproof enclosure. With this line of thought, a moveable camera was a possibility again, like in silent work. This of course allowed the camera to move on tracks or dolly, adding to the variation of shots needed to tell the story. There was another Tri-Ergon patent suit in 1930 in the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, Lee de Forest vs. Tri Ergon, in the case known as “Recording Sounds.” De Forest maintains “That he is the original and first inventor of certain new and useful improvements in Recording Sounds.” This is based on an application for a patent in July, 1921 and issued in April, 1924, patent 1,489,314. His appeal was based on the examiner of patents awarding priority for “photographing simultaneously upon separate films the picture and sound, and photographing the sound record on an unexposed portion of the picture film between the marginal edge and the sprocket perforations thereof,” to the three Germans from Tri-Ergon (Vogt, Massolle, Engl). The three wrote that they realized that combining picture and sound in the original record process was not ideal because the exposure needed for the picture may be different than that of the audio track. Tri-Ergon claimed they were using separate film for picture and sound, and claimed it was their patented process. De Forest counterclaimed that he made notes in his notebook prior to the dates claimed by Tri-Ergon, although Tri-Ergon claimed that de Forest did not apply in a timely manner. And while Tri-Ergon had the patent first, de Forest had laboratory notes dated earlier showing he was first with the idea. It is possible that de Forest may have been in Germany close to the time he filed this so a proper question is, “did he copy the German patent while working in a lab there?” De Forest claimed primacy by submitting his notebook, Exhibit 1, dated December 28, 1920 where he wrote: “Developed this last 10 min until wholly fogged. This would be too long for cine picture. Hence will probably need to make two negatives (picture and sound) and

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print on same positive.”76 The second entry dated January 18, 1921, “Developed 11 min (very cold day) (longer development is best for sound film but not for picture. Hence will probably use two films)”77 In spite of this evidence the commissioner ruled against de Forest. This is only one of the hundreds of patent interference claims and counterclaims that would not be sorted out until long after the technology for sound movies was already decided. Alas, some of the de Forest patents do reflect a naïveté on his part of the real nature of film production. In this 1927 patent no. 1,653,155, “Talking Picture Equipment,” his sound stage is just a long room with bare incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There is no way to either control or reflect the light sources, so they remain just bright and evenly lit for an exposure. There is no indication in this sound stage patent that he gave any thought to set design and construction, or the three-point lighting of Key, Back and Fill light used for years by Hollywood. The patent drawing depicts a woman, apparently in some performance, at one end of the stage, her background that of trees or bushes. At the far end in its sound proof housing is the Phonofilm camera, and on top of the camera “box” is a microphone with a horn which is used to pick up the sound. There is no other mounting for the microphone, no plan to move it on a boom to be closer and above the head of the performer 50 ft away. There is no way to move the camera box either. This patent shows that de Forest did not spend much time on the set of a “real” film, and if he did, he didn’t think enough of the techniques used to include in this patent. You can see the results of this narrow interpretation of film making by watching the Phonofilms. Most are long shot with no sound separation if there is more than one source of speaking or singing, and the lighting is not of the type used to reinforce the emotion of the scene or the story, but more than enough to obtain an adequate exposure. Of the 80 plus patents submitted for Phonofilm, none was more useful than the original one filed in 1919 that detailed the entire theoretical basis for his system. Subsequent patents filed yearly until 1930 were primarily modifications and additions to his basic variable density process, including patents for improvements to microphones, loudspeakers, and projection screens.

Radio and Television After the Phonofilm debacle, de Forest turns his attention to television and will work for a brief while with the inventor of the mechanical television, Charles Francis Jenkins. As one of the original inventors in film and television, Jenkins began to experiment and amass film and TV patents in the 1890s. In 1916 he would continue his interest in the moving image as the

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Figure 9.7 De Forest, seated, is witnessing a demonstration of the “Jenkins Radiovisor,” an early scanning disc TV. The other participants are really watching de Forest watch TV, and they are unidentified. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

founder of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE). In spite of the odds, Jenkins would not give up on his mechanical television system he called the “Radio Visor” or “Radio Vision.” His vision is an impossible one, that of using short waves to carry the audio and the electrical impulses that will interact with a spinning disc and light and photocell to draw very tiny images composed of less than 50 lines. It is a dead end. The resolution is poor, and because it was the start of the depression and an era of limited availability, the Jenkins system rightly died (Fig. 9.7). Still, de Forest was interested, and for a time his radio manufacturing company had a financial interest in the work of Jenkins. Speaking to the Lewis Institute in Chicago in 1930, he talked about the Jenkins television and how it was going to be available with broadcasts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but that there are problems: “The great drawback in television

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by radio is the narrow wave frequency channels which are available. Six by six inch interlaced pictures require 48 lines to the inch. That of 48 lines to the inch requires a side band of about 100 kilocycles and the Federal Radio Commission has not many such licenses to give out to the television broadcasting companies.”78 You can see that he is thinking small, about a mechanical television system that never will come to fruition. But in 1930 practically no one was thinking about television, and it would take nearly 20 more years before television was available in the average home. By the end of the 1930s, he was learning about the development of the all-electronic television systems, and in the de Forest papers there is a typed transcription of a de Forest conversation with David Sarnoff, who as RCA head would demonstrate television at the 1939 World’s Fair. De Forest has written in pencil on the edge of this note: “Expressed by Dave to me June 1938!”79 What “Dave” said was this: “I also believe that transmission and reception of motion pictures by radio will be worked out within the next decade. This would result in important events or interesting dramatic presentations being literally broadcast by radio through the use of appropriate transmitters and, thereafter, received in individual homes or auditoriums where the original scene will be reenacted on a screen, with much the appearance of present day motion pictures.”80 The reason that this note is suspect is because Sarnoff and RCA had already developed a system with their scientist Vladimir Zworykin, and it was premiered at the abovementioned 1939 fair. This note indicates less knowledge than was surely known by Sarnoff about an electronic television system in 1938. Either that or Sarnoff did not want to reveal what he was doing in television to de Forest, known as an inventor who might seize an opportunity to exploit it.

Armstrong, Again, Feedback, Again In the history of electronics, there is one patent battle that stands far above all the others, and Lee de Forest was part of it. It began two decades earlier when at least five inventors believed that they had primacy in the discovery of the most important characteristic of the Audion. Called “feedback” or “regeneration,” it simply means that a small signal amplified by the vacuum tube can be made louder and stronger by taking that signal from the output and feeding it back into the input of a tube. This same process can also make the vacuum tube oscillate, making it useful as a transmitter of radio waves. In the first battle in 1914 it was decided that Edwin Armstrong should be credited for this discovery based on the much earlier date of his patent. In this case de Forest was allowed second place over four other claimants. Later de Forest would produce a piece of paper in the form of a laboratory note, signed and dated by his lab assistant van

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Figure 9.8 The May 21, 1934 telegram of congratulations from long time de Forest attorney Sam Darby Jr., on the occasion of the final de Forest vs. Armstrong decision in favor of de Forest. Basically, the Supreme Court ruled that they were not going to reinvent the wheel and go down this well-trodden path again. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Etten that would show that de Forest drew the feedback circuit a few months before the Armstrong patent was filed. What scientists and others have said about this diagram is that while it was dated prior to the Armstrong filing, it did not show that de Forest really understood the significance of what he had discovered. After several more court battles including the awarding of its primacy in 1924 to de Forest, it is finally resolved in 1934 in de Forest’s favor. The May 21, 1934 telegram from attorney Sam Darby Jr. to de Forest reads“Supreme Court decision today upholds your patents.Congratulations. S.E. Darby Jr.”81 That’s it. This case had been the major dark cloud which hung over de Forest and the entire electronic inventing community for 20 years. It is finally solved, but it is known that the celebrations were muted. This case had cost millions, it had caused anguish, it had made lifelong enemies of dozens of people, and it consumed much of the time of two brilliant inventors of radio, Armstrong and de Forest. And to add to the sense that it still wasn’t really resolved, it has been said by some in the technical community that the judge who wrote the decision for the majority did not really understand the science involved, that essentially the Supreme Court got it wrong (Fig. 9.8)!

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Six months prior to this decision by the high court, in a letter to the editor of the New York Times, de Forest wrote of this patent ambiguity: “At best the present state of acts will, I think, afford scant comfort to American inventors and patentees, who until now have undoubtedly believed that if one lived long enough, and had the means to carry his patent application through the devious channels of patent office interference, through infringement prosecutions, appeals to US circuit Courts and at last to receive from the Supreme Tribunal of the nation, a decision that ones patent is valid – then, under the above state of acts, he might be considered actually to ‘have a patent.’ But no! After all that, we learn that what has transpired through all the 14 trying years means simply nothing at all – that every new infringer of his patent has as good a right as the original sinner, to start again from the bottom, and through successive trials carry the now hoary, moth-eaten issue again through the years up to the same court which the Supreme Court reversed, there to have our ‘last tribunal’ reversed in turn by its junior – all this, I opine, seems to make of our U.S. Patent System the farce which unfortunately, in some quarters it is so frequently esteemed.”82 In May 1934 in the United States Supreme Court, in the case of de Forest vs. Armstrong, de Forest wins the last battle. The opinion of the Court was given by Justice Cardozo, and while somewhat complex, he has stated clearly that de Forest as “prior inventor under the law” wins the case even though Armstrong may have made the invention and patented it before de Forest acted on it. One fact obvious to the court, after years of litigation in dozens of courts of various levels from various jurisdictions, “The evidence in this suit for an infringement is a repetition, word for word, of the evidence in the earlier suits, so far as material to the conflicting claims of Armstrong and de Forest. What has been added is so nearly negligible that to all intents and purposes the records are the same.”83 The court then listed all of the decisions in all of the courts in the past 20 years and how they ruled on the issue and why. In his ruling Justice Cardozo said that in order to overturn the validity of the original patent holder, there had to be strong evidence, even though the prior ruling applied to this case was the Austin machinery vs. Buckeye Tractor: “Again it is said that ‘the presumption of the validity of the patent is such that the defense of invention by another must be established by the clearest proof, perhaps beyond reasonable doubt.’”84 This means that even if Armstrong’s claim is valid in a number of areas, and it was de Forest who was still the original inventor and it would take much proof to change anything in favor of another. Cardozo continues: “This court in affirming the decrees in favor of de Forest did not say out and out that it

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would have reached the same conclusion upon the issue of priority if it had been itself the trier of the facts. It did, however, say in substance that Armstrong had failed to establish his own superior right by evidence sufficient to carry thorough conviction to the mind, or by evidence of manifest error in the findings of the court below.”85 Again, a very narrow definition, and while it is said even today that Cardozo got it wrong, he really only relied on precedents to not decide against the evidence on which past courts had ruled: “The evidence that was insufficient at that time to evoke a clear conviction that the patents were invalid is the same in all essentials as the evidence before us now. We must pronounce a like decree unless we are prepared to say in the light of fuller argument that the first decree was wrong.”86 Some continue to believe that the court was being “lazy” by not trying this case anew, but the decision stands. Cardozo wrote in his ruling that so much has been written about this case and that because there is such a full record there is no need to “fill the pages of our reports with an analysis of the opposing arguments as if we were a court of the first instance trying the controversy anew.”87 Again, refuting what even the modern day scientist continues to believe, that Cardozo did not understand the science, the evidence found by reading the Court’s narrative does show more knowledge than would be expected from a legal generalist. And after this narrative, Cardozo again concludes “We think that for all these contentions of de Forest adequate support exists in the record and the law. There is evidence that in August, 1912, he discussed with his assistants the possibility of using sustained oscillations of the Audion in generating and transmitting radio waves as well as those of audio frequency.”88 Finally, to give Armstrong equal time, his “day in court” in this book, there is the evidence, oft-repeated, that de Forest publicly spoke about feedback and did not seem to either understand its significance or believe in it. The court did take note of this December 1913 paper he read before the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE): “In the discussion following the paper he made answers which, it is argued, are irreconcilable with a belief that there was a regenerative feedback of radio frequencies from the plate circuit to the grid. He denies, however, the meaning now ascribed to him, and insists that to his understanding in the heat of the discussion the audio and not the radio frequencies were the subjects of the questions.”89 There is also the question asked rhetorically of de Forest: “If you knew about this as early as 1912, why didn’t you attempt to exploit it or use it in a way that would be useful and patentable?” De Forest would have answered that he was out of money and preoccupied with the telephone repeater invention, one that would have immediate use and create profit. It was this reason that he gave

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for not being first with a patent on the amplifying and oscillating uses of the Audion. Considering the other life-altering events of 1912 – his pending arrest, his move to Palo Alto, his marriage to Mary Mayo – there is no reason not to believe his explanation.

Family Life As de Forest relaxes after the final Armstrong trial, he does remember that he has a family, several of them in fact. He remains in touch with daughter Marilyn from his years with wife three, Mary Mayo. Marilyn, now 15 years old and living in New York, writes to dad in the winter of 1936. It seems she has found religion and needs cash: “I am willing to go to a convent in Ossing. Not a cheap place like mother wants to send me. I need a coat very bad so is it all right with you if I buy a coat instead of a uniform? Please answer this question as it is very cold here.”90 She signed the letter “with love and kisses from your darling Marilyn de Forest.” We know from the evidence in the de Forest papers that he seldom saw his three girls, one from his marriage to Nora and two by Mary. His current marriage to Marie was by all accounts a solid one, but for whatever reason did not result in children. For de Forest, success in that area would be defined by the son he always wanted but never got. He also continued his in-home radio listening and his ongoing search for the best reproduction of what he termed fine music. He would be expected to own one of the best radios of the day and that would mean a Scott Philharmonic or a McMurdo Silver Masterpiece VI. There is a letter, an obvious advertising endorsement, in 1936 from de Forest to McMurdo Silver himself, “Dear Mac, You have my permission to use this testimonial in whole or in part.”91 Was the very expensive set given to de Forest in exchange for the endorsement? That is not known, but the letter reads like advertising copy: “At all events, certain is it that when one tunes in today a fine symphony, or some thrilling aria, while seated before such a perfected instrument as your Masterpiece VI the full realization that he is listening to heavenly music, literally music from the heavens, may now come overwhelmingly upon him.”92 He goes on in great detail about this radio and in typical poetic fashion he praises its long distance capability, the reception of international short wave: “Great Gods of Geography!”93 In 1937 he receives an honorary degree, a Doctor of Engineering from the Lewis Institute of Chicago. D. C. Jackson Jr. of Lewis conferred the degree: “Lee de Forest, – a fertile inventor, scientific genius, – your invention of the three-electrode vacuum tube, the audion, which is the soul of the telephone repeater, and the application of the audion to electric amplification and sustained oscillation, made commercially practicable

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Figure 9.9 From a feature in the New York Sunday Mirror, January 21, 1934, the question is “Whatever happened to Lee de Forest?” This was a good subject inasmuch as de Forest remained actively in the news for the first 3 decades of the twentieth century. But by 1930 he appeared to have ran out of gas. This story tells that he is alive and well and happy, still inventing in his Hollywood laboratory. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

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transcontinental and transoceanic telephony and radio broadcasting, and have greatly aided electrical measurements, scientific research, and industrial development.”94 Had Lewis thought about doing this years ago but had put it off until the final court decision on feedback? Similar questions will always be asked about the life of de Forest: Would he have achieved more of the accolades he himself wanted so badly had it not been for the personal and ethical issues that surrounded his life? How many more honorary degrees will await? What will the fallout of the Armstrong decision really cost Lee de Forest? (Fig. 9.9)

The Father of Radio, Part One While Lee de Forest spent much energy in the 1930s defending his earlier work, he would continue to invent in several important areas, among them bomb guidance systems for the next war. And because the United States will join the war after Pearl Harbor in 1941, de Forest and other scientists will step up and invent for the cause of peace and right. WWII will be the second world war that de Forest will live through, and as in the first war, he will willingly lend his expertise. Because of WWI the technology of the radio, sound recording, and sound-on-film benefited from the Governmentimposed patent pool, which forced inventors to “contribute” all their individual pieces to the nascent electronics industry. Before entry into the war in 1917 there were a few basic uses of the de Forest Audion, mostly amplification and the transmitter. When the war ended 2 years later, the technology of both receiver and transmitter had improved enough for broadcasting to an audience. In the 1930s a similar situation surrounded the television. In Great Britain, as in America, the technology to send moving pictures by radio was largely mechanical, as in the Radio Visor of Jenkins or the Televisor of Baird. Both governments were hesitant to adopt these systems as they were low-resolution of between 50 and 100 lines. As early as 1927 in San Francisco, Philo Farnsworth had demonstrated the first all-electronic system of television. A few years later Vladimir Zworykin was developing an all-electronic system of television for RCA, and while Germany under the Nazis already was on the air with electronic television, and the BBC had launched its experimental service, the coming of the second world war would halt most television development for entertainment purposes. Experimentation to develop better radar technology for the war effort would later translate into a better electronic television system. But before America’s entry into the Big War, both Lee de Forest and television would take a brief bow at the 1939 World’s Fair.

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The New York World’s Fair of 1939 September 22, 1939 is officially known as “Lee de Forest Day” at the New York World’s Fair. This will be the largest and the last such fair for a decade, as war was raging in Europe and America’s entry was a year away. At this event de Forest receives a “Scroll of Honor” detailing his accomplishments as the inventor of the Audion, and as the “Father of Modern Radio Art.”95 It also proclaims him the Father of Radio Broadcasting, a friend of the amateur, a pioneer in sound-on-film, although it did not list him as the inventor of sound film. The day-long event and its proclamation was apparently initiated by President William J. McGonigle of the Veteran Wireless Operators Association, and it was signed by a long list of presidents of technical organizations: the IRE, the SMPE, The Radio Club of America (RCA), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). The AMA president’s signature was likely a tribute to another invention mentioned in the proclamation, that of the “electric knife” used in surgery and the socalled “short-wave therapy,” a form of the now-discredited diathermy. After receiving this proclamation and thanking McGonigle, he has a few words for “fellow veterans of the wireless,” and recognized those old days, 40 years ago: “Wireless was the name we knew and loved and worshipped like an ancient idol by which we lived and earned our livelihood, while that modern word of science, RADIO, too generic, too Broadway, lacks that personal tang which, some way, will always be associated with our brave youth, when our world was young, and we Veterans sailed the seas of sunrise.”96 de Forest was a gifted speaker, and refers to wireless as that “queer, rakish craft so newly launched to sail the Hertzian waves. Ah, those were the days of the Wireless – now ‘gone with the wind’ from the FCC – as dead as the Civil War (Fig. 9.10).”97 On this day he is called some names that will stick with him, but will be controversial for the remainder of his life: “The Father of Modern Radio Art” and the “Father of Radio Broadcasting” were not quite to the word the “Father of Radio” he was proclaimed in the 1930 Los Angeles Times article, and that he will title his 1950 autobiography, but it was a clear implication and he liked it. He needed it. In his 1939 entry in “Who’s Who in Commerce and Industry” it read that he was “Called the Father of Radio,” although these entries are usually written by those profiled. In 1939 his legacy is on the mend but he is not a wealthy man compared with those captains of industry who now profit from his inventions. Here, at this most humbling event, a day in his honor, he really only has good words to say about the very early days of wireless: “If my pioneer efforts in Wireless have seemed to deserve all this, I can do no more than to express to you now, to each and every one

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Figure 9.10 De Forest is given the Scroll of Honor at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. This was on the occasion of Lee de Forest day at this famous fair, one in which David Sarnoff premièred electronic television as a fait accompli. This event reinvigorated his reputation as the “Father of Radio,” and the award ceremony was broadcast live over the radio. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

of you, and to your organization, the deepest, the most sincere, and the friendliest appreciation of which my heart is capable.”98 Accepting the scroll of honor is an uncharacteristically humble Lee de Forest, no rancor on this day, no rant about how Phonofilm was stolen, or how his enemies robbed him of the best years of his life and work. This is a day only for pleasantries. Later he gives a longer acceptance speech which is carried live by the media he is credited with inventing, in this case the NBC and Mutual radio networks. This address is a brief autobiography: “When a man of my apparent age addresses an audience, his hearers may naturally expect to listen to a recounting of history. And in ancient days at least the elder men were supposed to be endowed with a gift of prophecy. Tonight I propose to inflict upon you a little of both, for some of my earlier prophecies are now history.”99 The highlights of this speech begin with the vacuum tube and the radiotelephone transmissions of music he initiated in 1907, and he talks about the 1907 fire that burned his laboratory in the Parker Building in New York City: “I have never become completely reconciled to my loss in

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that fire; and I am sure that today the notebooks describing the earliest Audion bulbs, which were then destroyed, would have made a mighty interesting exhibit at this World’s Fair.”100 Had this fire not happened, we might today view the de Forest legacy (and Armstrong’s) in a radically different way. Of course clarification may have had an unintended and opposite effect. It may have shown him in a lesser role than the one de Forest has crafted for himself. It will never be known. He attributes part of his contribution to radio broadcasting after World War I to his rapport with the editor of the Detroit Daily News in 1919: “They saw the possibilities of radio, and quickly agreed to help the good work along.”101 He credits the establishment of WWJ as one of the first stations and he tells how he stills marvels at what the radio has accomplished: “More than the newspaper, more than the postal service, this mighty service of hearing the spoken voice in greeting, the musical entertainment program, has actively united citizens of every nation in a bond of common fellowship, common acquaintanceship, as no other conceivable instrumentality could accomplish.”102 He tells the Fair audience that he will not dwell on the past, but tonight he will see into the future. He believes that radio will be a power for the elimination of war, and a uniting force: “Due to the mighty social power of the radio broadcast, this war has already brought to the sense of every listener a realization of what war is, and means, and may mean to him personally and to his family in a manner absolutely new in the history of mankind.”103 He predicts that radio will evolve into an important educational medium, second only to the schools. In this prediction he is wrong. He recounts his 1907 prediction of the dissemination of music into the homes using radio, and tells the audience that he was the first to suggest this use for the wireless telephone: “The result today achieved in bringing to untold millions all the rich treasures of music, voice and instrument, are to me a reward more meaningful, more satisfying, more intimately my own, than all wealth.”104 Speaking of a time recently when he heard a song on the radio that in its beauty captivated him as a listener: “And through my spirit then flashed an intimate sense of appreciation of the infinite mystery of those forces, physical and spiritual, which are interwoven in that strange instrumentality which Man has named The Radio.”105 He tried to predict the coming of television, although he does not see it any clearer than anyone else. His vision of TV was still one of radio with pictures: “And soon, all in good time, mingled with the present sounds of sweet music and their voices, we shall see, emerging from the void of night, from the empty air, the beautiful faces of those who distantly sing, smiling down upon us from large white screens within our homes.”106 Like with

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radio and the talkies, television technology would need to improve before the programming and the audience could follow. His conclusion: “Who can say what the future of this science of the radio and the electron will not unfold?”107 De Forest recognizes others in the history of radio whom he admires, especially one he calls “the Dean of them all – my bosom pal before, during, and after the war – dear old George Clark.”108 Like de Forest, Clark is important to historians because he too saved and preserved broadcast history.109 de Forest recognizes Clark and Clark’s first boss, John Stone Stone. It is a small fraternity, the New York group that worked on wireless and radiotelephone and de Forest thanks them all as if they were present, but it is not noted which of those mentioned are in attendance. But this is a “Who’s Who” of de Forest’s circle of those who respect his science knowledge, including personal friends like Clark. He concludes his day at the Fair: “We oldsters have tonight the well-earned right to look back, with some full measure of satisfaction, upon the long paths we have trod; to thank fate that we, as pioneers, were fortunate to have played our part in this making of the history of modern Science and our modern life.”110 This is Lee de Forest in 1939, still an enthusiastic participant in life. Now into year 67 of his 88, he has firmly crafted a legacy for himself primarily in two areas: the invention of the three element vacuum tube and the invention of radio broadcasting. He did not once in this group of speeches refer to the Phonofilm or sound movies in general. He did not use the word “feedback,” and while he thanked many he worked with in his 40 years of inventing, he did not invoke some of the names of those who he believed are enemies: Major Armstrong, William Fox, and Theodore Case. It was his day and he would be the gatekeeper. In later years de Forest will be publicly feted numerous time by technical organizations while he is vilified by others considered “pro-Armstrong.” The decade of the 1930s for de Forest began with the final court echoes of his sound movie debacle and ended with a polite tribute organized by those who would follow him loyally to his end, the radio amateur and the wireless pioneer (Fig. 9.11). But he was gradually, slowly fading to black, and while he will live a mostly happy life with Marie he still has 2 decades remaining to tell his story once again, this time in a big book he had wanted to write for decades, the de Forest life story. It is fortunate that he lived a very long and healthy life for it looks like he will be given the opportunity to say what he wants to say, to get most if not all of the recognition he seeks. He will have the time to neatly put his life to rest. Not that the “Father of Radio” will go quietly. No, he will make more enemies and he will leave a

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Figure 9.11 De Forest, shown with movie star Bebe Daniels and wife Marie, is apparently in a happy place. He lives in Hollywood, he is happily married, he is still inventing, and he seems to have found peace. Oh? From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

mixed legacy. He will poke a finger at Major Armstrong and the radio industry. He will not be universally hated or loved; he will neither be compared to Hitler or Mother Theresa. Lee de Forest has 21 more years to get it right.

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Having spent the first fifty years of this century making, and helping to make, radio and television history, it seems fitting that I should now relax a little and take time off from my still-busy rounds to record a bit of that history, together with such details of my personal life as may be of interest to others.1 The Father of Radio is Busy Awards and Accolades Other Opinions of de Forest And In The End The Significance of Lee de Forest

If the 1930s was the de Forest decade of confusion and resolution, the 1940s will be the decade of the rant. By the 1930s his sound-on-film inventions were universally used by Hollywood for their profit, and while de Forest fought his film patents in court, there was no significant monetary or psychic benefit. He did win a final battle with Major Armstrong but it too only led to a giant letdown, a collective “so what?” He found the good wife, marrying the kind, beautiful, and doting Marie for lifetime marital happiness. But the decade of the 1940s will find Lee de Forest with less to do, less money for lawyers, and even a few unimportant inventions to file. The 1940s de Forest will be a seemingly always peeved person, upset with the Major, upset with radio programming, but living in Hollywood and carefully outlining his legacy. In the last de Forest decade, the 1950s, he will finally find his reward. A very large list of adjectives is employed to describe Lee de Forest in his final decades: Crotchety, irascible, curmudgeonly, reactionary, rightwing, McCarthy-loving-anti-communist. Many of these were true, but there is also the de Forest who is still held in awe by both the public audiences and the entertainment industries he had long served. He will continue to invent, but nothing of consequence, and he continues to “sell” his story by speaking to industry groups, trying for awards, and in 1950 writing it all down in his autobiography. Lee de Forest was a “complete” person; he was well-educated, he invented important things, and he documented it M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7_10, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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well. But what does it mean? And what today are the opinions of de Forest held by scientists, or students, and teachers of technology history, or the public? And from where do they get these opinions? Finally, in the years between 1945 and 1955, de Forest will invent and patent a color television system, a transistor, and a videotape recorder. Not possible you say? The proof follows as the last years of his life are followed, evaluated, and concluded.

The Father of Radio Is Busy Having exited the courts for the last time, the de Forest vs. Armstrong fight marches through the congress and the press. On December 6, 1943 Armstrong testified before the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee: “I am the inventor of the regenerative circuit, the super-heterodyne method of reception, and the method of eliminating disturbances in radio signaling which has become known as Frequency Modulation, or FM.”2 In a letter from fellow inventor Allen B. DuMont, he tells de Forest of this Senate Committee claim by Armstrong and asks him: “In view of your familiarity with the subject matter, I would very much appreciate any comments as to this statement as my understanding is that you were the inventor of the regenerative circuit.”3 De Forest fires back his response the same day: “I always knew, since 1919, that Major Armstrong was not activated in the remotest degree by regard for truth and fact.”4 These types of exchanges characterize the enmity between de Forest and Armstrong, a “he said, he said” never-ending collection of invective. It does not end. It was decided that Mr. DuMont, a leading industrialist, should write a letter to Senator Burton Wheeler of the Senate Committee and try to right the wrong and change the record, for whatever good it might do. The subject was the invention of frequency modulation or FM: “I have just read the testimony presented before your committee on December 6th, 1943 by Major Edwin H. Armstrong principally dealing with the subject of FM transmission and reception. In reading this over it seems to me that an entirely false impression is obtained from the testimony given.”5 It is a campaign launched by an angry de Forest, his way to get into the record what he believes are the facts about the Armstrong inventions. He uses science and experts like DuMont to set the record straight. In this letter it is DuMont who says what de Forrest and others are saying, that the claim of less static at the 50 MHz frequency used for the FM tests also applies to AM transmission at that frequency, one much higher than the current AM

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band of less than 1 MHz (550–1,600 kHz or 0.55–1.6 MHz). There is other testimony by DuMont explaining how existing broadcasters have improved their fidelity on their current channels, and therefore high quality audio is no longer the exclusive provenance of FM. He uses some of his television research experience to explain to the Senate Committee how he as well as Armstrong has found better conditions simply by moving to the newly allocated higher frequencies. Bothered by the Armstrong testimony de Forest writes to his lawyer and friend Sam Darby Jr.: “I have been attempting to interest the editor of Short Wave Craft magazine to investigate the history of the Super-heterodyne and Super-regenerative patents in order that Major Armstrong might not continue to sail under false colors in those two directions. It has been my strong impression that Levy of France was declared the original inventor of super-heterodyne and Turner and Bolitho of England, the original inventor of super-regenerative.”6 He also wrote several versions of letters to the editor of FM Magazine following their long and largely laudatory profile of Armstrong. In one draft he laid out an international view of the patents surrounding regeneration, some of which Armstrong had purchased and sold to Westinghouse: “Thus by virtue of purchase and suppression has the Major become mistakenly regarded as the originator the super-regenerative principle and circuits.”7 He lists the patent numbers and dates of the British and French patents, and refers to Armstrong’s testimony before the Senate Committee: “When one under oath loudly states ‘I am the inventor of this and that’ we assume that he means definitely to convey the impression that he is the original. Not an ‘also-ran,’ who when defeated in the courts, very quietly purchases the rights of the original inventors, and continues unabashed his vociferousness.”8 Lee de Forest always wants the last word: “In summation therefore and it now appears and should, in the interest of plain fact, truth, and justice become widely known that Major Edwin H. Armstrong was NOT (his own caps and underline) the original inventor of (a) regeneration or feedback; (b) Super Heterodyne; (c) Super Regeneration; (d) Frequency Modulation.”9 There is no evidence that this letter was either mailed or published, but it demonstrates that de Forest remained brutal in his opinions of Armstrong, his number one enemy. But it was de Forest’s family friend and lawyer Samuel Darby Jr. who proved to be the voice of reason, saying he did not want to be involved publicly in this feud: “I have no desire or intention to inject myself into the matter by way of carrying on any controversy in the public press, magazines or anything of that sort, no matter how much I might desire to do so.”10 He also tries to put the de Forest–DuMont letters to the press and

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Senate into some logical context: “In your letter to Mr. DuMont you say that great credit must be given to Armstrong for his work in the development of frequency modulation after earlier mathematical analysis had indicated its unfeasibility. I think that in making this statement you must have fallen into the common error of accepting Armstrong’s claims at their face value. As the enclosed letter to DuMont points out, FM was invented by Ehart in 1902 and used by the telephone company years before Armstrong filed his first application.”11 Darby did not want to be the public face of the controversy but as a friend of de Forest, in later years he acted more as an advisor than as his patent litigator. Even as late as 1954, de Forest is trying to set this record straight. In response to an article by Armstrong biographer Lawrence Lessing he writes a letter to the editor which appeared in the July 1954 Scientific American: “Sirs, Doubtless through inadvertence or lack of complete information, Lawrence P. Lessing’s otherwise excellent article on the life of the late Major Edwin H. Armstrong omits certain facts concerning patent interference proceedings and patent litigations.”12 With Armstrong now in his grave and with some in the science community believing that de Forest helped push the Major toward his end, he is still telling his story. He is using the velvet glove because of the earlier death of Armstrong from suicide, but he wants to tell his story publicly one more time. About Armstrong he said: “I found him truculent, never-forgetting, ever resentful. He seemed totally un-reconciled to the fact that fate had denied him much that he had fought to achieve. He continued to find new foes to battle, and filed patent suit after patent suit. As the years of his life extended and darkened, more and more gloomy appeared his outlook, until in bitterness he could endure no longer to face a warrior’s future.”13 This may have been his final public utterance about the late Major Armstrong. But it was not only de Forest who challenged the Armstrong patents. In the 1940s it was Armstrong vs. Sarnoff over the battle for television channel allocations. After WWII both TV and FM fought over the 42–50 MHz spectrum space originally allocated to FM. Armstrong was using it, but television wanted it for channel 1. In the end FM was moved to 88–106 (later to 108) MHz and the television dial would thereafter start with channel 2. Channel 1 would be used for two-way communication.14 According to Armstrong biographer Jeanne Hammond: “Goaded perhaps by the bitter memory of losing his regenerative patent years before, Armstrong became embroiled in 21 infringement actions to adjudicate his FM patents. Battling giant corporations with batteries of lawyers used up his resources. Finally, in 1954, ill, disillusioned, and his fortune gone, Armstrong took his own life.”15

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The Father of Radio Seeks His Legacy In the final decades of his life de Forest engages in a never-ending mission to be universally known as the “Father of Radio.” He accomplishes this by writing in any publication that is connected with radio, television or film, and he will make as many speeches and accept as many awards as organizations are willing to bestow upon him. He did actively seek a Pulitzer Prize, but it was for naught. It seems that in his final years he is almost trying too hard to get noticed for his achievements of 25 years in the past. He wants his opinions known, and he adopts a paternal attitude toward the media he believed he had invented, that of the radio. As in 1907 when he wrote about his ideas for sending fine music by radio into homes, and in 1923 his plan to film the great artists for people to watch in movie theaters, he still wants the best for those media for which he takes inventing credit. He puts all his energy into being “The Father of Radio.” This quest which began with the award of that designation at the 1939 World’s Fair will never end (Fig. 10.1).

The Father of Radio Is on the Radio In 1941 there was a reprise of an early de Forest story, this time on a nationwide broadcast on the NBC Radio Network show, “Behind the Mike,” a “series on the voices and faces behind broadcasting.” In this episode called “The Lee de Forest Story,” former de Forest laboratory assistant Frank E. Butler collaborates with the show’s writers in a dramatic recreation of parts of Butler’s time with de Forest. The play opens with a reenactment of the 1907 plan by de Forest to sell his Audion to the U.S. Navy. The Navy refuses, claiming it is too costly and has batteries that have to be charged, and that battery acid could spill on the ship during severe weather. After that refusal de Forest says he is through with wireless telegraph and that in the future he and his assistants will devote their time to inventing a wireless telephone. It is described in the script as using a “flaming arc” and a telephone microphone for the transmitter and an Audion for the receiver. Their next step was to erect an antenna and try to send music from a phonograph record to wireless operators a few miles away. It was remembered by Butler that the music was the “William Tell Overture” of Rossini. The actors described the excitement the “audience,” of how commercial operators must have felt when they suddenly heard music while listening for telegraph signals.16 The 1908 fire in the Parker Building in New York was said to have destroyed de Forest’s lab notes and early Audion samples.

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Figure 10.1 In the end, this is what de Forest wanted more than anything, recognition that will live beyond the temporal life. In the 1950s he poses with an unidentified sculptor for a bust. This likeness was used in the old Perham Foundation Foothill Museum in Los Altos CA to greet those who came through its doors. When the museum closed for lack of funding the bust went into storage with the de Forest papers. Today you can find it in the lobby of the California Historical Radio Society at KRE in Berkeley CA. Photo from the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

The second part of the show was a recreation of the March 1912 arrest leading to the trial in which de Forest and his colleagues were indicted for stock fraud. This overly-dramatic view of the trial17 centered on the accusation that de Forest had made false representations about the value of the Audion in a stock offering. The prosecutor said it was worthless: “Now gentlemen of the jury, I want you to consider this (holding Audion) here as an electric light bulb similar to the one invented by Mr. Edison. It has a filament and is lighted by electricity. Why did this genius Edison labor all these years, sacrificing his time and knowledge. Why? To make a better light. They (the defendants, de Forest) have taken this lamp bulb, not for a light, but used it as it was not intended, but for what? We are told it has the power to talk and to hear. But to talk and hear on the same device? Why even man can’t talk and hear with the same organs. (there are sound effects

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of laughter) They not only belittle the work of Edison, but they place in ridicule the very act of the Creator himself. But they have presented this device to an unsuspecting public, and have asked them to invest their money in it. We all know this is impossible! I know you will find these men guilty and send them to the federal penitentiary where they belong!”18 At that trial Butler offered proof that the device was used over a distance of 14 miles in the coverage of the Yacht races. The jury acquitted de Forest but told him to leave inventing and get a real job! For this live program de Forest himself was contacted by telephone and spoke at the end of the broadcast: “Do you remember those first radiophone tests, Frank? Then it must be evident that I am not speaking in that old microphone that we used in the Parker Building way back in 1907. Radio voices sounded rather muffled and indistinct back then compared with those high fidelity mikes we are using today. Yes, 34 years have seen tremendous development in every branch of communications. And you and I, with Jack Hogan, almost the sole living survivors of the old yard, who were present at the very birth of broadcasting, are indeed fortunate to be alive to compare the radio transmitters today with those of yesterday. In 1907 nobody could have possibly foreseen what is occurring right now because then the amplifier, which has since been made possible by the transcontinental telephone, was only a little brass baby lying in swaddling cotton, in that little old shoe box in our laboratory. How well I remember those first Audion tubes and you do too. How difficult they were to construct, how great our chagrin when one of them burned out, and what headaches we suffered to keep those first radiotelephone transmitters on the air. Bittersweet are those old memories.”19 He wishes he could live to see the twenty first century and the progress in radio and television, and he wonders what it will be like saying: “But I have a hunch that the little grid will always be found in the radio and amplifier tubes even then.”20 He is partly correct. Today the grid of de Forest remains alive in some guitar amplifiers using tubes and the high-end audiophile tube amplifiers still preferred by those who can afford them. And what of Frank Butler? He remained loyal to his old boss de Forest to the end. Writing about his initial hire for the de Forest exhibit at the 1904 St Louis fair in Radio Broadcast in 1924 he said, “Within a week or two I was chosen as special assistant to de Forest because I could telegraph while he could not. From that time on, and for many years, I was perhaps closer to him in his interesting work than any other of his employees. Subsequent events and severe trials in which I stood by him through thick and thin convinced me that he appreciated my efforts. Others of his employees likewise never deserted him through even his most crucial periods. He called us his ‘Old Guards’ and we were as faithful as Napoleon’s followers.”21

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The Father of Radio Speaks to Film People About Television De Forest continues to remain in contact with the Hollywood community where he has lived for many years. In 1945 he compiles several dozen of the articles he wrote in the 1940s for The Hollywood Reporter into a booklet called “Television and Motion Pictures.” This is de Forest as the Professor of Media. In the article, “Their Shadows Before,” he writes of the possible effect of television on the motion picture. This is an early warning, in 1945, as the Second World War is just winding down and television remains in the experimental stage having being frozen in time for the past 5 years. There is very little programming and most of it is concentrated in a few large eastern cities. The television audience is tiny, made up of hams, experimenters and those who purchased sets before the War Materials Act stopped their manufacture. In 1945 television was a dream, a concept. But now de Forest sounds a warning to the film industry: “For this new unknown stands in the minds capable of vague and mystical powers to rule or wreck what they have been earnestly building for the past 3 decades.”22 He asks the film community if they are ready for television and is the threat of it real? He compares the possible loss of the film audience to that caused earlier by radio and in typical de Forest poetic hyperbole: “This new thing, television – is it a Frankenstein to devour, or at least macerate us? Or is it only a bogey, a straw-man, set up by clever radio engineers or their bosses, to frighten the film industry (Fig. 10.2)?”23 Clearly he foresees some vague threat and he appears to be siding with the film business as opposed to radio and television. Flash forward 5 years: It will be the radio owners, NBC, CBS, and ABC, that are the first to exploit television and get the business going, plus they already have the content from their radio business. It was easy enough to move most of that programming to television, first to stations they owned, then to others as networks expanded. It was a natural for radio to “own” television, radio with pictures. Later, the film studios would cease to fight television, and use their properties, studios, writers, talent and technical, to create programming for TV. First though, they would live in television’s shadow. They would try to fight it with gimmicks like 3D and wide screen and spectacle, but later they would embrace it. When you consider his 1945 warnings in the context of the film-television audience wars of the mid 1950s, he is a decade ahead in his predictions. De Forest is framing this as a battle, a fight for the eyes and ears of the public, and he is going to be proven prescient: “Soon after V-Day will appear ‘T-Night,’ when in half a 100-cities across the land will begin to flash regular hours of good entertainment, free to all and sundry who can find themselves before a kinescope tube; to make the public realize that something new and big and of absorbing interest has finally

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Figure 10.2 In his later years de Forest and his actress wife knew a number of Hollywood actors, in this picture he poses in an NBC radio studio with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and an unnamed man. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

entered into the homes lives of the American people.”24 He is correct. This is how it will happen. In his article, “The Question We Face,” he tells the film folk that the influence of the coming media of television will depend upon the quality of the program, but he believes that it will be high enough to attract large numbers: “if only five million projection type of television receivers are installed, then, figuring five members to a family and neighbors, 25,000,000 fewer potential customers will line up before the theater box offices.”25 He uses the descriptor “projection type” to describe those early 1939 sets that projected the image from the tube upon a mirror to enlarge it for viewing by groups. It is interesting that while he sees a threat to the film audience from the emerging media, cannot see the actual TV set. In 1945 when this was written, there would be some very expensive projection sets, but most of the available televisions would have tiny screens.

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De Forest continues to frame the coming media war as a survival of the fittest: “It cannot be questioned, therefore, that television is certain to eat hungrily into the very vitals of the cine-theater. The era above described may be delayed five, possible 10 years. But it surely lies ahead of us. Television is on the march, or will be after VE Day. It is inevitable.”26 The country has just been through another major World War, so these war metaphors must seem very natural in the mid-1940s. VE-Day was May 8, 1945. In the decade of the 1940s the war was the major event. Radio and movie people contributed to the war effort by communicating the American way, and by providing escape in the form of movies and radio comedy, and drama. And now with the war just about officially over there are major changes coming to the media landscape. Television as the new interloper was poised and if you are a radio network owner that is good news. If you are a theater owner, maybe not. De Forest makes some suggestions to the film industry that they might bring television programs into their theaters using large screen projection, or “the exhibitor can purchase spot time at the local telecaster office, and run his trailer before 10,000 eyes which would otherwise never learn of the marvel.”27 In his article “Television Programs,” he suggests the proper way for theater owners to advertise their films on television: “Television advertisers must not attempt to blackjack the watching public with offensive television commercials. The surest way to smother television in its cradle is to expect to pour on the screen the same sort of vulgar bombast as now darkens millions of our radio dials except when news is on the air.”28 The poor quality of advertising on radio is one of his major complaints, and while he rightly sees it coming to television he is hopeful: “I entertain high hopes that television program makers will be able to dissuade their sponsors from such ruinous policies.”29 Again he compares the effect early radio had on the film audience noting that the damage was short-lived and not easily quantified, but he sees television as a more direct threat: “Here is competition of the same brand as that which the cinema can offer; a screened picture, smaller, true, but not too small for easy viewing, without eye-strain, by a good sized household group – 10–15 persons – comfortably seated where smoking is permissible.”30 He is making the case for television’s effect on film in a way that he could not for radio. He also makes the case for the uniqueness of the new media, and how the existing program formats may not work: “An entirely new type of program will be required, as utterly unlike those we know and love as is the technique and complexity of the iconoscope different from the ordinary simple microphone manipulation.”31 In 1923 he said a similar thing about the effect of sound on silent films. Now he suggests that the best writers

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and existing actors may find employment in the new medium because at least in the beginning television will need them. Already the familiar actors of the film were in weekly radio programs, and they would be welcomed by television. De Forest’s argument to film producers is that they have learned what audiences like and can use this knowledge to make television work. They should not fight it, they should join it: “Given an intelligent understanding of the basic differences inherent to the theater screen, theater audiences, and the home screen and home audiences, the present directors of cine entertainment are far and away the best qualified to formulate and direct the coming television programs.”32 In the end it may be decided that this is what Lee de Forest does best: Like the best scholars he synthesizes information, in this case about the competing mass media, and he attempts to influence those who can act upon his suggestions. Toward the end of his life these “suggestions” will sound more like the rants of talk radio, but here he seems to have been ahead of what the public and industry knew about media effects. Using the Hollywood Reporter as a forum, he is exhorting the film industry not to just stand idly by and watch television take over their franchise, but to embrace it: “Let it be understood by the film fraternity that, in this younger branch of their art, lie immeasurable opportunities for developing new techniques, new modes of audience approach, opportunities vastly more varied than any the theater can afford them, then the progressive, far-sighted leaders among them will eagerly grasp the new vehicle, ride along with it, have a friendly controlling hand in directing its course.”33 This is de Forest as the teacher. A similar lecture is heard in classrooms in media studies, as the Internet is the new media, and a common discussion is how to take advantage of it using existing talent from radio, TV, and film. And while the Internet began with the familiar content of the established media: the newspaper front page, the television screen, the radio player on the computer screen, de Forest explains how television in 1939 was just radio with bad pictures. And even though he did not fully exploit the visual language of film during his 1920s Phonofilm shorts, he finally seems to get it: “The one best equipped by previous experience to produce satisfactory television drama is surely the motion picture director, trained in the skillful variation of medium and close-up shots, how to blend these and varied backgrounds into a smoothly running continuity.”34 He often refers to how programming will have to work on the small screen and that does mean more close-ups. From the early Edison shorts of simple acts to the close-up of the film, it is now television that he believes will receive the wisdom and experience of the past 50 years of image making. He also sees

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the new medium as a way to provide thousands of jobs to “men returning from the war,” just as radio did after the First World War. He also makes another comparison between radio and television that as the technology had been invented before the programming was fully formed, so too will television follow the radio model. Now the channels and apparatus, next the content. He strongly encourages the film studios to begin to produce for television. Certainly de Forest has mixed loyalties. He believes he invented, or at the very least fathered radio, but he is not all that welcome as a part of it. He was rebuffed by the film industry owners in the 1920s. He failed to get their attention. And now he is telling the film community that they should quickly get a toehold into television before it is too late. As an inventor with patents in radio, television, and film he seems to be saying that he only wants the best for “his” media, high quality programming, nonoffensive advertising, all resulting in a successful industry that employs thousands. What is in it for Lee de Forest? Is it money? Not likely. Is it fame? Of course. Basic to him is a life-long desire to be loved, adored, at least listened to, in this case by the very people who have pushed him aside. He needs their applause. Nevertheless his message to the industries of film and television is that while they may believe that a very different programming philosophy should be the province of the small screen, they should consider the television movie: “Therefore it will be presently learned that the best way to present the most appealing types of show, the drama, the comedy, the light opera, is to prepare it as in the film studio, deliberately, carefully, without uncaught presentation slip or flaw – in short, perfectly prepared – on film.”35 He has seen the early television programming of live events and live entertainment and believes them inferior to what the movie studio can create. He is right, of course, and today much of the non-news and sports programming has been written, rehearsed, acted, recorded, and edited in a film studio setting by a film company. He also wonders about the competition from within, as at this point it is radio that seems to be in charge of television. It is the radio broadcaster and radio network that will own television. What will this mean? “The radio broadcaster is deliberately building up a giant competitor to his own show. Greater and more credit to him for so doing, a deliberate self sacrifice on the altar of scientific progress, culture and general education.”36 He prophecies that radio is doing this on purpose, to make the transition from audio only to television. Yes, there were some who believed as de Forest may have, that television would kill the radio as well as the movies. In the 1950s television did threaten movies, but as a result the films became better, entertainment in their own right, making the movie-going experience

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separate from that of the in-home experience. Radio, on the other hand, had real problems in the 1950s as their companies took away their audiences by moving their programming into the visual format. Obviously, some succeeded and others failed to work in the new medium, but it was a struggle for radio. But rather than walk away from a challenge, radio was forced to re-invent itself. Given the choice between watching “Gunsmoke” on TV or hearing it on the radio, television won that audience battle, as it did with all the comedy and drama and variety that by the 1950s was becoming long in the tooth on radio. The reasons for the eventual survival of radio in the face of television can be described as new audiences and new music. The so-called “baby boom” children born after their fathers returned from the war grew up to become impressionable teens by the end of the 1950s. This large group both appealed to and confused advertisers, but it was the baby boom generation’s music, rock and roll, that really saved radio. But their parents, having watched and mostly accepted the transition of their soaps and comedies and dramas and westerns, and mysteries from radio to TV, did not care about radio that much by the 1950s. It was not compelling for adults, and not at all for their kids. So when a few urban radio stations took a chance on what was the white man’s version of black soul and rhythm and blues called rock and roll and paired it with hip sounding disc jockeys, you could argue that radio was reborn. And many of those same AM stations that began in the 1920s with comedy and and drama, and moved to big band music in the 1950s, still exist as highly rated news and talk stations. Radio remains viable today, albeit in different forms of delivery. No longer the big box in the living room, radio lives in the car, the smart phone, and on the computer.37 But in 1945 it is de Forest who is arguably “educating” Hollywood to the realities of the new media in their midst, explaining his view of the role of advertising agencies (the same role as with radio), and how the frequencies have been allocated for television and how a mere 500,000 FM listeners will have to obsolete their radios during the changeover. He borrows a comparison to the nascent days of radio, “how best to induce the public to acquire video receivers in huge quantities quickly?”38 He suggests a system that the BBC tried prior to the war and that is the rental of sets, a way to build up a large audience, saying the price of television sets will be high initially and out of reach of many. This idea was abandoned, partly because television by the end of the 1940s became for Americans a must-have device, one comparable to food, clothing and shelter. Of course the prices of mass-production televisions became affordable. De Forest was not entirely correct in his predictions.

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In his final articles he covers the entire industry from technical to programming, to distribution by cable for network programming, to the possibility of color television. His writings reveal a depth of the issues, and while he is writing in the Hollywood Reporter, these collected articles put the entire post war electronic entertainment industry into perspective. He is correct in his predictions but he is 10 years ahead of when much of it will happen. He advises ad agencies, film producers and directors, writers, actors, and set builders about the best way to meet and use the television. He writes for a large audience. He sees this future: “Television will not create a radically new art, but a 1,000 new stars, new writers, new directors – a new industry, yet based chiefly on what the motion picture and the radio have taught us – with much of Hollywood’s lost motion and budget extravaganza deleted.”39 Television copies the film using extravagant amounts of money, and by taking chances it does succeed, and as de Forest predicts it creates a new industry bigger than all the other media, it employs thousands and tries to be a force for good: “Television will carry new thoughts, new hopes, new products into millions of homes – and do it kindly. It will mold men’s minds and stir their hearts. We shall watch the wonderful tomorrow come into vibrant life before our eyes.”40 The man who invented the radio and the sound movie believes he is well-qualified to predict television’s future.

The Father of Radio on Radio’s Failure In March 1947 he spoke to the National Association of Broadcasters, and this time his theme was the sorry state of radio. His speech begins with a quote from an October 28th, 1946 letter he wrote for the Chicago Tribune called “A Father Mourns His Child.” He is discussing the “qualities and trends of today’s average radio program.”41 It is this rant which has been popularized as indicative of the de Forest personality, specifically his narcissism and his belief in the rights accorded him as the “Father of Radio”: “I, who originated the idea, and the means for broadcasting, was not invited to their council (the previous NAB meeting in Chicago). Had I been I might have said: ‘What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America’s mass intelligence. You have debased this child, you have sent him out in the streets in rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie woogie, to collect money from all and sundry for hubba hubba and audio jitterbug. You have made of him a laughing stock to intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere; you have cut time into tiny cublets, called spots, more rightly stains, wherewith the occasional fine program is periodically smeared with impudent insistence to buy or try.”42 He systematically denigrates all that is radio programming – the soaps, the

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Figure 10.3 De Forest relaxes at his Hollywood home with wife Marie, as she knits and he plays disc jockey with a large collection of 78s. This photo was likely taken in the mid-1940s before the availability of the 33 1/3 long playing record album. As the one who railed against the “jive and boogie-woogie” prevalent on radio, he was likely listening to classical and opera. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

commercials, and the murder mysteries – and he calls for a level of quality like that of the BBC. Here he seems to be on both sides: as a small-government conservative and a advocate of free enterprise, but he wants for radio the United Kingdom model: “Under government sponsorship, radio appeals there to the higher intelligence, realizing its fine mission to elevate and not degrade (Fig. 10.3).”43

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After quoting his Tribune letter he tells the NAB assembled his story, starting in 1907 with trial broadcasts, and how has “observed with successive sentiments of watchful interest, annoyance, alarm, and finally thorough disgust, the progressive increase in the percentage of time devoted to the sales message, coupled in late years with a consistent degradation of the quality of such content, an increasing impudence or offensiveness to the listeners.”44 This is not unlike the speech on the low quality of television delivered before the same organization in May 1961 by Kennedyappointed FCC Commissioner Newton Minow. His was the famous “vast wasteland” speech, referring to what TV had become.45 De Forest saw a radio wasteland some 15 years earlier. De Forest believes that our moment had passed, and that when in the early 1920s American broadcasting had to make a decision about who would pay for radio, we opted against the British model of government support. He believes that we are poorer for our decision. He tells the NAB that it might have worked out except for “the sad and moribund lack of conscience today displayed by most station owners.”46 As Minow in 1961 had preached to the owners of broadcasting about their stewardship of their television channels, de Forest had done it earlier with radio. He may have saved his strongest salvo for the advertising business, even today an easy target: “The advertising agency stepped into our picture, more skilled in salesmanship, congenitally more rapacious than the station owner or his sponsor, and too often totally lacking in all conception of courtesy, consideration for his public, or his professional dignity.”47 He tells the broadcasters that it is the radio, his child, that is causing the American public to grow dumber: “I am reluctantly persuaded that our average American intelligence is today at the sub-grammar school level, that the great bulk of our citizens are thoroughly thoughtless, appallingly careless of what most vitally concerns them and their national welfare.”48 For all the public opinions of de Forest as uncaring, as an educated person he did believe that the citizen should be uplifted. He saw that as an important part of the role of radio which he condemned in 1946 for their “deplorable lack of any adequate sense of its public responsibility, shamefully and fatefully indifferent to its magnificent possibilities for uplift, to guide our citizenry to higher levels of citizenship, to educate the mass mind.”49 He believed that Americans would be a better people if radio could improve. There is no evidence that he was ever invited back to the NAB. You might want to believe all the ornate rhetoric by de Forest about the state of the mass media and how our citizens need to be better educated and be exposed to fine speeches and music, all commercial free. You might believe him when he praises the model of the BBC and its government

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control and financing. You might believe him except for this 1949 letter he wrote to Senator William Knowland, an angry taxpayer rant against government control and financing: “We are definitely headed towards Socialism, and that invariably means a ‘police state’ – the loss of the individual liberties which chiefly have made our Nation great and good.”50 What he is saying is oddly familiar as you begin to read what he is really concerned about in 1949: “Socialized medicine, as proposed, is actually nothing but political medicine.”51 He notes on the letter that he mailed copies to all members of congress. In addition to medicine he was also against subsidized housing: “Federal housing, as now proposed, will result in housing chiefly the indigent, the least worthy of our citizens, the over prolific, and therefore the class which will quite naturally vote, and continue to vote, for that government which houses them – all at the cost of the hardworking, the thrifty, from whom alone you will collect the taxes necessary for that vast, vote buying, extravagance.”52 He is eerily like some conservatives today who believe that the government has done too much for the disadvantaged. It is very likely that some of those to whom he refers were returning war veterans, who after giving their soul and limb to protect the homeland, returned broken and surely in need of a compassionate government. The de Forest speeches and letters show a complex person, but clearly not always a compassionate one.

The Father of Radio Predicts the Future In an untitled speech given in the late 1950s he predicts the science and technology of the future. Does he get it right? Look at some of these and judge for yourself. Space Exploration: “Man will have orbited around the earth and moon many times over. Space platforms outside the earth’s atmosphere will be in use as relay stations. We will have landed on the moon and established a base there.”53 Communication? “You will have portable telephones no larger than a king-size cigarette pack. Walking down a street in Boston, you can call your family at home or phone a friend in Los Angeles.”54 Transportation: “Cars will have ‘automatic pilots.’ After entering an expressway, at a given point you can relax and ride on an invisible beam.”55 Light: “Electroluminescence, or cold light, will revolutionize the appearance of homes, industries and entire cities.” Power: “Nuclear energy will be a practical power source for industry, autos, ships, missiles, trains and planes.”56 Home: “Electronic appliances will do your cooking, dishwashing, and dispose of waste. High frequency sound waves will clean your dishes.”57 He also predicts automation in industry, satellite analysis of weather, and a life span approaching 100 years.

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Of course he died in 1961 without realizing that most of his science predictions would come true. This hybrid of Tom Swift and the Jetsons is how the father of radio spent his old age: “This is not science fiction. These elements of a golden age are definitely within reach. Some things, however, science cannot do. It cannot, for example, determine how its gifts are to be utilized. It cannot overcome blind fears or small thoughts which impede progress. Nor can science make nations live together in a spirit of justice, humility and peace. This all men together must learn to do. Or science and all its miracles will be meaningless.”58

Father of Radio, the Book In 1950 Lee de Forest was able to accomplish what he had set out to do decades before, the compilation of his life’s work into an autobiography he titled Father of Radio. The earlier evidence suggests that he was more than willing to give generous amounts of his time to anyone who would tell his stories. There are several dozen feature newspaper and magazine biographies based on personal interviews, the most comprehensive of which was serialized in 1924 in Radio News, the “Life and Works of Lee de Forest” by William Arvin. At the end of the 1920s a single Lee de Forest while apparently enjoying the nightlife of Greenwich Village met writer Georgette Carneal and promptly made her his official biographer. Her book, the first complete de Forest biography, Conquer of Space, resulted. It was a nonacademic book with no significant references, an adoring take on him, with quotes by de Forest from his diaries and the newspapers, but not clearly attributed. It is sympathetic, a “woe is me, the great man, I work and slave and never sleep or take money and others do me wrong.” Hers, like the Radio News biography, was largely positive in its treatment of de Forest. In other words, they followed the script, a careful and at times painful and reflective record based on his diaries, speeches, articles, letters, and the personal interview. So it can be concluded that Father of Radio, because it used the same body of material, was quite similar in its treatment to that of the Carneal Book and the Arvin biography. Still, it was an important first step that would have satisfied most men, and it added an additional period of time, the mid 1920s to 1950 (Fig. 10.4). In the dedication and preface of Father of Radio, he talks boldly about his role in early wireless, as well as the Audion, the amplifier, and radio and television in general. Notably missing in this introduction is Phonofilm and his role in the sound-on-film process, although there are several complete and detailed chapters about it. It was not until the seventh decade of his life that he was ready to tell his story. The publication of his book was accompanied by the usual press and reviews. The New York Times Book

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Figure 10.4 The book cover of the 1950 de Forest autobiography, Father of Radio, from the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Review of September 1950 did not treat the book kindly: “There is much drama in his story, but unfortunately a great deal of it is lost through inept narration. Like ore still to be refined, this long, detailed autobiography glitters here and there, but in the main it is an assembling of biographical raw material rather than a finished product.”59 The Los Angeles Times Book Review said the opposite: “His autobiography is the work of a man in love with life and people, and even his technical descriptions of inventions take on some of the color and all of the enthusiasm of an adventure story writer’s narrative.”60 The Los Angeles writer seemed to have had more of a personal connection with de Forest, having apparently just attended his 77th birthday party, and the review is all positive: “After a lifetime of invention in the field of radio, moving pictures and television; after years of financial crashes, lawsuits, fights against monopolies and patent thieves, Dr. de Forest is still active in his laboratory.”61 The Chicago Tribune book reviewer also wrote favorably about the book: “It’s worth reading. His impact on life in the twentieth century has been profound.”62 Each of these three major reviews recounted the highlights of the de Forest story, and the Chicago reviewer summarized it: “Despite poverty, heartbreak, cynical skepticism, duplicity of associates, and endless discouragement, Lee de Forest hewed out the course he had mapped for himself. He had the necessary vision, inner faith, and the resolution and courage to succeed. Everyone living today is a

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Figure 10.5 De Forest in his Chicago laboratory, circa late 1940s. In later years he continued to generate patents for invention, but none had the significance of his first three inventing decades, 1900–1930, From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

beneficiary. His is a fabulous story of triumph over great odds in the American tradition.”63 Even with mostly good reviews the book’s sales were disappointing.

The Father of Radio Invents in His Last Decade More than a writer, more than a political spokesman, de Forest is a scientist. Just as he had done every day since 1899, de Forest went to his lab and invented something. In the late 1940s through the late 1950s there were inventions related to color television, the transistor, and medical devices, primarily the now-discredited diathermy machine. This latter device uses radio waves to cure various ills by sending radio frequencies into your body, now considered a “quack” medical treatment that actually may have been dangerous (Fig. 10.5).64 There is a 1954 drawing of a potential patent application for a “Vehicle Approach Warning System,” a device for automobiles using a “difference in frequency interruption of the light falling on a photoelectric cell, as compared with the frequency of interruption of the reflected light falling on the cell, depends on the distance between transmitters source and reflecting object.”65 In the drawing it used a rotating slotted disc on the front of the auto. A warning sound or visual indicator alerts you if you get too close to the nearest

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auto. This was not practical in 1954.66 Then there is the May 1954 invention of the “inertia-less microphone.” This is described: “To modulate by sound (air vibration) a continuous high frequency electric current as it passes from a conducting circuit through the ether to another conducting circuit as a frequency modulated current, to be amplified and finally transformed into sound vibrations, or recorded on tape.”67 He is still of sound mind into his eighth decade, but there is no evidence that he had the energy or the resources to see many of these ideas through to patents or manufacture. There is a late 1940s drawing of a telephone answering device. The way this works is rather bizarre: A microphone is placed near the bell of the telephone. The phone rings, the microphone picks up the sound which is amplified and sent to a mechanical motorized arm that lifts the telephone handset from its base. There is a tape recorder connected to the amplifier which comes on after the handset is picked up, and a tiny speaker sends the recorded announcement to the phone’s transmitter. It must be a one-way system, “hello we are not here, but we are taking your time by answering the phone and here is what we want to say,” but it could also be a business machine that answers after hours and gives useful information. In 1950 de Forest writes an article in Radio-Electronics magazine called “The Problem of Color TV” in which he talks about the need for a compatible standard. He profiles the NBC all-electronic system which is used today in a modified form, but he seems more impressed with the competing CBS color system. This one, using a three-color motorized disc, could be “bolted on” to an existing set, and he sees this as a disadvantage, as the screen size for the color wheel would be limited to 7 or 10 in. His beef with the RCA system is that it requires the purchase of an entirely new television. But a government and industry technical committee was initially impressed by the quality of the CBS system, and the FCC did originally agree to the CBS mechanical standard. That standard was never implemented. In this article de Forest is promoting his own mechanical television system which he had patented earlier: “I place before any kinescope face, even of a 16-in. diameter, a three-color mosaic screen. It oscillates in an orbital, circular movement.”68 In the de Forest papers there are some hand drawings of a “de Forest color television receiver tube” and there is a patent for this mosaic screen color system, patent no. 2,452,293, applied for in 1945, granted 1948. His was a “third” way, separate from the large color wheel and the electronic system. It would not become the system finally accepted and manufactured. Probably the most unusual device ever patented by de Forest is no. 2,813,931, issued in 1957 and called “Automatic Dialing Device for Dial Telephone (Fig. 10.6).” Tired of dialing the phone? Here is the answer. It is a very rugged looking metal template that fits over the dial and through a system of gears

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Figure 10.6 A 1954 patent filing for an automatic telephone dialer. It uses little mechanical fingers, solenoid-controlled, to spin the rotary dial. There is no evidence that this device was ever manufactured. There is a selection of de Forest patents in the Appendix. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

and solenoids, big metal fingers dial the phone so you will not have to. Other de Forest patents seemed more useful. In 1956 he received a patent on a new type of transistor, but there is no evidence that it significantly changed the industry or if it was that much different than what had been introduced by Shockley and others in 1949. This patent, no. 2,735,049 called “transistor,” does show that the inventor of the tube had a working knowledge of solid-state circuitry. A 1956 patent, no. 2,743,318, “Method and Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Television Pictures,” is his version of the video recorder. This patent, which was filed in 1953, seems to mimic the Quadrature system of Ampex and Ginsburg, Dolby, et al. in 1951. This device uses a strip of magnetically coated film on which tracks are laid down using a spinning head drum as in all predigital videotape recording system. The tracks appear to be written transversely to the moving “film.” In the patent text he claims to do for video what magnetic recording does for audio, and he understands the main issue: “The problem of recording and reproducing a television program is made quite difficult by the fact that the frequencies are much higher than those involved in audio recording and reproducing.”69 He understands the

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theory of magnetic recording, and that to record the bandwidth of a television signal a linearly moving magnetic medium would have to move too rapidly across a magnetic recording head to be practical. His solution is the transverse writing across ½ inch tape. There is no evidence that this patent was ever used, but it would have likely infringed upon that of Ampex. He did receive several patents for what he called “Short Wave Therapy,” or noncontact diathermy and radio surgery, and in a 1949 ad there are a few details, including a photo of de Forest holding a tube, backlit for effect with the caption: “The ultimate in radio therapy and radio surgery designed and built by radio scientists and engineers, approved by noted physicians for use by physicians and in hospitals.”70 Would you want to be operated on with equipment that sends short waves into your body and that was “designed by radio scientists?” All of this was in the category of unproven and experimental. Most of these inventions he worked on from his base in Los Angeles, but during the latter part of 1940s he was affiliated with a lab in Chicago and a vocational school there known as DeVry Technical. Mostly they used his name, and while he did spend a small amount of time there, there is no evidence he actually lived there, as his residence remained in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. There is one more thing about the life of de Forest, and that is how that sometimes hidden away in the de Forest papers are items about which a researcher would say: “Oh, sure, of course, him.” This is in the form of a story in the Los Angeles Examiner in 1957, the headline, “De Forest Files for Patent on 4-Inch Thick Wall TV Set.” You may be saying to yourself, “well I have one of those,” but in 1957 even the smallest television set was several feet thick. According to the inventor: “The new flat set he said as he worked through his birthday in his office on Highland Ave is made possible by the use of printed circuitry to condense the bulky TV tube into a flat picturelike package.”71 This would likely have not been possible to make, and in a typical de Forest theme of the flame: “His aim, he added, is to use clusters of gas flames and selenium cells to produce 120 volts of electricity.”72 This flame-based device might have inspired the more daring headline writer of the 1950s to use, “Hot New Invention by De Forest.” The de Forest flame makes an appearance for the final time.

Awards and Accolades Some believe that de Forest bestowed the “Father of Radio” title upon himself. This may have been true, but there were surely others in amateur radio circles, and in science, educational, and historical organizations that

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believed that if one person should get such a moniker, it would be him. Even the Los Angeles Times used the title in its story of the de Forest marriage to Marie Mosquini in 1930. So his autobiography was not the first time that the title was used. The largest public event honoring him was the 1939 World’s Fair, where the Father of Radio theme was used for a Lee de Forest day, but there are other examples found in the Perham Collection of educational booklets that proclaim him the father of radio. No doubt some of these were made under his supervision, help, and encouragement. In 1952 there was a dinner sponsored by the de Forest Pioneers in his honor, making him a lifetime member of his own organization. The Pioneers were always a solid group behind de Forest, then old men who were once wireless operators and hams. In April 1952 there was a dinner in honor of him which was addressed by Herbert Hoover, one of de Forest’s favorite presidents and the head of the Department of Commerce when it was in charge of radio, pre-1927. In the speech Hoover names the “five greatest inventors” of science: “Faraday, Edison, Morse, Bell and de Forest.”73 Hoover recounted how he and de Forest were both from Iowa and grew up within 15 miles of each other, but he went to Stanford while de Forest Yale, he into politics while de Forest chose science: “Dr. de Forest brought infinite blessings to mankind by the instant transmission into every home of the news, of great music, of great drama and great lifts in education.” 73b He did not mention the sound film. Hoover added: “I deserted the technological field for the slippery path of public life. Some people think my gigantic invention was the great world-wide depression.”74 There was a special tribute in March 1956 from President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower: “In this fiftieth anniversary year of a great invention, I congratulate you on your many contributions to scientific progress. Through your long and distinguished career you must have experienced many moments of pride that your imagination and talent furthered the development of modern radio, television and radar.”75 He did not say film. This was the fiftieth anniversary of the Audion. In May 1958 there was a dedication of “The Lee de Forest Elementary School” in his home town of Council Bluffs Iowa. There were also birthday tributes on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1957, including a telegram from David Sarnoff and from Hugo Gernsback of Radio News fame. He was featured as a mystery guest on the May 22, 1957 episode of “What’s My Line?” a quiz show featuring famous people, in de Forest’s case, the “Father of Radio.” He was also in the first group of film and television people to have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, his star was embedded into the sidewalk

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Figure 10.7 The honorary Oscar presented to Lee de Forest in April 1960. This must have been a significant coda to the long de Forest life. It was presented by the Motion Picture Academy for his contribution to the sound film. ” This statuette is part of the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

on Vine Street on February 9, 1960 with a very large group, done with little fanfare and there is no known visual record of this event.76 Finally, for his 1920s work in film, he was the recipient of the 1959 Honorary Oscar presented at the Academy Governor’s Ball on April 4, 1960 (Figs. 10.7 and 10.8). Also receiving an Honorary Oscar at that ceremony was silent comedian Buster Keaton. Why did de Forest receive this some 35 years after he was soundly rejected by Hollywood as the inventor of soundon-film? According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: “Honorary Award, To Lee De Forest for his pioneering inventions which brought sound to the motion picture.”77 The award was suggested by the Academy’s Science and Technology Committee, and from the files in the

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Figure 10.8 A close-up of the honorary Oscar presented to Lee de Forest in April 1960. It reads: “Academy Honorary Award to Lee de Forest for his pioneering inventions which brought sound to the motion picture.” This statuette is part of the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library, the written minutes of the meeting stated: “At this point, Mr. Aalberg reminded the Committee that at a prior meeting, the name of Dr. Lee de Forest, internationally-known inventor, had been discussed as a possible recommendation to the Board of Governors for an honorary award for his great inventions and contributions to the motion picture industry. Mr. Sidney P. Solow reviewed the attached biographical data. The chairman then asked for an expression of opinion from the Committee on recommending Dr. Lee de Forest for an honorary award. Upon a motion made by Lorin D. Grignon, seconded by Richard Cahoon and unanimously carried it was RESOLVED to recommend that the Board of Governors bestow an Honorary Award to Dr. Lee de Forest.”78 It was that simple. The referred-to biography lists quotes from a number of publications that mention the de Forest role in the invention of film sound. Included in the lists were books on sound film history, technical journal articles, including entries in encyclopedias and Who’s Who. One such quote: “In fact, it was through the short subject that sound made its bow to the public…. In the summer of 1926, the first exhibition to the public through modernized sound synchronization equipment was a short subject in which appeared Eddie Cantor, the stage comedian, the recording having been made by the de Forest Phonofilm system. In December of the

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Figure 10.9 How do we know what we know? In this late 1950s photo, Lee de Forest, left, shares a display of early Audions with San Jose Museum operator Douglas Perham. In 1912 Perham worked with de Forest at Federal Telegraph in Palo Alto. Perham collected and saved historical artifacts from the beginnings of what would become the Silicon Valley electronics industry. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

same year the same company produced a one-act melodrama entitled ‘Retribution,’ which played about 30 min and is probably the first entirely talking short subject ever made.”79 This latter title did not survive.

Other Opinions of de Forest Today there are as many conflicting opinions about Lee de Forest as there are writers of technology and media history. Many of these opinions are surely as a result of reading de Forest’s own words in his collected papers which include diaries, lab notes, speeches, articles, and newspaper stories. This record, while generally self-selected by de Forest, does depict his long life as he and others viewed it, and it shows in some detail the processes he used toward invention. But because de Forest was surely the “gatekeeper” of these collections, you will not find, for example, any laudatory articles about Armstrong or Fessenden. It is clear who his enemies were and why (Fig. 10.9).80

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Researcher Gordon Greb interviewed de Forest in 1959 in Los Angeles for his research into early broadcasting: “When I arrived at his home, Mrs. De Forest greeted us at the door to their home at 8190 Hollywood Boulevard and welcomed us inside. As soon as we were seated in the living room, I introduced myself and thanked the kindly old looking gentleman who was wearing large horn-rimmed glasses and seated in the lounge chair. De Forest, who at the time was 86 years old, seemed curious as to why we were there and giving him special attention in his twilight years.”81 Fifty years later, while working with the de Forest papers this author came across a copy of a letter sent to Professor Greb by de Forest, a letter that Greb did not receive because de Forest mailed it to the wrong university. In the letter, de Forest demands payment for his time, in a not so gracious way: “I am sure that you will admit the justice of my request for compensation when you consider that you brought the recording device and microphone into my home and occupied at least of hour of my busy morning in discussion and recording of the early history of the San Jose station.”82 It was wrongly addressed to Gordon Greb at the University of Southern California, USC, when it should have gone to San Jose State University. There was a 30-min audio recording made of the 1959 Greb visit, and in it Greb asks many questions of de Forest but the later mostly responds in “u huh, un uh.” In the Kelley papers of the Antique Wireless Association there are several letters containing some 1916 opinions of de Forest. One writer suggested that “De Forest’s first wife had a BS and an MS in Electrical Engineering and was experimenting trying to control plate current with external magnets. She got the idea of the grid and later built a tube with one.”83 There is no other evidence that that this is true. De Forest’s second wife had a BS in civil engineering but left him before he added the grid to Fleming’s valve. This writer added: “Imagine a man like Tesla, giving so much to the world and receiving so little in honors, being practically unknown while a scoundrel like de Forest sits in glory. At my house he doesn’t.”84 Another letter in the collection dated September 1916 tells about a meeting with de Forest when he applied for a job in 1916: “’Doc’ struck me as being a very pleasant man to work for, very capable as a scientist and sincere in what he undertakes alone. On the other hand he seems to be a very poor businessman, lax as to discipline, and with a weak personality which could make it difficult for him to get capital from the right kind of people. He appears to be one that might be easily influenced by unscrupulous promoters and yet at the same time be sincere and honest in his own mind.”85 The unnamed writer was asking whether it would be a mistake to go to work for de Forest. The answer is not in the papers.

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The Modern Opinion Survey The ongoing research for this book was presented at academic conferences and to graduate seminars, where an unscientific and open-ended survey of the attendees was conducted. This instrument asked for opinions of de Forest, both as a scientist and as a person. Whenever de Forest is mentioned today, there are always strong comments. From a fellow professor: “I don’t know that much about de Forest, except that he wasn’t much of a theoretician, that he was a right-wing nutball and he was a litigious as hell. He was in the right place at the right time with a few good ideas.”86 Fair enough. But how have people formed their opinions about de Forest? Was it from the many books written about him, or are these opinions in a college textbook somewhere? What exactly are professors of broadcast and film history teaching about de Forest? The open-ended instrument, all it qualitative analysis, asked these four questions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Are you familiar with the work of Inventor Lee de Forest? What do you believe is (are) his significant accomplishment (s)? What is your opinion of him as a scientist? As a person? On what have you based your opinions?

This last question is clearly the most important, one that professors always ask of their students – “How do you know what you know?” The first time this questionnaire was administered at a university conference on radio and film history there were eight responses out of approximately 20 in the audience. This was a somewhat knowledgeable audience. As to the first question all were familiar with de Forest. It could be that of those who failed to respond, some did not know his work. For question 2, all answers included the word Audion or vacuum tube, and others added to that “one of the first broadcasters; effective legal representation; and early prototype of car radio.” As to the third question about opinions, both scientific and personal: “as scientist, positive,” “good scientist, sold fraudulent stock to fund his experiments,” “very inventive, self-promoter; egotistical opportunist; low; one of the great tinkerers; last of the one-man inventors; lucky; vindictive; vain; thin-skinned; significant innovation; unscrupulous businessman; He used a lot of work, his and others, to develop radio in the 1910s, his fights over patents are legend, especially Armstrong.” The final question is the most important, how do you know these things, and the answers are: Empire of the Air, Susan Douglas,“Empire of the Air” by Ken Burns, some research and secondary historical texts. Most who cited “Empire” cited the PBS documentary by Burns, not surprising since its audience was certainly greater than those for the Lewis and Douglas books.

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The next group was larger, a conference of mostly wireless and radio technology people, and that result: First, the significance of de Forest: “adding the grid to the vacuum tube, even though he didn’t seem to understand how it worked; the role the Audion played in the development of radio; audion.” The opinions of him were varied: excellent as a scientist, four wives and two daughters, god help us!; mediocre scientist, ego-driven person; I think he was a more complex person than is usually described in most sources, but I also believe he was a supremely self-confident elitist. I believe he felt entitled to bilk the public to finance his pursuits; second rate scientist, flawed person, egoist; “smart person but was a crook; It is hard to understand, in view of his Ph.D. in E.E., that he could not satisfactorily explain the operation of his Audion. Others developed the theory of operation and characteristics; more self-absorbed and perhaps ‘borrowed’ more from others than his peers. Unscrupulous as a person.” As to the sources: “Empire of the Air; my library; reading about Armstrong patent litigation; the more I read the less I like; hearsay from 40 years of being interested in radio plus recently the book (Douglas) Inventing American Broadcasting.” To one survey a participant added “Arrange to sell and sign your book here at the AWA Conference.” Of course. A graduate seminar of film and theater students was also given the author’s survey. About half of the students had heard of de Forest, and one responder called him “a virulent, anti-Semitic jerk, egomaniac.” Also, “arrogant, brilliant, ambitious.” To the question, “how do you know this,” the answer: “I’ve done some reading about de Forest.” So it can be concluded that it is not the reputation you want, it is the reputation you get. You have no control over it. The latter day opinions of de Forest are mostly based on two things: his long and contentious battle with Edwin Armstrong, a fight de Forest won but many believe unfairly. It was thought to have been based on faulty science. The other opinion-shaping event for Lee de Forest was the PBS documentary by the famous Ken Burns. Based on the Tom Lewis book, the Burns treatment was possibly the most-seen portrait of de Forest, showing the inventor as self-absorbed, petty, and less important when compared with Armstrong and Sarnoff. An unwanted reputation has also followed the co-inventor of the transistor, Stanford Physicist William Shockley. In a 2010 documentary called “The Real Revolutionaries,” Nobel Prize winner Shockley was shown less for his science and more for his public racist attitudes which in the end proved to be his undoing. In the documentary: “William Shockley is portrayed in an accurate historical context. This is a guy who helped invent a revolutionary technology, and he’s not remembered for that invention. Instead, he’s remembered for his views on eugenics, on IQs and the gap between races.”87 There will be no elementary schools named for him.

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And in the End Lee de Forest lived a very long time, 87 years. Significantly, his life spanned two centuries that included the most important years in the development of the electronic entertainment technology that made radio, television, and film possible. He was not the sole “inventor” any of the three, but he was first with scientific contributions, principally the three-element vacuum tube. Unlike other inventors he also wrote and produced programming for these media, and he was a frequently published critique of each. He was both a scientists and a humanist. He was not a business person, a fact he freely admitted, and this led to associations with unscrupulous stock promoters. It also may have caused wrong thinking on his part that he as the scientist-inventor was above it all and the consequences this thinking engendered. Throughout his life he attempted to endear himself to the talent of the media he helped create, from musicians to impresarios, to actors and popular writers. In the end he was a favorite son of Los Angeles, and on July 5, 1961 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors generated a proclamation, “In greatest sympathy” and adjourned on this day in memory of one of the Southland’s favorite sons, Lee de Forest. He was survived by Marie and three daughters, Harriet, Eleanor, and Marilyn (Fig. 10.10). De Forest died on the evening of July 1, 1961 of a heart attack. He had been healthy most of his 87 years, working in his lab until the end. The New York Times wrote in their obituary: “Though he was credited with more than 300 American and foreign patents and ranked as a leading pioneer in the field of wireless communication, he never reaped the full financial benefits of his work.” De Forest was quoted from his autobiography: “Throughout my long career I have lost no opportunity to cry out in earnest against the crass commercialism, the etheric vandalism of the vulgar hucksters, agencies, advertisers, station owners – all who, lacking awareness of their grand opportunities and moral responsibilities to make radio an uplifting influence, continue to enslave and sell for quick cash the grandest medium which has yet been given to man to help upward his struggling spirit.”88 In this very long and detailed obituary there was but one sentence about Phonofilm: “He also organized, in 1923, the de Forest Phonofilm Company to manufacture the Phonofilm, the name of his invention for making talking pictures, patented by him in 1919.”89 In this detailed obituary the Times said: “He was considered to be a genius in the field of communications; he was a great dreamer, a poet and an enthusiastic advocate of radio and television for uplifting the masses.”90 He was compared to

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Figure 10.10 Lee and Marie near the end of his life. Marie in the 1970s donated all of her de Forest collection to the Foothill College Electronics Museum in Los Altos CA, where it became part of the original Perham collection of mostly hardware. Los Altos is adjacent to Palo Alto where de Forest developed his Audion as an amplifier. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

Edison and Tesla as perhaps the last of the lone inventors. There was much about his invention of the Audion, and the court battles with Marconi and Armstrong over the rights to it. What was not said was the story of the decade-long battle to invent and perfect the system of talking pictures. And from his “adopted home town” of Los Angeles: “Lee De Forest was called the father of radio. A piece of twisted platinum wire earned him the title by which he was known the world over. The wire was the ‘grid,’ which in 1906 he built into the vacuum tube, giving the tube a third element and the world an almost magical device from which have stemmed a procession of new discoveries. His invention made possible radio broadcasting and reception, bringing entertainment and contact with the rest of the world into cities, villages, farms, ships, planes and automobiles. Although his inventions should have amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune for De Forest, at the time of his death he had only $1,250 cash. When his will was filed with the court, De Forest’s attorney said the inventor had personal property that would increase his assets and owned patents that could yield further income, but were not doing so at the time.”91

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The Significance of Lee de Forest There is no way to write about Lee de Forest without some discussion of those negative personal characteristics attributed to him by biographers and researchers: words such as abrasive, paranoid, caustic, crotchety, curmudgeonly, dishonest, unethical, aloof, and more. Yes, there is surely evidence of this, but while some write him off as an imposter who stole from other scientists and exaggerated his work, the fact is he did invent one of the most important electronic devices of the Twentieth Century: the three-element vacuum tube. From that starting base, and armed with a world-class education and the necessary tenacity, he did set out to do what he said he would do as a small child – be an inventor. As all his biographers have said, de Forest was the one who elicited emotional responses from almost everyone. You either loved him or hated him, you supported him unquestionably or you vilified him for every inventing sin – there seemed no middle ground. Above all, he was an American original, a unique person in the history of science in the Twentieth Century. One important characteristic that is obvious from the research is that he was not a patient man. He seemed to delve headfirst into ideas and inventions, spend all his time and money, and if he failed he would immediately lose interest, blame others for his failure, and quickly move to another idea and tackle it with the same vigor. When his wireless telegraph empire collapsed under the weight of Abraham White and the stock scandal, he immediately got into the radiotelephone business. When he had exhausted his work with the Audion and it was purchased by the telephone company, he immediately moved into broadcasting, at High Bridge in 1916 and in San Francisco in 1920. This first effort was stopped by the war and the latter by the federal radio inspector. Then he went into his Phonofilm “decade,” and when that invention failed to define him he quickly switched to television. Unlike Marconi who built a lifetime business around wireless communication, de Forest just could not do one thing for very long. The fact that into his eighth decade he was still filing patents on the transistor, on color television, and on the videotape recorder shows that his mind did not sleep – ever.

What He Wanted, What He Got, What It Means Most of his contemporaries would have been satisfied with just a fraction of his accomplishments. That de Forest was restive and never satisfied was likely a source of his ongoing discontent with most things in life. Personally, his family life was a mass of contradictions: He wanted a wife and a companion, but he was always at the lab. His first three wives were surely not

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partners emotionally nor were they treated as equals. His final wife Marie is mentioned early in the relationship as the “one” for life and that prediction did come true. There is not much known about the de Forest social and family life in later years as there are no existing diaries after about 1932. Even after death when Marie was distributing his legacy and speaking with historians, she never wavered from the story that de Forest always told, that he was a Great Man, wronged by his enemies, all of whom conspired to rob him of his legacy. Professionally, on the surface it seems that he had all that a person could want and much more. He had the best education possible at the time, a Yale Scientific Ph.D., and as a student at the top of his class he was asked to write for the Yale Science Journal as an undergraduate. He was feted at numerous Alumni events where he received the full respect of his academic alma mater. He was one of the most important inventors in early wireless telegraph technology. He even eclipsed Marconi in the adoption of his system in the United States, especially by the Navy. In wireless he was surely treated fairly by the press, in the news of both his successes and failures. Like the earlier Marconi, de Forest utilized and improved upon, and received patents for modifications of earlier scientist’s ideas and technology. Unlike Marconi, de Forest developed a reputation for using the ideas of others without attribution, stealing was the word most used, and for this he paid with fines and loss of reputation. And while he did battle with Marconi to an inventing “draw,” he was celebrated as the great inventor by a group called the “De Forest Wireless Pioneers,” old wireless men who seemingly loved de Forest. The development of the three-element vacuum tube, the Audion, is the one invention that defines de Forest. Some scientists believe that it was really the two-element vacuum tube of Fleming that inspired him and that Fleming should have the credit. What about the greatest inventor of all time, Thomas Edison? If it were not for Fleming’s research into and knowledge of the “Edison effect,” citing the apparent behavior of moving electrons, perhaps the Fleming Valve would not have happened and therefore no Audion. Edison was a chemist and spent hours looking at filaments in glass bulbs and this may have led him to seeing the effect of carbon deposits. But he did not know what to do next. It then was for Fleming to add a second element, a plate, and use it as a detector. Fleming had discovered that it was a rectifier of radio waves into audio, but he only used that signal to trigger a visual indicator. De Forest added the grid and the device amplified and oscillated. While Fleming used the two-element tube to detect the presence of Morse code, de Forest used it with an earphone to hear. Thus there is the major and original difference between Fleming and de Forest.

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You have read in these pages how invention is a cumulative endeavor, that it takes decades of trial and error to arrive at a useful and patentable moment. Surely there are those like Fleming who believed himself robbed by de Forest, just as Major Armstrong believed. There is another way of looking at this invention: In Edison’s time there was no need for a detector because there was no wireless. Fleming had worked for Marconi and he needed a better detector, and so he re-discovered Edison’s earlier work. Perhaps there would have been no need for the oscillating vacuum tube if de Forest had not promoted the radiotelephone as a way to send voice and music into the home. Perhaps there would not have been the explosion of commercial radio in the early 1920s if Armstrong, de Forest, AT&T, and others had not developed and exploited the Audion. Perhaps. You may even begin to believe that Judge Cardozo got it right in the 1934 Supreme Court case Armstrong vs. de Forest when he attributed the original idea of the oscillating Audion to de Forest based on his 1912 lab notes. Cardozo said that even though de Forest may not have fully understood it, as the original inventor of the tube, he gets priority. This is both science and established law. The history of the invention of the Audion was made murkier by countless court battles, but there are many precedents for inventors who believe they were, using de Forest’s words, “robbed.” Philo Farnsworth went to his death never receiving the recognition he wanted for electronic television. RCA and Zworykin got the credit instead. Armstrong felt the same over regeneration, and even the great Marconi lost a major patent battle to Tesla in 1943 after both were dead. W.K.L. Dickson went to his grave believing that it was he and not Edison who invented the motion picture system. Most of these court battles lasted a long time. More often than not they were inconclusive.

The Real and Final Truth About the de Forest and Case Relationship In his 1923 writings about the Phonofilm system, de Forest publicly promotes Theodore Case as an important inventor and cites his significant contributions to the improvement of his system. The evidence in the Case papers shows that until the middle 1920s the de Forest-Case relationship was one of mutual respect, with both scientists experimenting and improving upon the original de Forest patent and technology. The 1918 de Forest Phonofilm notes presented early the theory of how sound-on-film might work, but it took both men several years to improve upon its individual pieces to make it work well enough for public acceptance. By then de Forest had a film company and dozens of contracts with movie theaters that called for new films weekly and the installation of the technology for their

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playback. This responsibility obviously overwhelmed de Forest, a perpetually unprepared businessman, so while he struggled to keep up with his contractual obligations to the theater owners, Case had the luxury of time and inherited personal wealth to improve the Phonofilm system enough to accumulate his own patents on a system he and his attorneys believed was different from that of de Forest’s. As a result, the de Forest-Case relationship deteriorated and Case became person non grata, in de Forest’s opinion an enemy, just an employee who went rogue. Ultimately Case sold the sound-on-film process that he developed with de Forest to William Fox, de Forest sued, and the court battles lasted for several years with a tepid out-of-court settlement. And while there is evidence that Case was an important thinker in the improvement of important parts of the Phonofilm technology, the number of patents filed early by de Forest vs. those of Case indicates that it may not have been Case’s invention to sell. The record of what really happened, in both the Case and de Forest papers, is contradictory. Ultimately both men stated in court documents that their invention was really based on and influenced by the nineteenth century pre-film experimenters Bell and Ruhmer. Again, it was a scientific “draw.” The real truth of the de Forest-Case scientific and business relationship is that both contributed to the development of Phonofilm, de Forest with his early theoretical writings and patents, and Case with his superior cells needed to both record and reproduce sound-on-film. Their relationship was a symbiotic one. But the larger impediment to success for both men was the movie industry itself. By the time de Forest and Case received the attention of the studios, there was already mature experimentation and successes in sound-on-film by RCA, A.T.&T., General Electric, and Western Electric. Neither de Forest nor Case could compete with these giants. Regardless of its parentage, in the case of Phonofilm the evidence suggests that the film industry knew about the de Forest invention but did not take him seriously. It was not only the fact that he was a small, nonaffiliated independent inventor either. There were certainly business and creative cinema professionals who saw his earlier Phonofilms, but contrary to what de Forest wanted, seeing them may have worked against him. As films they were imperfect, mostly continuous long shots of existing entertainment media: music, the vaudeville, opera, and comedy. They were really laboratory experiments posing as cinema. Because the language of film, the shots, and the editing that had characterized films for years was missing, Phonofilms did not look like real “films.” And even though de Forest tried to tell the industry that he had a better way to synchronize the picture and sound on one film, the audio quality of his earlier films was poor. Those in the electronics industry knew of some of these experiments and those of

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other inventors, but in 1925 when Phonofilm was not of its highest quality, the newly improved electrical recording of phonograph records did yield higher quality audio. And when the choice was made by the mainstream film owners to synchronize sound and film, the phonograph was a proven technology and its quality was high. So by demonstrating the lower sound quality but superior synchronization system of Phonofilm, de Forest may have driven the technical community harder to improve the existing phonograph record. The result was Vitaphone. Phonofilm was also about the content of the movies. By putting himself out early and publicly about how he saw the addition of sound affecting the creative side of the movies, de Forest may have doomed himself early in the development. Apart from his technology the large catalogue of Phonofilms was not interesting enough to attract large audiences, and coupled with de Forest’s writings saying that he believed the purpose of the Phonofilm was not to make features or displace silents (but to present great orchestras and vaudeville, recordings of existing media, and speeches), both his content and his writings could have helped to doom his system. And there is another part of the film story that may have kept him from the film success he desperately wanted: Lee de Forest cared much more about the audio, the sound that films would make than he cared or understood about their images. The art of film to him was about hearing, not seeing. As a filmmaker he produced content for the ear while failing to produce for the eye. So ironically he may have limited the success of the science of Phonofilm by producing and promoting the actual Phonofilms. The artistic and business public might have looked at, for example, the Ben Bernie film “Sweet Georgia Brown” of 1925 and realized that it was like the turn of the century experimental silents, a filmed record of something else, a lesser substitute for the real thing. And de Forest was not the only one who misjudged what the public would want from his invention. Many experts believed and de Forest wrote in 1923, that the well-developed silent film would continue to be popular and that little movies of bands, singers and other stage acts would be the “niche” for the sound films. After “The Jazz Singer” grabbed the public because of its story and actor Al Jolson, it became must-see cinema. By then the playback of that film used improved amplifiers and speaker systems and the public said a loud yes to the talkies.

The Radio and the Sound Film Lee de Forest was early with two important entertainment technologies and ideas for their use. It is likely that any member of a potential public audience for radio in 1910 would have been disappointed with the quality of a de Forest broadcast. Industry and capital would not have followed. The

426

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Figure 10.11 The de Forests wave goodbye to an unseen but adoring audience. Audience was what de Forest was all about. From the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose.

technology of the amplifier, the microphone, the transmitter, the receiver, and the loudspeaker was not then good enough for radio, and so while de Forest was an early, if not the first radio programmer, his work was not well enough developed for an audience beyond hams, experimenters, and early adopters. With Phonofilm, he was also early with basic programming neither attractive nor artfully presented. Like radio earlier the talkies had to wait for the better support technology of the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker for in-theater sound serving a well-written, well-directed, and well-acted feature film that the public liked. The major contribution of Lee de Forest may have been that he created some of the first mass media audiences. And in the process he pointed the way for others to exploit these audiences fully (Fig. 10.11). That is the meaning of Lee de Forest. The answers to the first two questions then are, what he wanted: To be famous, rich and beloved. He was famous and beloved by many associates and at least one wife. What he got: Acknowledgement that he was an important, if not the most important

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Twentieth Century inventor of a single device, the three-element vacuum tube which he and others developed for radio, television, and film. But what he may have wanted most he never received, and that was both the fame and profit from the Phonofilm system. The years between 1919 and 1930 must be known as the lost decade for inventor de Forest, one in which he labored, saw fortune appear and then disappear, and heard applause rise and then fall, finally to be mired in court battles, some won, some lost, most just faded to black. That is the story of Lee de Forest, the man who would be King of Radio, Television, and Film.

End Notes

Chapter 1 Born to Invent 1 A teenage Lee de Forest, in his diary quoted in his autobiography: Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett and Company, Chicago, 1950, p 34. This book is abbreviated later in this book as FOR 2. Edison biographies; de Forest autobiography: George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926; William Adams Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius, Blue Ribbon Books, New York, 1934, Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, John Wiley, New York, 1998; Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett and Company, Chicago, 1950 3. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, John Wiley, New York, 1998, p 17 4. De Forest was a prolific writer. As a college student, undergraduate and in his doctoral program, he contributed to the Yale Sheffield Scientific School Journals; after graduation he worked in Chicago as a technical writer; His autobiography, Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follet and Company, Chicago, 1950 5. Edison biographies, de Forest biographies, FOR 6. George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926 7. Edison biographies, de Forest biographies, FOR 8. Both de Forest and Edison, like most successful inventors have sued and were sued many times for their intellectual property, each believing that he or she was the first inventor, causing many to abandon their claims due to the legal cost, or lose the case outright, sometimes because the court did not understand the science. There are many stories of inventors who preceded their more famous counterparts in inventing something, but lost out to the better-financed, better-represented inventor. It is not enough to invent – you must continue to protect your invention 9. Edison biographies

M. Adams, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0418-7, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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10. George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926, p 251 11. George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926; William Adams Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius, Blue Ribbon Books, New York, 1934, Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, John Wiley, New York, 1998 12. George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926, p 97 13. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 278 14. George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926, p 89 15. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 401 16. The author’s previous work traced the technology leading to radio between 1900 and 1920. This included voice transmission experiments using the spark, the arc, and finally the vacuum tube: Michael Adams, “The Race for Radiotelephone,” AWA Journal, Vol 15, 1996 17. Victor H. Laughter, Operator’s Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Handbook, Drake, Chicago, 1909, p 11 18. Michael Adams, “The Race for Radiotelephone,” AWA Journal, Vol 15, 1996 19. Hugh G.J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton, University Press, 1985, p 50 20. ibid., pp 49–50 21. Victor H. Laughter, Operator’s Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Handbook, Drake, Chicago, 1909, p 13 22. Reginald Fessenden, “Wireless Telephony,” a paper presented to the twenty-fifth annual convention of the American Institute of Electric Engineers, Atlantic City NJ, June 29, 1908, p 2. This is a reprint from Lindsay Publications 23. John P. Schaeffer, An Ansel Adams Guide to Basic Techniques of Photography, Little, Brown Co., Boston, 1992, p 8 24. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movies Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003, p 3 25. ibid. 26. I have viewed hundreds of films from the first half of the 20th Century to add a perspective to the written word. This book is about the audio and visual media, and throughout there are references to films and radio programs. A reenactment of the Marey experiments are shown in an early French educational film, “The Biography of the Motion Picture Camera,” Les Films du Compas, French, 1948

End Notes

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27. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998; Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park, Crown Publisherrs, NY, 2007; educational film, “The Biography of the Motion Picture Camera,” Les Films du Compas, French, 1948 28. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 292; Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park, Crown Publisherrs, NY, 2007, p 198 29. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 293 30. There was an early ad that promoted the early Kodak camera, various magazines, 1890s 31. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 294 32. Edison letter to F.H. Richardson, “SMPE Transactions,” September 1925. As the major film industry organization of technical professionals, the SMPE (Society of Motion Picture Engineers) records were very useful in my research. The organization is now the SMPTE, for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 33. ibid. 34. ibid. 35. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movies Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003, p 9 36. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Son, NY, 1998, p 294 37. ibid., p 300 38. Louis Lumiere, “SMPE Journal,” vol 27, Dec 1936, Society of Motion Picture Engineers 39. ibid. 40. ibid. 41. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movies Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003 p 1 42. William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998, p 19 43. ibid. 44. Admiral Bradley Fiske quoted in George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926, p 192 45. Two de Forest biographies and an autobiography document the life of de Forest up to his death. De Forest friend and confidant Georgette Carneal wrote Conqueror of Space, an Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee de Forest, Horace Liveright, NY, 1930. This is the first “official and authorized” de Forest biography in book form, one of two written between 1924 and 1930. The first of these was: William Arvin,

432

46.

47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60.

Lee de Forest

“Life and Works of Lee de Forest” a biography based on personal interviews and access to the diaries of de Forest, serialized in Radio News, 1924. Both of the early works benefitted from personal interviews with de Forest and access to his diaries, papers and patents. The third book was his own autobiography, Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett, 1950, Chicago. All three of the works written in de Forest’s lifetime used material managed and selected by de Forest. These biographers in later references are abbreviated using their last names From the de Forest diaries, contained in biographies from Carneal, Hijiya, Arvin, and Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett, 1950, Chicago ibid. The information on the spelling of the de Forest family name was detailed in: Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett, 1950, Chicago FOR, p 9, for the abbreviation used for the de Forest autobiography, Father of Radio What has happened to Talladega College since the 17 year Henry de Forest presidency and the institutional improvements he was responsible for between 1878 and 1895? According to the Talladega College Website: “Peterson’s Guide ‘Top Colleges for Science’ identified Talladega College as one of 200 colleges and universities in the United States that offers an outstanding undergraduate program in science and mathematics.” www.talladega.edu FOR, p 21 Georgette Carneal, Conqueror of Space, an Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee de Forest, Horace Liveright, NY, 1930 p 12 (to be known as “Carneal”) James A. Hijiya, Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio, Lehigh University Press, London, 1992, p 29 (to be known as “Hijiya”) William Arvin, “Life and Works of Lee de Forest” a biography based on personal interviews and access to the diaries of de Forest, serialized in Radio News, 1924 (to be known as “Arvin, Radio News”) ibid. From the de Forest diary in Georgette Carneal, Conqueror of Space, an Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee de Forest, Horace Liveright, NY, 1930 p 30 Information from diaries, biographies, FOR Carneal, p 17 FOR, p 27 Arvin, Radio News

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61. A letter to father Henry and a note to mother Anna, 1890, in Carneal, p 40 62. Carneal, p 40 63. Arvin, Radio News 64. ibid. 65. ibid. 66. ibid. 67. ibid. 68. ibid. 69. ibid. 70. Carneal, p 56 71. ibid., p 62 72. Arvin, Radio News 73. FOR, p 71 74. Hijiya, p 47 75. ibid., p 50 76. FOR p 82 77. ibid., p 85 78. Professor Michael Pupin, who would later become the mentor of de Forest rival Edwin Armstrong, was a star professor at Columbia 79. From his diary, in FOR, p 87 80. FOR, Carneal 81. From his diary, in Carneal, p 63 82. Carneal, p 65 83. From his diary, and as told to Carneal, p 74 84. From his diary, in FOR, p 91 85. Arvin, Radio News 86. ibid. 87. ibid. 88. ibid. 89. Heckman and LaFontaine, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007, from the Internet 90. From the collection of dozens of de Forest class notebooks from his six years at Yale University. The major collection of de Forest papers used in the research for and writing of this book is from the Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose. This collection contains school notes, laboratory notes, letters, patents, speeches and diaries. It also includes a large hardware collection including de Forest Audion vacuum tubes, radios manufactured by the de Forest companies, a large collection of photographs, and memorabilia including de Forest’s Oscar for sound-on-film

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91. Science education at the turn of the century: a remarkable collection of original Yale class notebooks is housed in the Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose. Most of the class notebooks in this collection show instruction in high-level physics, chemistry, mathematics and electricity, and theories and formulas from all of the known scientists of the day. It is a window into what de Forest was learning and into what post-graduate science education was in the 1890s, postHertz and pre-wireless 92. FOR p 97; An incomplete version of the de Forest Ph. D. thesis is also found in the Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose. This culminating work leading to the award of the doctor of science in physics appears to be a two-part endeavor. The author believes that the laboratory experiment was a one year project and the so-called “thesis” or written component was just a summary of the practical experiment. At most universities the final doctoral work is known as a dissertation 93. Hugh G.J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton University Press, 1985, p 8

Chapter 2 The Race for Wireless 1. A de Forest letter to an otherwise unidentified family friend named Ed, December 1904, Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose, to be abbreviated as “Perham de Forest papers” 2. From Nobel Lectures in Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 3. Hugh G. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton University Press, 1985, p 187 4. Many of the non-de Forest patents in the Appendix and referred to in this work can be found on the Web under the excellent Google Patents search engine. For any American patent enter http://www.google.com/ patents into your browser and follow the directions 5. Hugh G. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton University Press, 1985, p 197 6. Bartholomew Lee, in AWA Review, vol. 13, Antique Wireless Association, NY, 2006 7. Bart Lee, et. al., The Marconi Beacon Experiment, AWA Review, vol. 21, Antique Wireless Association, NY, 2008 8. From Nobel Lectures in Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 9. Hugh G. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton University Press, 1985, p 306 10. FOR, p 101

End Notes

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

435

Crookes in Fortnightly Review, 1896, quoted in Carneal, p 72 From de Forest diary, 1899, in FOR, p 104 FOR, p 104 ibid., p 106 ibid., p 105 ibid., p 109 De Forest, from his diary, in FOR, p 117 Carneal, p 114 From the de Forest diary, in Carneal, p 112 De Forest laboratory notes, June 14th 1900, Perham de Forest papers ibid. De Forest laboratory notes, April 1900, Perham de Forest papers ibid. De Forest laboratory notes, Sept. 1900, Perham de Forest papers A single piece of paper, dated Nov 28th 1900, from the Perham de Forest papers De Forest laboratory notebook, June 1901, Perham de forest papers ibid. Reginald Fessenden, “Wireless Telephony,” a paper presented to the twenty-fifth annual convention of the American Institute of Electric Engineers, Atlantic City NJ, June 29, 1908, p 7. This is a reprint from Lindsay Publications From the de Forest diary, in Carneal, p 112 From de Forest recollections, both in Carneal and FOR ibid. This is a letter to friend named only as “Ed,” Dec 4, 1901, Perham de Forest papers De Forest laboratory notebook, dated December 7th 1902, Perham de Forest papers The Electrician, Nov 7, 1902, a marked copy from the Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. ibid. A de Forest drawing, dated May 19, 1902, from the Perham de Forest papers FOR, p 169 FOR, p 130 Pittsburgh Press, Aug 10, 1902 ibid.

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43. From a December, 1902, publication unknown, Perham de Forest papers 44. From his diary, in Carneal, p 149 45. ibid. 46. FOR p 161: while this is the de Forest recollection in his 1950 autobiography, there is always the suspicion that de Forest managed the information about this event to his favor. There is no other evidence, for or against, other than the courts ruled in Fessenden’s favor 47. Bartholomew Lee, “How Dunwoody’s Chunk of ‘Coal’ Saved both de Forest and Marconi,” AWA Review, vol. 22, 2009 48. New York Times, July 17, 1902 49. De Forest letter to a “Dear Comrade,” believed to be former paramour Jessica Wallace, Aug 9, 1902, Perham de Forest papers 50. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1904 51. Lee de Forest, “Electrolytic Receivers in Wireless Telegraphy,” 1904 paper before the Electrical Congress of St. Louis, in the Perham de Forest papers 52. FOR, p 184 53. New York Times, April 19, 1904 54. New York Times, April 24, 1904 55. New York Times, May 8, 2004 56. New York Times, July 10, 1904 57. Buffalo Times, April 8, 1906 58. Colorado Springs Evening Telegraph, April 28, 1906 59. ibid. 60. Pensacola Journal, April 8, 1906 61. New Haven Union, Mar 22, 1906 62. ibid. 63. ibid. 64. There is a giant collection of newspaper clipping in the de Forest papers. These are mainly organized in scrapbooks and are in some chronological order. Usually the date and the name of the paper are included but not the page number or the edition. This reference refers to an arranged montage of news stories in a scrapbook about the fake news story. It must have been quite an event. All March, 1906, Perham de Forest papers 65. ibid. 66. Another montage about the successes of the de Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, from a scrapbook, April 1906, the Perham de Forest papers

End Notes

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67. Brother Charles de Forest letter to Abe White, April 1906, Perham de Forest papers 68. ibid. 69. From a scrapbook montage of various newspaper stories about the wireless company and Abe White, April, 1906 Perham de Forest papers 70. New York Press, September 9, 1907 71. ibid. 72. From the scrapbook montage, a news story about Abe White, unnamed, undated scrap but probably April, 1906, in Perham de Forest papers 73. From the de Forest diary, in Carneal, p 143 74. New York Times, May 7, 1906 75. The November 28, 1906 letter to the board of the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company. While this is a carbon copy of the original, its significance is that it contains the hand written addendum by de Forest. No one other than de Forest got this version. From the Perham de Forest papers 76. From an undated and unattributed 1906, news story, Perham de Forest papers 77. ibid. 78. Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 193 79. Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and His Wireless Message, Grosset and Dunlap, 1911, p 170 80. ibid. 81. ibid., pp 173–175 82. Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 194 83. Some of the titles from the recently-updated list created by broadcast historian and Professor Christopher Sterling are, The Boy Inventors Wireless Triumph, 1912; Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator, 1924; The Radio Boys First Wireless, 1922; The Ocean Wireless Boys series of six titles, all wireless, 1914-1917; The Boy Aviators, Working with Wireless, 1910; The Wireless Station at Silver Fox Farm, 1910; The Wireless Patrol, 1917-19, series of three; Young Wireless Operators, 1920-24, series of five; and the oldest, The Story of a Wireless Telegraph Boy, 1908, and many more. Christopher Sterling, “Children’s Books Devoted to or Emphasizing Telegraph, Telephone, Wireless, Radio or Television, 1879-1990,” sixth edition, 2009, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University

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84. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003 p 11 85. See the DVD collections, “Treasures” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894-1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco, and the Edison collection from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, all widely available on DVD from Amazon, TCM Cable and others 86. Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, Wiley and Sons, NY, 1998, p 402 87. William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998, p 36 88. From Edison DVD collection, Museum of Modern Art, restored in cooperation with the Library of Congress 89. Alex Ben Block editor, George Lucas’s Blockbusting, Harper-Collins, NY, 2010, p 10 90. For these summaries the author watched hours of silent films from the collections, “Treasures” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894-1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco, and the Edison collection from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, available on DVD 91. ibid. 92. ibid. 93. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003 p 25 94. For these summaries the author watched hours of silent films from the collections, “Treasures” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894–1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco, and the Edison collection from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, available on DVD 95. ibid. 96. See the film, “Trip to the Moon,” directed by Georges Méliès, restored and on DVD

Chapter 3 The Meaning of the Audion 1. 2. 3. 4.

FOR, Lee de Forest in Father of Radio on his invention Gerald F. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Sams, 1977, p 31–32 ibid., p 32 Nikola Tesla’s signature invention, three-phase AC, is more efficient than DC for the distribution of electricity to homes and businesses. Electric lights operate directly from it. Direct current is used to power

End Notes

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

439

most electronic devices, so such devices either have rectifiers or operate on batteries which are DC J. Ambrose Fleming, U. S. patent 803,684, from Google Patents See Bart Lee in AWA review, various, G.F. Tyne, Aitken and others for details on the relationship between Edison and Fleming, later Marconi and Fleming Notes from de Forest, early patent specification for a flame detector, Perham de Forest papers Gerald F. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Sams, 1977, p 55 Lee de Forest U. S. patent 836,070, from the Perham de Forest papers Letter from de Forest to patent lawyer Woodworth, Dec 10, 1906, de Forest papers “scrapbook” in Seaver Center Collection of Western History, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. To be abbreviated “Seaver Center” ibid. FOR, p 213 Gerald F. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Sams, 1977, p 61 Lee de Forest U. S. patent 841,387, from the Perham de Forest papers Scientist Dr. John Staples and science historian Bart Lee contributed to the author’s understanding of the arcane terminology of the vacuum tube Gerald F. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Sams, p 61 Lee de Forest U. S. patent 879,532, Space Telegraphy, filed January 29, 1907, from the Perham de Forest papers Hijiya, p 72 Tom Lewis, Empire of the Air,” Edward Burlingame Books, NY, 1991, p 55 Reginald Fessenden, “Wireless Telephony,” a paper presented to the twenty-fifth annual convention of the American Institute of Electric Engineers, Atlantic City NJ, June 29, 1908, p 15. This is a reprint from Lindsay Publications Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 171–172 ibid., p 172 See Gordon Greb, “The Golden Anniversary of Broadcasting, Journal of Broadcasting, Broadcast Education Association, 1959; Joseph Baudino and John Kittross, “Broadcasting’s Oldest Stations: An Examination of Four Claimants, Journal of Broadcasting, Broadcast Education Association, Vol 21:1, Winter 1977 Clark Radiana Collection, his papers, Smithsonian, obtained in earlier author research there for the book, Mike Adams and Gordon Greb,

440 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Lee de Forest

Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 2003, McFarland, NC ibid. Also see the author’s previous work based on Clark Papers research: Michael Adams,“The Race for Radiotelephone,” AWA Journal, Vol 15, 1996 Author research at Clark Papers in 2001, R. A. Fessenden, letter to S.M. Kintner, 29 Jan. 1932, Clark Radiana collection, Smithsonian James O’Neil in Radio World, 2006; Christopher Sterling and Donna Halper, “Fessenden’s Christmas Eve Broadcast: Reconsidering an Historic Event, AWA Review, vol. 19, August 2006 Christopher Sterling and Donna Halper, “Fessenden’s Christmas Eve Broadcast: Reconsidering an Historic Event, AWA Review, vol. 19, August 2006 ibid. John Belrose, “Fessenden’s 1906 Christmas Eve Broadcast, It does not matter what three U.S. radio historians have said, there is no controversy the broadcast was made.” January 2007 There was a point-counterpoint on Fessenden and the Christmas Eve broadcast of 1906 which began in Radio World and the AWA Review in 1906, and then answered by the primary Fessenden researcher-biographer in 1907 Reginald Fessenden, “Wireless Telephony,” a paper presented to the twenty-fifth annual convention of the American Institute of Electric Engineers, Atlantic City NJ, June 29, 1908, p 21. This is a reprint from Lindsay Publications Gordon Greb and Mike Adams, Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 2003, McFarland, NC See the author’s book, author’s Website, www.charlesherrold.org The collection by Professor Gordon Greb of open-reel audio recordings of interviews he made in the 1950s of former Herrold students are housed in the Columbia University Oral History Library From the Electro-Importing catalogue of wireless parts, January 1910, Herrold papers, History San Jose San Jose Mercury Herald, July 22, 1912 San Jose Mercury Herald, July 8, 1912 San Jose Mercury Herald, July 22, 1912 The author found this collection of press clippings about early radiotelephone in the Clark Radiana collection: “A New 100 Watt Wireless Telephone,” Electrical Experimenter, July 1915; “Aids Wireless Telephony,” Detroit Free Press, 29 June 1913; “Conversations and Music

End Notes

42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

441

by Wireless,” Illustrated World, Dec. 1915; “Eagle Men use Wireless Phone,” Brooklyn Eagle, 19 June 1913; “Famous-Barr Installs Wireless Phone Music,” St Louis Post-Dispatch, 26 Oct. 1913; “Fined for Testing New Wireless Phone,” New York Evening Sun, 23 Oct. 1913; “Fined for Wireless,” New York Journal, 24 Oct. 1913; “Human Voice Heard 700 Miles by Wireless Phone,” Savannah News, May 1913; “May Talk Soon from Europe to America,” New York World, 17 Nov. 1912; “Perfects Wireless Telephone System,” Brooklyn Standard-Union, 17 Oct. 1912;“Receives Wireless Telephone Messages with the Aid of Auto,” Los Angeles Examiner, 29 Sept. 1912; “San Jose Inventor Claims Perfect Conversation with Santa Barbara,” San Jose Mercury Herald, Feb. 1913; “To Extend Wireless Phone,” New York Times, 6 Mar. 1913; “Trinity Men’s Club Hears About Wireless,” San Jose Daily Mercury, 16 Jan. 1913; “Two-Way Wireless Phone Between Rome and Paris,” New York Times, 6 Mar. 1913; “University of California Doing Good Radio Work,” Electrical Experimenter, Apr. 1914; “Wireless Telephony is Near at Hand,” Little Rock Gazette, 2 Nov. 1913; “Wireless Talk Across The Atlantic,” Boston Transcript, 22 Nov. 1913; “Wireless Telephones,” Omaha Herald, 10 Oct. 1913; “Wireless Telephone,” Macon (GA) Times, 30 Oct. 1913; “Wonders of The Wireless Phone,” Savannah News, 10 Jan. 1914 See the author’s previous work: Michael Adams, “The Race for Radiotelephone,” AWA Journal, Vol 15, 1996 Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 214 Other inventors who used the Poulsen arc may have been infringing on his patent, but by the time it mattered, the vacuum tube had replaced the arc for voice communication and the arc was relegated solely to high power transcontinental code transmission. The infringement was never tested. The American rights to the Poulsen arc were purchased by Cyril Elwell of Federal Telegraph, who would become a future friend and employer and later an employee of de Forest Western Electrician, Nov 7, 1902, from the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose ibid. A de Forest news interview with New York World, April 7, 1907 From a speech by de Forest, date unknown, probably written in the early 1920s, from the Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose Gleason L. Archer History of Radio to 1926, New York: American Historical Society, Inc., 1938, p 112

442

Lee de Forest

50. Philadelphia Pan American, June 22, 1922, from the Seaver Collection of de Forest materials, 1919–1925, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum 51. US Navy World Cruise, 1907–1908, told to George Clark by Com. HJ Meneratti, June 1938, in the AWA Bruce Kelly Files, Antique Wireless Association Archives, NY. The AWA or Antique Wireless Association holds the major international collection of early wireless and prebroadcasting technology 52. ibid. 53. ibid. 54. ibid. 55. ibid. 56. ibid. 57. ibid. 58. De Forest in his diary in FOR, pp 225–6 59. Talking Machine World quoted in FOR, p 229 60. Philadelphia Pan American, June 22, 1922 61. ibid. 62. New York Herald, July 10, 1908 63. New York Journal, Feb 20, 1909 64. Jersey City Journal, Feb 20, 1909, from the Perham de Forest papers 65. FOR, pp 257–8 66. “To Hear Opera by Wireless” New York Times, Jan 9, 1910 67. New York World, Jan 9, 1910 68. ibid. 69. John Belrose, “Fessenden’s 1906 Christmas Eve Broadcast, It does not matter what three U.S. radio historians have said, there is no controversy the broadcast was made.” January 2007 70. De Forest stories, writings, and diary entries that repeated this theme in its various iterations, Perham de Forest papers 71. FOR, p 254 72. New Haven Union, March 22, 1906 73. A hand written letter to Mignon, June 1906, Perham de Forest papers 74. ibid. 75. ibid. 76. ibid. 77. ibid. 78. ibid. 79. ibid. 80. ibid. 81. ibid.

End Notes

82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

443

ibid. ibid. ibid. FOR, in his autobiography de Forest seems to give a fair assessment of his marriage to Nora. In his biography Hijiya gets deeper into the family of Nora and his book contains some new photographs from his research connection to the family A news story scrap, 1907, no month or publication, Perham de Forest papers New York Times, February 26, 1909 ibid. New York Times, Oct 19, 1911 ibid. ibid.

Chapter 4 California Days 1. De Forest diary and autobiography notes, remembrances of 1916, written in the mid 1920s, Perham de Forest papers, 2. The author learned to make films as a graduate student. Later in his career he both made films and taught film production using actual film and later video. Two of his documentaries, “Radio Collector,” and “Broadcasting’s Forgotten Father: The Charles Herrold Story,” were aired nationally on PBS. “Radio Collector” was nominated for an Emmy. The author wrote, produced, directed, edited and hosted both of these films. The author’s first book was a university-level textbook that described the film making process as he taught it, Single Camera Video, the Creative Challenge, Wm. C. Brown Co. publishers, 1992 3. Barnaby C. Dallas, Play, Photoplay, and Screenplay Structure: Dramatic Principles from Theater to Cinema, Master’s Thesis, San Jose State University, 2000, pp 35–53 4. ibid. 5. For this book the Author has watched and made notes on hundreds of early films. Many of these can be found in the collections, “Treasures” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894-1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco, and the Edison collection from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, all widely available on DVD from Amazon, TCM Cable and others 6. See the DVD collections, above 7. Alex Ben Block editor, George Lucas’s Blockbusting, Harper-Collins, NY, 2010, p 41

444

Lee de Forest

8. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, Little, Brown and Co, NY, 2007, p 69 9. ibid., p 43 10. “The End of an Era,” television documentary written by historian Kevin Brownlow, Thames Television, 1980 11. William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998, p 32 12. ibid., p 36 13. ibid., pp 42–43 14. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By, Ballantine Books, 1968, p 88 15. Booklet with DVD series, “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894–1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco. A group of knowledgeable film historians have added greatly to the understand of these early films 16. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, Little, Brown and Co, NY, 2007, p 179 17. The opening title “disclaimer” for Birth of a Nation, DW Griffith, 1915, DVD version, re-mastered in 2009 18. Birth of a Nation, DW Griffith, 1915, DVD 19. ibid., title 20. ibid., title “reconstruction disclaimer” 21. ibid., title, the Klan saves the South 22. ibid. 23. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, Little, Brown and Co, NY, 2007, p 183 24. Neil Young, Southern Man, album, “After the Gold Rush,” 1970 25. More Treasures from the American Film Archives, DVD 26. William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998, p 124 27. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, Little, Brown and Co, NY, 2007, p 40 28. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By, Ballantine Books, 1968, p 34 29. Christopher Sterling, “Children’s Books Devoted to or Emphasizing Telegraph, Telephone, Wireless, Radio or Television, 1879–1990,” sixth edition, 2009, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, see the complete list in an earlier chapter 30. Victor Appleton, The Moving Picture Boys, Grossett and Dunlap, NY, Vol 1, 1913, p 6

End Notes

445

31. ibid., p 37 32. Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera, Grosset & Dunlap, 1912, p 40–41 33. ibid., p 71 34. Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone, p 91 35. Cyril Elwell, “Autobiography,” unpublished, 1943, Clark Radiana Collection, Smithsonian 36. New York Times, March 28, 1912 37. ibid. 38. De Forest diary, March, 1912, Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose 39. This letter, written while in Palo Alto in 1912, is from a collection of Palo Alto writings, in the Perham de Forest papers 40. New York Times Dec 6, 1913 41. FOR, p 312 42. George Parmly, letter to Guy Beardsley, Secretary, Yale Class of 1896, Nov, 1914, Perham de Forest papers 43. ibid. 44. New York Times, Dec 6, 1913 45. The source for this claim is the famous drawing dated August 1912, and notarized by lab assistant van Etten. This was used for “proof ” in the various de Forest v. Armstrong trials, because is showed that de Forest had the idea for regeneration a few months before Armstrong. Even though some scientists believed that de Forest either forged this note or didn’t understand the significance of what he had discovered, he did prevail all the way up to the Supreme Court. From the Perham de Forest papers 46. FOR, pp 305–306 47. About the 1913 Biograph job: there are minimal and undocumented references in the Maurice Zouary biography and FOR; this job apparently lasted a very short time and it is one of the least-documented, evidence-wise, of the early de Forest work in synchronized film sound 48. Carneal, p 255 49. From the notebook called “Notes, Ideas, Inventions,” 1914-1915, Perham de Forest papers 50. ibid. 51. Bart Lee, AWA Review no. 22, Antique Wireless Association, 2009, NY 52. Lee de Forest, saved remembrances of 1916, but perhaps written in the early 1920s and saved for future biographical records, Perham de Forest papers

446

Lee de Forest

53. AT&T Booklet for 1915 PPIE, “The Story of a Great Achievement,” Perham de Forest papers 54. ibid. 55. De Forest Booklet for 1915 PPIE, “The Story of a Great Achievement,” Perham de Forest papers 56. New York Times, Nov 16, 1915 57. ibid. 58. ibid. 59. New York Times, Dec 11, 1915 60. ibid. 61. ibid. 62. Letter from de Forest in France to wife Mary in New York, 1915, Perham de Forest papers 63. ibid. 64. ibid. 65. A collection of remembrances of Dec 1916, probably written in the 1920s as saved biographical information, Perham de Forest papers 66. FOR, p 339 67. Collection of remembrances of Dec 1916, probably written in the early 1920s, Perham de Forest papers 68. Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 293 69. ibid. p 295 70. New York Times, October 27, 1916 71. Gordon Greb and Mike Adams, Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 2003, McFarland, NC 72. Collected reminiscences of Sep 1916, perhaps written in the early 1920s for future biographical use, Perham de Forest papers 73. De Forest remembrances of Sep 1916, perhaps written later in the 1920s for future biographical information, Perham de Forest papers, 74. A de Forest speech, exact date unknown other than 1917, Perham de Forest papers 75. Collected remembrances of September 1916, likely written in the 1920s for future biographies, Perham de Forest papers 76. Adams and Greb, Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 2003, McFarland, NC 77. Clinton de Soto, Two Hundred Meters and Down, American Radio Relay League, 1936 78. Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University, 1966, p 45 79. ibid., p 46 80. New York Times, series of headlines of war dead, 1918–1919

End Notes

447

81. Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University, 1966, p 52 82. Mike Adams, television interview of Don Wallace, “Radio Collector,” documentary series, PBS, 1985 83. Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University, 1966, p 53 84. Collected remembrances of September 1919, perhaps written in the early 1920s for future biographical reference, Perham de Forest papers 85. Berkeley Gazette, Sep 19, 1919 86. Stanstead Journal, Aug 29, 1919 87. De Forest diary, Jan 28th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 88. This writing begins a lengthy series of diary entries on sound-on-film progress: “On this day I made a photographic voice record on film with ‘talking flame..., ’” was the first of these. All of these will begin in Chapter 6 as the de Forest inventing life moves to the talking motion picture, from the Perham de Forest papers 89. De Forest diary, November 2, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 90. De Forest diary, October 5, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 91. ibid. 92. A hand-written birthday letter to de Forest from his mother Anna, August 21, 1920, from the Seaver Center on Western History, de Forest scrapbook collection, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. To be abbreviated “Seaver Center”

Chapter 5 Radio’s Arrival 1. Lee de Forest, writing in Radio World, October, 1923 2. Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987, p 280 3. Gleason L. Archer, History of Radio to 1926, American Historical Society, 1938, New York, p 165 4. Two of the important early works on the formation of RCA and early radio are: Gleason A. Archer, History of Radio to 1926, American Historical Society, 1938, New York; Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University Press, NY, 1966 5. Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University Press, NY, 1966, p 72 6. Clark left a giant legacy now called the Clark Radiana Collection at the Smithsonian History Center 7. One of the hundreds of poems in the Perham de forest papers 8. Gleason L. Archer, History of Radio to 1926, American Historical Society, 1938, New York, p 88

448

Lee de Forest

9. Joseph Baudino and John M. Kittross, “Broadcasting’s Oldest Stations: An Examination of Four Claimants,” Journal of Broadcasting, 21:1, Winter 1977, BEA, Broadcast Education Association 10. Leslie McFarlane, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, Methuen, 1976 11. Allen Chapman, The Radio Boys at the Sending Station, Grosset and Dunlap, 1922 12. Margaret Penrose, The Radio Girls on the Program, Cupples and Leon, NY, 1922, p 201 13. ibid. 14. The author has studied all the Radio News volumes between 1919 and 1925, the important transition years from amateur interest to the commercialization of radio broadcasting. The collections of Paul Bourbin and the James Maxwell Memorial Library of the California Historical Radio Society in Berkeley have mostly complete collections of all radio-themed periodicals 15. Radio Amateur News, July, 1919 16. ibid. 17. Radio Amateur News, Sept, 1919 18. Marvin R. Bensman, The Beginning of Broadcast Regulation in the Twentieth Century, McFarland & Co, NC, 2000, p 8 19. Radio Amateur News, Sept, 1919 20. ibid. 21. ibid. 22. ibid. 23. ibid. 24. Opera by Subscription? Yes, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, to receive the broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera today, you do need a subscription to the satellite radio service Sirius/XM 25. Radio Amateur News, Sept, 1919 26. Lee de Forest, writing in Radio Amateur News, Sept 1919 27. Radio Amateur News, Sept, 1919 28. Radio Amateur News, November, 1919 29. Radio Amateur News, May, 1920 30. ibid. 31. ibid. 32. Radio News, July, 1920 33. ibid. 34. ibid. 35. Radio News, June, 1920 36. Radio News, August, 1921 37. Radio News, October, 1921

End Notes

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

449

ibid. Radio News, December, 1921 ibid. ibid. Radio News, January, 1922 ibid. RCA, “Radio Enters the Home,” catalogue, 1922 RCA, Radio Enters the Home, catalogue, 1922; The $18.00 and $350.00 radios of 1922 would translate into $200-$800 to $4,000-$10,000 in today’s dollars, the high price of early adoption Kendall and Koehler, Radio Simplified, 1923, John Winston Co, NY Radio News, April, 1922 ibid. Dearborn Independent, August 8, 1922 ibid. Radio News, August, 1922 Clifford J. Doerksen, American Babble, Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2005, p 20 ibid. History of Radio to 1926, Gleason A. Archer, American Historical Society, 1938, New York, p 398 Clifford J. Doerksen, American Babble, Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2005, p 118 Radio World, Oct, 1923 ibid. The Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose contain an incredible number, in the thousands, of books, newspapers, magazines, flyers, pamphlets and brochures, both mass media and trade publications, with articles by and about de Forest. One reason we know so much about him is that he was always available to reporters and he made them feel welcome Radio News, July, 1923 De Forest, writing in the Miami News, Feb 10, 1923 Radio Broadcast, October, 1927 Radio News, April, 1927 The author’s 1985 PBS series, “Radio Collector” showed the progression of technology and audience in the 1920s. This was accomplished by interviewing dozens of radio technology historians who showed and talked about the significance of the various eras of radio

450

Lee de Forest

64. Radio News, various issues, 1923 65. Radio Broadcast, Oct, 1927 66. Radio Dealer, June, 1922

Chapter 6 Phonofilm, the Promise 1. De Forest diary, August 23, 1920, Perham de Forest papers. There is a very complete record of the 1920s in his diaries, in newspapers stories, and in the collected correspondence between de Forest and Theodore Case. There are three majors sources of primary research materials used in this and the three following Phonofilm chapters: The Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, (may be abbreviated “Seaver Center.”) The Case Research Laboratory Papers, Cayuga Museum of History, (may be abbreviated “Case Papers.”) The Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose, the major source of general de Forest papers, may be abbreviated “Perham de Forest papers” 2. John Frayne, AES Journal, July/August 1976, Vol 24, No 8 3. Ernst Ruhmer, Wireless Telephony, Crosby, Lockwood and Son, London, 1908, p 6 4. Scientific American, July 29th, 1901 5. Ernst Ruhmer, Wireless Telephony, Crosby, Lockwood and Son, London, 1908, p 36 6. Edison letter, reprinted in: F.H. Richardson, SMPE Transactions, Sep 1925 7. Letter from WKL Dickson to Tom Theisen, SMPTE History Committee, 1932, WKL Dickson papers, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County 8. ibid. 9. ibid. 10. Booklet with DVD series, “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894–1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco 11. Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound, Columbia University Press, NY, 2004, pp 160–164, ads for these products 12. ibid., p 165 13. William Adams Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius, Blue Ribbon Books, NY, 1932 14. ibid., p 291 15. ibid., p 292 16. Redondo Beach newspaper dated 1912, papers of EH Amet, Seaver Center

End Notes

451

17. ibid. 18. Peter Talmachoff, “The Wizard of the West,” in the Amet papers, Seaver Center 19. Amet patent, 1,124,580, Seaver Center 20. Harry M. Geduld, The Birth of the Talkies: from Edison to Jolsen, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1975, p 76 21. Edward Kellogg, “History of Sound Motion Pictures, part 1,” SMPTE Journal, June 1955 22. Harry M. Geduld, The Birth of the Talkies: from Edison to Jolsen, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p 78 23. Edward Kellogg, “History of Sound Motion Pictures, part 1,” SMPTE Journal, June 1955 24. FOR, p 343 25. FOR, p 345 26. De Forest 1897 notebook, Yale, Perham de Forest papers, History San Jose 27. FOR, p 403 28. A de Forest scrap of paper, his 1918 notes on film sound, in the de Forest papers, History San Jose. Note also the secondary reference to the phonograph: de Forest in the beginning believed that by recording sound on a film, longer passages of music, complete works, could be recorded. The phonograph disc was limited to 4 minutes 29. ibid. 30. Lee de Forest, patent 1,446,246, U.S. Patent Office, from the Perham de Forest papers 31. ibid. 32. ibid. 33. ibid. 34. ibid. 35. Maurice H. Zouary, DeForest, Father of the Electronic Revolution, 1995, no publisher indicated, probably himself, p 107 36. De Forest diary, August 23,1920, Perham de Forest papers 37. De Forest diary, September 8, 1920, Perham de Forest papers. In this reference developed means chemicals used to process the film 38. ibid. 39. De Forest diary, September 11th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 40. De Forest diary, Sep 16th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 41. Scientific American, July, 1923 42. De Forest diary, September 11th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 43. De Forest diary, September 19th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers 44. De Forest diary, October 6th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers

452 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Lee de Forest

De Forest diary, Nov 10, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Nov 25, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Nov 27, 1920, Perham de Forest papers Stephanie Przybylek, Breaking the Silence on Film, The Cayuga Museum of History, 1999, p 8 Theodore Case, 1917 monograph, Case Research Laboratory Papers, Cayuga Museum of History. To be abbreviated “Case papers.” ibid. Letter from Case to de Forest, Jan 26, 1920, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, August 13, 1920, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, August 18, 1920, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, Aug 19, 1920, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Aug 26, 1920, Case Papers ibid. De Forest letter to Case Nov 10, 1920, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Dec 8, 1920, Case Papers For the first few years of their correspondence de Forest used the letterhead “De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company, but by 1921 or 1922 the purpose of the de Forest experiments was clear to Case and he understood that he was supplying pieces of the Phonofilm system. The “De Forest Phonofilm Corporation” letterhead did not appear until the formation of the company in 1923 Case letter to de Forest, Dec 31, 1920, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Jan 5, 1921, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, Jan 6, 1921, Case Papers FOR, p 347 De Forest diary, Sep 11th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Sep 18th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Sep 11th, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Nov 23, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Nov 28, 1920, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Jan 4th, 1921, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Apr 24th, 1921, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, May 12, 1921, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, June 11, 1921, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Apr 24th, 1921, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, July 4, 1921, Perham de Forest papers ibid. De Forest diary, July 9, 1921, Perham de Forest papers FOR, pp 362 De Forest diary, April, 1922, Perham de Forest papers

End Notes

79. 80. 81. 82.

453

FOR, p 365 Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1922 Detroit Free Press, Oct 29, 1922 Lee de Forest, American Radio Journal, Oct 1, 1922, from the Perham de Forest papers 83. NEA Journal, August 31, 1922 84. ibid. 85. ibid. 86. ibid. 87. ibid. 88. A news editorial in a large de Forest scrapbook of 1922 Phonofilm stories filed after the Germany research trip, untitled scrap but late 1922, Perham de Forest papers 89. ibid. 90. New York Times, Sep 10, 1922 91. ibid. 92. ibid. 93. Case letter to de Forest, Sep 18, 1922, Case Papers 94. De Forest letter to Case, Sep 22, 1922, Case Papers 95. ibid. 96. De Forest letter to Case attorney EA Thompson, Sep 26, 1922, Case Papers 97. ibid. 98. Case letter to de Forest, Nov 16, 1922, Case Papers 99. De Forest letter to Case, Nov 22, 1922, Case Papers 100. ibid. 101. ibid. 102. De Forest letter to Case, Nov 23, 1922, Case Papers 103. ibid. 104. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 5, 1922, Case Papers 105. ibid. 106. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 7, 1922, Case Papers 107. ibid. 108. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 14, 1922, Case Papers 109. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 19, 1922, Case Papers 110. ibid. 111. Case letter to de Forest, Dec 21, 1922, Case Papers 112. Case letter to de Forest, Dec 22, 1922, Case Papers 113. ibid. 114. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 23, 1922, Case Papers 115. ibid.

454

Lee de Forest

116. De Forest letter to Case, Dec 31, 1922, Case Papers. This letter is reproduced as a photo to show one of the few hand-written letters from de Forest to Case. De Forest admitted, once in the margin of his usual typed correspondence with Case, that he used a person who either transcribed his letters, typed and made carbons, or took dictation. This is a habit that de Forest employed from the beginning, and most of the entries in the de Forest papers collections are typed, the letters being carbon copies. In the Case papers, the de Forest letters are original and the Case letters are carbons 117. ibid. 118. ibid. 119. ibid. 120. ibid. 121. New York World, Sep 24, 1922 122. ibid. 123. Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990, p 9 124. The film, “Orphans of the Storm,” 1921, TCM cable 125. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By, Ballantine, NY, 1968, p 97 126. The film, Lost Souls, 1923, TCM cable 127. The film, “Battleship Potemkin,” 1925, TCM, Silent Sundays 128. Book with “More Treasures from the American Film Archives, 1894–1931,” DVD set, National Film Preservation Foundation 129. “Hollywood, A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Part 2, End of an Era,” written by Kevin Brownlow, Thames Video/HBO, 1980 130. Case letter to de Forest, Jan 13, 1923, Case Papers 131. ibid. 132. Case letter to de Forest, Jan 29, 1923, Case Papers 133. De Forest letter to Case, Feb 5, 1923, Case Papers 134. ibid. 135. ibid. 136. Gertrude Gordon, unnamed 1922 newspaper editorial clipping in the Perham de Forest papers 137. ibid. 138. ibid.

Chapter 7 Phonofilm, the Realization 1. 2. 3. 4.

Lee de Forest, “The Phonofilm,” SMPE Transactions, No. 16, May 1923 De Forest letter to Case, Mar 17, 1923, Case Papers ibid. ibid.

End Notes

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

455

ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. Case letter to de Forest, Mar 25, 1923, Case Papers ibid. FOR, pp 367–8 New York Times, April 5, 1923 FOR, p 370 New York Times, April 16, 1923 ibid. New York News, April 29, 1923 ibid. ibid. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 22, 1923 ibid. ibid. New York City Telegram, April 29, 1923 ibid. FOR, pp 371 Scientific American, August, 1923 ibid. ibid. De Forest, explaining Phonofilm to an Associated Press reporter, Jan 5, 1924, and carried in hundreds of daily papers C. Francis Jenkins, from the SMPE Charter Lee de Forest, “The Phonofilm,” SMPE Transactions, No. 16, May 1923 ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. JT Tykociner, “Photographic Recording and Photoelectric Reproduction of Sound,” SMPE Transactions, No. 16, May 1923

456 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Lee de Forest

ibid. De Forest book, “Phonofilm,” 1923, Perham de Forest papers Waddell in de Forest book, “Phonofilm,” 1923, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. Atlanta Constitution, April 8, 1923 Worcester Massachusetts Telegram, October 14, 1923 ibid. Paducah Democrat (KY), April 30, 1923 Bisbee Press (SD), Dec 12, 1923 Stockton Record (CA), December 13, 1923 Los Angeles Herald June 29th, 1923 ibid. De Forest letter to Case, March 31, 1923, Case Papers ED Clapp letter to Case, April 5, 1923, Case Papers Case attorney John Taber letter to de Forest, March 15, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, April 13, 1923, Case Papers ibid. John Taber letter to de Forest, April 23, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, May 24, 1923, Case Papers ibid. De Forest cable to Case, May 28, 1923, Case Papers Wadell letter to Case, May 24, 1923, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, May 29, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, August 28, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to General George Squier, August 28, 1923, Case Papers New York World, May 12, 1923 quoted in Phonofilm brochure, Perham de Forest papers, De Forest Phonofilm brochure, 1923, Perham de Forest papers ibid. New York Times, Apr 26, 1923 De Forest letter to Case, November 7, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to case, December 31, 1923, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, December 31, 1923, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, January 3, 1924, Case Papers Bronx Home News, January 5, 1924 De Forest letter to New York World, January 3, 1924, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, January 11, 1924, Case Papers ibid.

End Notes

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

457

ibid. Elwell letter to Case, January 14, 1924, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, February 11, 1924, Case papers ibid. ibid. New York Herald quotes Quirk in February 1924 Photoplay, February 17, 1924 88. De Forest, commenting on press account, 1924, Seaver Center 89. Waddell letter to case, February 27, 1924, Case Papers 90. De Forest letter to Case, February 28, 1924, Case Papers 91. ibid. 92. Hugo Riesenfeld letter to Waddell, February 13, 1924, Case papers 93. De Forest letter to Case March 4, 1924, Case Papers 94. De Forest letter to Case, March 3, 1924, Case Papers 95. Waddell letter to Case, April 7, 1924, Case Papers 96. Waddell latter to Case, March 18, 1924, Case Papers 97. De Forest letter to Case, April 11, 1924, Case Papers 98. De Forest latter to Case, April 30, 1924, Case Papers 99. Case letter to de Forest, May 7, 1924, Case Papers 100. Case letter to de Forest, May 19, 1924, Case Papers 101. In his research the author photographed over 800 documents and photographs at the Case Research Laboratory. Each of these was about some part of the invention of sound-on-film collaboration between de Forest and Case. There are schematic diagrams, notes, and the progression in these writings from the curious in 1920 to the hopeful in 1923 to the angry in 1927 is reflected in the collection saved by Theodore Case. This and the de Forest diaries are the best primary evidence we have of de Forest and Case as individuals and scientists as they were engaged and interacted in the development of the talkies. It should be noted that in the early biographies of de Forest and in the collections of papers that de Forest kept that are now in San Jose and Los Angeles, he has not either mentioned or saved any copies of the hundreds of letters that he sent to Case or their answers. He has “lost” for posterity part of an entire decade 102. De Forest letter to Case, June 4, 1924, Case Papers 103. De Forest letter to Case, June 11, 1924, Case Papers 104. ibid. 105. Case letter to de Forest, May 15, 1924, Case Papers 106. See many of the de Forest Phonofilm patents in the Appendix 107. Case letter to Waddell, June 12, 1924, Case Papers 108. ibid.

458

Lee de Forest

109. De Forest letter to Case, July 2, 1924, Case Papers 110. Case letter to Waddell, June 30, 1924, Case Papers 111. Case letter to Elwell, July 14, 1924, Case Papers 112. Case letter to de Forest, July 8, 1924, Case Papers 113. De Forest letter to case, July 11, 1924, Case Papers 114. De Forest letter to Case, July 7, 1924, Case Papers 115. ibid. 116. De Forest letter to Case, July 17, 1924, Case Papers 117. Case letter to de Forest, July 18, 1924, Case Papers 118. Case letter to de Forest, July 21, 1924, Case Papers 119. Case letter to de Forest, July 23, 1924, Case Papers 120. De Forest letter to Case, July 24, 1924, Case Papers 121. De Forest letter to Case, July 26, 1924, Case Papers 122. De Forest diary, August 15, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 123. De Forest letter to Case, August 14, 1924, Case Papers 124. De Forest letter to Case, August 15, 1924, Case Papers 125. De Forest diary, August 31, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 126. Coolidge as vice-president originally took office in August, 1923 following the death of Warren Harding. He was re-elected in 1924. Source: whitehouse.gov 127. De Forest diary, June 29, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 128. FOR, p 393 129. De Forest letter to Case, August 15, 1924, Case Papers 130. Case letter to de Forest, August 21, 1924, Case Papers 131. Case letter to de Forest, August 28, 1924, Case papers 132. Case bookkeeper Eldred letter to de Forest company, Aug 28, 1924, Case Papers 133. De Forest letter to Case, August 28, 1924, Case Papers 134. Talladega Evening Post, December 16, 1922 135. Letter from Franklin Institute, September 22, 1922, Seaver Center 136. New York Evening Journal, Dec 12, 1923 137. De Forest introductory notes, tribute to Edison luncheon, Feb 1924, de Forest collection, Seaver Center 138. Signed Edison letter to de Forest, Feb 20, 1924, Seaver Center 139. De Forest diary, March 30, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 140. De Forest diary, October, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 141. De Forest diary, February 19, 1925, Perham de Forest papers 142. De Forest diary, December 25 1925, Perham de Forest papers 143. Radio Digest Illustrated, November 25, 1922 144. Letter to de Forest company stockholders, December 1922, Seaver Center

End Notes

459

145. Boston Globe, May, 1923 146. New York Times, March 21, 1924 147. ibid. 148. De Forest diary, April 12, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 149. New York City News, May 11, 1924 150. Court document quoted in he Chicago Post, May 15, 1924, Seaver Center 151. Lee de Forest, SMPE Transactions, No 20, September 1924 152. ibid. 153. ibid. 154. De Forest diary, March 1924, Perham de Forest papers 155. New York Sun, June 23, 1923 156. “The First Sound of Movies” is a 2003 documentary from Inkwell Productions. It is a two-DVD set, one a series of interviews with the late Maurice Zouray and the de Forest Phonofilm story, minus Case, as Zouary told in his biography of de Forest. The second DVD was a series of restored Phonofilms, but Zouary replaced the “de ForestCase” titles with those having de Forest name only The real importance of Maurice Zouary was his donation of the Phonofilm collection to the Library of Congress, some of which he had restored. In 1969 the Library staged a public showing of several Phonofilms, a so-called 50th anniversary (1919-1969) of the de Forest invention. This was part of the annual New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center. According to Zouary associate Ray Pointer, the Phonofilms were never copyrighted, so as originals in the Library collection they remain in public domain. There was an attempt in 2003 by Zouary and Pointer to sell their documentary on de Forest and Phonofilm called the “First Sound of Movies,” but it received very little public exposure. Archivist Sam Kula of the American Film Institute, the AFI, was asked by Zouary in 1969 to appraise the de Forest collection and determine its fair market value, but the estimate was not included in the small Zouary file available to the author furnished courtesy of Stan Rubenstein, President, Radio Club of America. In his book Zouary concluded, “If we measured DeForest in terms of the money he accumulated and left as his worldly goods upon his death in 1961, then he could rightly be called a failure. His widow, Marie DeForest received an estate of just $1,200 and for the subsequent years until her death, she lived in abject poverty.” (Maurice Zouary, DeForest: Father of the Electronic Revolution, 1995, Zouary as publisher) In 2010 this author contacted Mr Zouary, then 89 years old, in an attempt to interview him and look at his papers. His wife answered the

460

Lee de Forest

phone and said, “Oh, we just took him to the emergency room – he is not going to make it.” He didn’t. Surely a missed opportunity, but in the end it can be concluded that in his zeal as a de Forest apologist Mr. Zouary lacked the scholar’s perspective. Just a few hours from his home were the missing pieces of the Phonofilm story, another collection of original de Forest materials in the Case Museum in Auburn 157. De Forest diary, March 1924, Perham de Forest papers 158. New York Times, Apr 20, 1924 159. Providence RI News, April 6, 1924 160. De Forest diary, June 1924, Perham de Forest papers 161. De Forest diary, June 29, 1924, Perham de Forest papers 162. ibid. 163. Charles Ross Taggart, interview in the Vermonter, Vol 32, no. 6, Nov 1927

Chapter 8 Phonofilm, the Rejection 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

De Forest diary, May 24, 1926, Perham de Forest papers Case telegram to de Forest, Sep 2, 1924, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, Sep 16, 1924, Case Papers ibid. Case notes, a single undated scrap of paper, probably late 1924, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Sep 20, 1924, Case Papers Case letter to Waddell, Oct 16, 1924, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Oct 18, 1924, Case Papers Case book keeper Eldred letter to de Forest, Oct 24, 1924, Case Papers Waddell Letter to Eldred of case company, Oct 27, 1924, Case Papers Case letter to De Forest, Oct 29, 1924, Case Papers ibid. Case friend and advisor Osborne telegram to Case, Nov 10, 1924, Case Papers Case letter to de Forest, Nov 10, 1924, Case Papers De Forest letter to Case, Nov 12, Case Papers De Forest diary, Dec, 1924, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. New York City Financial News, Dec 31 1924 De Forest letter to Case, Mar 5, 1925, Case Papers ibid. ibid. De Forest letter to Case, May 22, 1925, Case Papers

End Notes

461

24. Case letter to de Forest, May 23, 1925, Case Papers 25. Boston Transcript, Apr 22 1925 26. Stephanie Przybylek, Breaking the Silence on Film, Cayuga Museum, 1999, p 82 27. Case letter to de Forest, Sep 25, 1925, Case Papers 28. De Forest letter to Case, Oct 25, 1925, Case Papers 29. De Forest attorney Sam Darby letter to de Forest, Nov 16, 1925, Case Papers 30. Case letter to de Forest, Nov 20, 1925, Case Papers 31. De Forest letter to Case, Nov 21, 1925, Case Papers 32. ibid. 33. ibid. 34. Case Lab employee Eldred letter to de Forest company, Dec 7, 1925, Case Papers 35. From a de Forest speech on Phonofilm in late 1925, Perham de Forest papers 36. ibid. 37. De Forest diary, Sep 27, 1925, Perham de Forest papers 38. De Forest diary, Oct 15, 1925, Perham de Forest papers 39. De Forest diary, Sep 28, 1925, Perham de Forest papers 40. De Forest diary, Dec 24, 1925, Perham de Forest papers 41. De Forest diary, Dec 1925, Perham de Forest papers 42. ibid. 43. De Forest diary, Feb 19, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 44. De Forest diary, Mar 4, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 45. ibid. 46. De Forest diary, July 25, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 47. ibid. 48. ibid. 49. De Forest letter to Phonofilm shareholders, Aug 26, 1926, de Forest papers, HSJ 49b. ibid. 50. DVD restoration, “The Jazz Singer” with “The Coming of Sound” documentary and disc of Vitaphone shorts, Warner Brothers, 2008 51. The Kol Nidre is a speech given in the synagogue before each evening of Yom Kippur 52. DVD restoration, “The Jazz Singer” with “The Coming of Sound” documentary and disc of Vitaphone shorts, Warner Brothers, 2008 53. De Forest diary, Mar 20, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 54. De Forest diary, April 15, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 55. ibid.

462 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Lee de Forest

De Forest diary, May 1, 1926, Perham de Forest papers ibid. De Forest diary, May 24, 1926, Perham de Forest papers New York Times, Aug 5, 1926 ibid. Case attorney Livingston Gifford letter on patents, Feb 16, 1926, Case Papers ibid. ibid. De Forest attorney Sam Darby letter to William Fox, May 14, 1926, Case Papers ibid. Fox attorney Courtland Smith letter to Case, May 17, 1926, Case papers Eldred letter to Fox attorneys, May 20, 1926, case papers Case-Fox agreement, July 23, 1926, Case Papers ibid. New York Times, Aug 5, 1926 It is estimated that this could equal $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 in today’s dollars Letter to Phonofilm shareholders, Oct 11, 1926, Perham de Forest papers De Forest diary, Oct 7, 1926, Perham de Forest papers Notes, meeting on talking motion pictures, Oct 14, 1926, Case Papers ibid. ibid. Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and his Talking Pictures, 1928, NY, Grossett and Dunlap ibid. ibid. Lee de Forest, “Recent Developments in the Phonofilm,” SMPE Transactions, Vol X, No. 27, October 1926 ibid. ibid. P. M. Rainey, “Some Technical Aspects of the Vitaphone,” SMPE Transactions, Vol III, No. 30, April, 1927 Earl Sponable, “Some Technical Aspects of the Movietone,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XI, No. 31, Sept, 1927 ibid. Terry Ramsaye, “Early History of Sound Pictures,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928

End Notes

463

87. ibid. 88. ibid. 89. William A. Johnston, “The Public and Sound Pictures,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928 90. ibid. 91. ibid. 92. ibid. 93. ibid. 94. ibid. 95. ibid. 96. Mordaunt Hall, “The Reaction of the Public to Motion Pictures with Sound,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928 97. ibid. 98. ibid. 99. ibid. 100. H. B. Franklin, “The Entertainment Value of the Sound Movie,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928 101. ibid. 102. Frank Woods, The Sound Picture Situation in Hollywood,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928 103. Warren Nolan, “Talking Pictures and the Public,” SMPE Transactions, Vol XII, No. 35, Sept 1928 104. Lester Cowan, editor, Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, McGrawHill, 1931, New York, pg v 105. ibid., pg vii 106. HG Knox, Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, McGraw-Hill, 1931, New York, p 6 107. ibid., p 7 108. ibid., p 6 109. ibid., p 12 110. Film, “Mysterious Island,” 1929, TCM cable channel 111. Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and of Movie Culture, Little. Brown and Company, NY, 2003, p 267 112. William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998, p 335 113. ibid. 114. For the story of the conversion from silent to sound, written while it was happening, see: Arthur Edwin Krows, The Talkies, Holt and Company, New York, 1932 115. Arthur Edwin Krows, The Talkies, Holt and Company, New York, 1932

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116. Arthur Edwin Krows, Journal of the SMPE, vol 16, no. 4, April 1931 117. New York Evening Post, March 14, 1929 118. ibid. 119. New York Times, June 19, 1927 120. ibid. 121. De Forest diary, June 20, 1927, Perham de Forest papers

Chapter 9 Phonofilm, the Lawyers 1. De Forest writes about wife Marie in his Diary, August 30, 1931, Perham de Forest papers 2. De Forest letter re: Fox-Case patent infringement suit, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 3. ibid. 4. Case statement, re: suit by de Forest, Aug 6, 1926, Case Papers 5. Case attorney analysis of Reis slit patent held by de Forest, Oct 26, 1926, Case Papers 6. ibid. 7. Analysis by Fox-Case attorney John Hogan in de Forest v. Case, Aug 8, 1929, Case papers 8. ibid. 9. E.I. Sponable, “A Brief History of Sound Recording Including Details in the Development of the Fox Case System,” 1930, Case papers 10. ibid. 11. ibid. 12. ibid. 13. From the two-volume de Forest court exhibit for his suit, de Forest Phonofilm Corporation v. Fox Case Corporation, 1929, a copy of which is in the Case Papers 14. ibid. 15. Stephanie Przybylek, Breaking the Silence on Film, Cayuga Museum, 1999, p 39 16. The estimate is that in today’s dollars the amount would be close to six million dollars 17. FOR, p 401 18. Untitled news report, 1928, Perham de Forest papers 19. ibid. 20. Haverhill Gazette, MA, July 31, 1928 21. ibid. 22. ibid. 23. De Forest letter to editor of Film Daily, July 5, 1928, Perham de Forest papers

End Notes

465

24. ibid. 25. Stephanie Przybylek, Breaking the Silence on Film, Cayuga Museum, 1999, p 112 26. ibid., p 120 27. New York Times, Nov 12, 1930 28. ibid. 29. See Chapter 6 for a complete explanation of de Forest’s 1918 notes on his sound-on-film process, including a photo of the actual notes 30. U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, 1930, from the Perham de Forest papers 31. ibid. 32. ibid. 33. ibid. 34. ibid. 35. ibid. 36. The focused light for writing sound on film passes through a very small slit so that the sound track is written on just the small portion of the film next to the picture. The smaller the slit the more precise the sound. The slit was used first in the Lauste and Ries experiments, and de Forest bought permission to use the slit from Ries. He bought the patent. An optical slit would have a small lens through which the sound is focused, the mechanical one would not 37. U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, 1930, from the Perham de Forest papers 38. Patent court, de Forest v. Freeman Owens, 1930, de Forest papers, HSJ 39. ibid. 40. ibid. 41. ibid. 42. ibid. 43. ibid. 44. ibid. 45. De Forest letter to Los Angeles Times, 1932, de Forest papers, HSJ 46. ibid. 47. ibid. 48. San Jose Mercury News, Sep 2, 2010 49. San Jose Mercury News, Aug 28, 2010 50. Letter to Gifford, 1928, de Forest papers, HSJ 51. ibid. 52. De Forest speech to theater owners, 1929, draft with corrections, de Forest papers, HSJ 53. ibid.

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54. Montage of news stories about de Forest radio, de Forest scrapbook, Perham de Forest papers 55. Darby note to de Forest, Perham de Forest papers, HSJ 56. De Forest diary, Aug 21, 1926, Perham de Forest papers 57. De Forest diary, Feb 23rd, 1927, Perham de Forest papers 58. De Forest diary, August 1927, Perham de Forest papers 59. De Forest diary, Nov 24, 1927, Perham de Forest papers 60. De Forest diary, Nov 28, 1927, Perham de Forest papers 61. De Forest diary, Apr 25, 1929, Perham de Forest papers 62. De Forest diary, Sep, 1931, Perham de Forest papers 63. De Forest diary, Aug 20th, 1931, Perham de Forest papers 64. De Forest, article in New York Times, 1930, date unreadable, a scrap in the Perham de Forest papers 65. ibid. 66. De Forest diary, Aug 30, 1930, Perham de Forest papers 67. ibid. 68. www.IMDB.com the Internet Movie Database 69. Los Angeles Times, 1927, undated scrap, de Forest papers, HSJ 70. ibid. 71. Los Angeles Times, Oct, 1930 72. De Forest patent 1,802,595, Perham de Forest papers 73. ibid. 74. De Forest patent 1,843,972, Perham de Forest papers 75. De Forest patent 1,929,626, Perham de Forest papers 76. De Forest lab notebook, Dec 28, 1920, in Exhibit, April 9,1930, in Patent Court, United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals 77. De Forest lab notebook, Jan 18, 1921, Exhibit, April 9,1930, in Patent Court, United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals 78. De Forest speech to Lewis Institute, March 19, 1930, Perham de Forest papers 79. Notes on a conversation with David Sarnoff, typed but with a hand written note by de Forest, Perham de Forest papers 80. ibid. 81. Telegram from Darby, Perham de Forest papers 82. De Forest, in a letter to the New York Times, exact date unknown but earlier in 1934, in the Perham de Forest papers 83. Justice Cardozo, US Supreme Court, de Forest v. Armstrong, May 2 & 3, 1934, Perham de Forest papers 84. ibid. 85. ibid. 86. ibid.

End Notes

467

87. 88. 89. 90.

ibid. ibid. ibid. Letter to de Forest from daughter Marilyn, Feb 20, 1936, Perham de Forest papers 91. De Forest letter to McMurdo Silver, January 21, 1938, Perham de Forest papers 92. ibid. 93. ibid. 94. Remarks by DC Jackson, Lewis Institute conferring honorary doctorate upon Lee de Forest, June 23, 1937, Perham de Forest papers 95. September 22, 1939 New York World’s Fair booklet proclaiming “Lee de Forest Day,” Perham de Forest papers 96. ibid. 97. ibid. 98. ibid. 99. De Forest banquet speech, Lee De Forest Day, New York World’s Fair, Sep 22, 1939, Perham de Forest papers 100. ibid. 101. ibid. 102. ibid. 103. ibid. 104. ibid. 105. ibid. 106. ibid. 107. ibid. 108. ibid. 109. Now the Clark Radiana Collection at the Smithsonian History Center 110. De Forest banquet speech, Lee De Forest Day, New York World’s Fair, Sep 22, 1939, Perham de Forest papers

Chapter 10 Lesson and Legacy 1. Lee de Forest in Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett, Chicago, 1950, abbreviated in this book as FOR 2. FM Magazine, March 1944 3. Allen B. DuMont, letter to de Forest, Apr 26, 1944, Perham de Forest papers 4. De Forest letter to DuMont, Apr 28, 1944, Perham de Forest papers 5. Allen DuMont, letter to Senator Wheeler, May 3, 1944, Perham de Forest papers

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Lee de Forest

6. De Forest letter to attorney Sam Darby Jr., April, 1944, Perham de Forest papers 7. This draft letter has been hand corrected by de Forest, letter to FM Magazine, Apr, 1944, Perham de Forest papers 8. ibid. 9. ibid. 10. De Forest attorney Samuel Darby Jr. letter to de Forest, May 6, 1944, Perham de Forest papers 11. ibid. 12. De Forest letter in Scientific American, July 1954, Perham de Forest papers 13. ibid. 14. The author’s work in this area: Mike Adams, “The Device that Defined a Decade,” BEA Feedback, 33:1, Winter 1992 15. Jeanne Hammond, “The Father of FM: The Tragic Story of Major E. H. Armstrong, Yonkers Historical Society, from www.yonkershistory.org 16. Radio play, “The Lee de Forest Story,” NBC Radio series Behind the Mike, Episode 27, aired March 23, 1941 17. See Chapter 4 for the actual details of this trial 18. Radio Play, “The Lee de Forest Story,” NBC Radio series, Behind the Mike, Episode 27, aired March 23, 1941 19. Lee de Forest, live on-air interview, March 1941, NBC radio series, “Behind the Mike,” episode 27, The Lee de Forest Story 20. ibid. 21. Frank E. Butler, “Making Wireless History With De Forest, Radio Broadcast, Dec 1924, p 211–219 22. De Forest, 1945 booklet compilation of Hollywood Reporter articles about the coming of television written in the 1940s, Perham de Forest papers. In this booklet of 20 business, programming and technical articles, be has made some corrections in the margins, as it is assumed he will make these into speeches later on. This 1945 collection would be a good one for university-level study in broadcast history, media effects 23. ibid. 24. ibid. 25. ibid. 26. ibid. 27. ibid. 28. ibid. 29. ibid. 30. ibid. 31. ibid.

End Notes

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

469

ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. The author, who was an “AM Top 40” disc jockey during the early 1960s, was there during this important time of re-invention of radio into a music and headline news service. There exist hundreds of books on the so-called “radio revolution” of the late 1950s through early 1960s, and it is difficult to recommend just one. There is: Rick Sklar, Rocking America, St. Martin’s Press, 1984, New York. Sklar was the founding Program Director of pioneer rock station WABC in New York, and in this book he gives a competent history that includes Alan Freed, Bill Drake and others important to the larger story. There are many more De Forest, booklet compilation of Hollywood Reporter articles, 1945, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. De Forest speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, quoting his letter to the Chicago Tribune, published on Oct 28, 1946, NAB, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. De Forest speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, March 1947, NAB, Perham de Forest papers See Erik Barnouw, The Image Empire, Oxford University Press, New York, 1970, p 196 De Forest speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, March 1947, NAB, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. ibid. De Forest letter to Senator William Knowland, April 12, 1949, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid. De Forest, untitled, undated speech fragment from the 1950s, Perham de Forest papers ibid. ibid.

470 56. 57. 58. 59.

Lee de Forest

ibid. ibid. ibid. Review of Father of Radio, New York Times Book Review, written by Samuel Lubell, Sept 17, 1950, Perham de Forest papers 60. Review of Father of Radio, Los Angeles Times, written by Martin Conville, Sept 17, 1950, Perham de Forest papers 61. ibid. 62. Review of Father of Radio, Chicago Tribune, written by Larry Wolters, Sept 17, 1950, Perham de Forest papers 63. ibid. 64. The present day controversy over RF radiation from cell phones is at least a warning that these waves might cause cancer, and for decades the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, has prohibited radio transmitters from operating close to humans, and licenses them only in locations that are far enough away from people that they are safe 65. De Forest laboratory notes, 1954, Perham de Forest papers 66. A variation of this device has been seen on San Francisco area freeways in the past year. Google has equipped Toyota Prius’s with similar but more complex and reliable devices, but with the same goal of a safer car that takes some responsibility for its safety away from the driver 67. De Forest laboratory notes, 1954, Perham de Forest papers 68. Lee de Forest, “The Problem of Color TV,” Radio-Electronics, 1950, de Forest papers, HSJ 69. De Forest U.S. patent no. 2,743,318 70. A 1949 Ad from De Forest Laboratories, 5106 Wilshire Bl, Los Angeles, CA, Perham de Forest papers 71. Los Angeles Examiner, 1957, month unknown, Perham de Forest papers 72. ibid. 73. Herbert Hoover, speech at de Forest recognition dinner, April 8, 1952, Perham de Forest papers 73b. ibid. 74. ibid. 75. Letter from President Eisenhower to de Forest, March 16, 1956, de Forest papers, HSJ 76. Author phone conversation with the office of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the group in charge of the “Walk of Fame”

End Notes

471

77. The inscription on his statuette, now in the Perham de Forest Collection 78. AMPAS technical committee meeting minutes, Dec 12, 1959, Herrick Library, Beverly Hills 79. H. B. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures, Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929, p 296 80. The major collection of de Forest material is the so-called Perham Foundation de Forest paper collection. Like the de Forest life, the entire history of Perham and the de Forest papers is one of high hopes and low moments, surrounded in myth, controversy and litigation. It is a story with which de Forest would surely have identified. In fact, both the Perham collection of pre-Silicon valley electronics hardware and the de Forest papers were literally saved from uncertain futures several times before finally ending up at History San Jose. See the story of Perham and its influence is in the “Research Notes” section 81. From a 2010 letter from Gordon Greb to author Adams about meeting de Forest in 1959 82. Letter from de Forest to Gordon Greb, February 14, 1959, de Forest papers, HSJ 83. Letter to Linc Cundell, Kelley papers, AWA Museum 84. ibid. 85. Letter to Quincy Brackett, Sep 23, 1916, Kelley papers, AWA Museum 86. An anonymous comment, university film professor 87. Richard von Busack, San Jose Metro, Feb 24, 2010 88. New York Times, July 2, 1961, “Lee de Forest, 87, Radio Pioneer, Dies,” obituary 89. ibid. 90. ibid. 91. Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1961

Bibliography

Autobiography and De Forest Biographies Lee de Forest, Father of Radio, Wilcox and Follett and Company, Chicago, 1950 Georgette Carneal, Conqueror of Space, an Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee de Forest, Horace Liveright, NY, 1930 James A. Hijiya, Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio, Lehigh University Press, London, 1992 Maurice H. Zouary, DeForest, Father of the Electronic Revolution, 1995, no publisher indicated, probably himself Tom Lewis, Empire of the Air, Edward Burlingame Books, NY, 1991

History of Radio Technology, Inventors, and Broadcasting Theo Edison, Telegraphy Self-Taught, Frederick and Drake, Chicago, 1902 Victor H. Laughter, Operator’s Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Handbook, Frederick and Drake, Chicago, 1909 John H. Bryant, Heinrich Hertz, The Beginning of Microwaves, IEEE Press, NY, 1988 Joseph H. Adams, Harper’s Electricity Book for Boys, Harper and Brothers, NY, 1907 George S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and his Work, Garden City Publishing, New York, 1926 William Adams Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius, Blue Ribbon Books, New York, 1934 Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention, John Wiley, New York, 1998 Hugh G.J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio, Princeton, University Press, 1985 Nobel Lectures in Physics 1901–1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 473

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Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987 Gerald F. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Sams, 1977 Gordon Greb and Mike Adams, Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 2003, McFarland, NC Gleason L. Archer, History of Radio to 1926, New York: American Historical Society, Inc., 1938 Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, Oxford University, 1966 Kendall and Koehler, Radio Simplified, 1923, John Winston Co, NY Marvin R. Bensman, The Beginning of Broadcast Regulation in the Twentieth Century, McFarland & Co, NC, 2000 Clifford J. Doerksen, American Babble, Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2005 Ernst Ruhmer, Wireless Telephony, Crosby, Lockwood and Son, London, 1908 Rick Sklar, Rocking America, St. Martin’s Press, 1984, New York Erik Barnouw, The Image Empire, Oxford University Press, New York, 1970 Clinton de Soto, Two Hundred Meters and Down, American Radio Relay League, 1936

History of Film and Film Technology Raymond Fielding, Technology History of Motion Pictures and Television, University of California Press, 1974 Alexander Walker, The Shattered Silents, How the Talkies Came to Stay, William Morrow Co., New York, 1979 Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926–1931, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1999 John P. Schaeffer,An Ansel Adams Guide to Basic Techniques of Photography, Little, Brown Co., Boston, 1992 Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress, Silent Movies, the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movies Culture, Little Brown and Co., NY, 2003 William K. Everson, American Silent Film, Da Capo Press, NY, 1998 Alex Ben Block editor, George Lucas’s Blockbusting, Harper-Collins, NY, 2010 Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By, Ballantine Books, 1968 Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound, Columbia University Press, NY, 2004 Harry M. Geduld, The Birth of the Talkies: from Edison to Jolsen, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1975 Stephanie Przybylek, Breaking the Silence on Film, The Cayuga Museum of History, 1999

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Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990 Lester Cowan, editor, Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, McGraw-Hill, 1931, New York HG Knox, Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, McGraw-Hill, 1931, New York Arthur Edwin Krows, The Talkies, Holt and Company, New York, 1932 H. B. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures, Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929

Juvenile Fiction Related to Wireless, Radio and Film Christopher Sterling, “Children’s Books Devoted to or Emphasizing Telegraph, Telephone, Wireless, Radio or Television, 1879–1990,” sixth edition, 2009, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and His Wireless Message, Grosset and Dunlap, 1911 Victor Appleton, The Moving Picture Boys, Grossett and Dunlap, NY, Vol 1, 1913 Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera, Grosset & Dunlap, 1912 Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone, Grosset & Dunlap, 1914 Leslie McFarlane, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, Methuen, 1976 Allen Chapman, The Radio Boys at the Sending Station, Grosset and Dunlap, 1922 Margaret Penrose, The Radio Girls on the Program, Cupples and Leon, NY, 1922 Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and his Talking Pictures, 1928, NY, Grossett and Dunlap

Films and DVDs “The Biography of the Motion Picture Camera,” Les Films du Compas, French, 1948 “Treasures” and “More Treasures from the American Film Archives 1894– 1931,” National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004, San Francisco “Early Edison Films” collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York Birth of a Nation, DW Griffith, 1915, DVD

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“Radio Collector,” 1985, PBS series, Mike Adams, Creator “Broadcasting’s Forgotten Father: The Charles Herrold Story,” were aired nationally on PBS, Mike Adams, Creator “The First Sound of Movies,” 2003 documentary, Inkwell Productions, Maurice Zouary and Ray Pointer “The Jazz Singer” with “The Coming of Sound” documentary and disc of Vitaphone shorts, Warner Brothers, restored for DVD 2008 “The End of an Era,” television documentary, Part 1, written by historian Kevin Brownlow, Thames Television, 1980 “Hollywood, A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Part 2, End of an Era,” written by Kevin Brownlow, Thames Video/HBO, 1980

Other, Internet, Etc Michael Adams, Single Camera Video, the Creative Challenge, Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers, 1992 The Internet Movie Database: www.IMDB.com “The Father of FM: The Tragic Story of Major E. H. Armstrong,” Yonkers Historical Society, from www.yonkershistory.org Radio Play, “The Lee de Forest Story,” NBC Radio series, Behind the Mike, Episode 27, aired March 23, 1941 Author’s site on de Forest: www.leedeforest.org Talladega College today: www.talladega.edu Google Patents: http://www.google.com/patents Author’s research into early radio: www.charlesherrold.org

Archives and Acknowledgements

Most of the primary sources used in this work were housed in three locations, the Perham de Forest papers at History San Jose, The Case Research Laboratory at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn New York, and the Seaver Center for Western History at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I first became aware of the de Forest papers in 1988, when as a new San Jose State University assistant professor I was asked to join the Board of Directors of the Perham Foundation Electronics Museum, then located on the campus of Foothill College near Stanford University. It was there that I was introduced to the large collection given to the Foundation by Marie de Forest. In this collection are his lab notes, speeches, press clippings, patents, diaries, book drafts and manuscripts, some Audions, his Oscar, and later inventions. Like de Forest’s life itself, the entire history of the Perham Foundation and de Forest papers is one of high hopes and low moments, surrounded in myth, controversy, and litigation. When the College needed space Perham was evicted from the museum building. The collection was saved from an unknown future, thanks to the skill of Perham attorney and technology historian Bart Lee, who successfully argued that the Foothill College District had an earlier contractual obligation to ensure the protection of the Perham de Forest collection. The judge awarded the foundation a significant sum of money to be used to house and protect the collection. The collection eventually went to History San Jose, where it remains safe today. Of major importance to the de Forest Phonofilm story is the Case Research Laboratory and papers preserved at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn, New York. Included is the 1920–1926 correspondence between de Forest and Case, the Fox–Case contracts, and the de Forest v. Case trial papers and legal research. This archive proved to be the most compelling collection of primary documents related to Phonofilm and the variable density sound-on-film invention. Another collection consisting of a large de Forest scrapbook is found in the Seaver Center at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. In 1930, de Forest gave press clippings, photographs, and some letters, all dated between 1920 and 1930 to the 477

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museum. This scrapbook – in format, cover design, and size is an exact match to those in the Perham collection, but this one book is the missing link of the 1920s, the Phonofilm years. Many writers have added to our understanding of the de Forest story. Two early biographers knew and interviewed de Forest in the 1920s. The first was written by William Arvin and serialized in Radio News beginning in October, 1924 with the introduction: “Biography recorded by W. B. Arvin of Radio News, under the personal direction of Dr. de Forest.” In 1930, Georgette Carneal wrote Conqueror of Space, the first book on de Forest, saying: “For information contained in this biography, the author is chiefly indebted to Dr. de Forest, whose accounts of the evolution of his own inventions, and whose history of his varied patents, supplemented by a complete written record in the form of diaries and notebooks kept from his early boyhood, form the bulk of this story of his life and achievements.” Hers was subtitled “an Authorized Biography of the Life and Work of Lee De Forest.” Both of these early authorized and supervised attempts were laudatory and non-controversial. They wrote what de Forest wanted. There are also contemporary writers, most still living, who benefitted from what is now the Perham de Forest Collection. Prior to giving the collection to Perham, in 1970 Mrs. de Forest met with and shared the collection with Maurice Zouary, a film industry technical professional who finally in 1995 published his de Forest biography, Father of the Electronic Revolution. The real importance of Zouary was that he collected and documented 200,000 feet of de Forest Phonofilms, and donated them to the Library of Congress in the 1960s. In a letter from Marie de Forest to Zouary she writes, “Congratulations and sincere appreciation for all the fine work you are doing for Dr. Lee de Forest – at long last where credit is overdue.” Recent biographies are less than laudatory, as researchers and writers began to chip away at the image that de Forest had so carefully managed. These newer biographies are academic books, and mostly, they attempt to bring perspective to the de Forest story. One of the best of the current biographies is by Tom Lewis, Empire of the Air: The Men who Made Radio, 1991, also made into a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. In 1992, James Hijiya published another well-researched book, Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio, one based on his research into the larger de Forest family. Said Hijiya: “This book is not so much an analysis of de Forest’s contribution to technology as it is a chronology of his spiritual quest.” The Hijiya book remains this author’s favorite, well-researched, academically-credible, compelling reading. In addition to the collections of primary source documents, I have read books and articles about the radio and film technology inventors of the de Forest era. I have looked at the connection between radio and film technology, and de Forest’s role in the creation of the electronic mass media audience.

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I have read most of the newspaper accounts of the de Forest story as it was unfolding, the so-called “first draft” of history. I have read the articles de Forest himself wrote for scientific magazines and journals. I have read patent infringement court cases. To complement the adult press, I added into some of the chapters a look at what the young people of the times were reading, what they believed from the juvenile fiction stories under the general titles of, “Wireless Boys,” “Motion Picture Boys and Girls,” “Radio Boys and Girls” and the “Tom Swift” series. Written between 1910 and the late 1920s, these are science fantasy for the young, the “what if?” of inventing, a forward look at the possibilities of the film, the radio and the television if they could someday somehow work as described in these stories. These are the books that must have influenced both young men and women to become inventors and scientists. Because de Forest invented for the movies I also watched hundreds of silent films, beginning with the Edison Company and ending in 1930 with the so-called “transition” films, those made silent but modified for release by the addition of some synchronized sound. There are many new collections of restored silent pictures, from the Museum of Modern Art, from the Treasures and More Treasures from the American Film Archives series, and countless other re-mastered classics, including those weekly on the Turner Classic Movie cable channel. I have looked at these films paying particular attention to the evolution of the film language, from the single long shot to the close up, from the recording of a single event to an edited narrative story, from the 30 second experiment to the full feature. It is through these films that as a researcher and writer I am able to connect the science and culture of the time to the audience. By watching these films, I get a visual glimpse into dress, architecture, travel and transportation, manners, family, work and leisure, tools and technology. In these films I can see class distinctions defining relationships and responses to everyday situations as de Forest must have experienced it.

Acknowledgements and Credits At San Jose State University, Reference Librarian Paul Kauppila helped me countless times with the literature and film search. Based on his very thorough early search, I was led in new and productive directions for a more complete telling of the story. For my ongoing research with the de Forest papers at History San Jose, I would like to thank Director Alida Bray, Melissa Johnson, Sarah Puckitt and especially Archivist Jim Reed who have kindly given me full access to the Perham de Forest collection. Access to the second important source, the Case Research Laboratory of the Cayuga Museum, was provided by Eileen McHugh and Lauren Chyle. Beth Werling

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and Cathy McNassor at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and John Cahoon of the Seaver Center for Western History Research have added to my ongoing search for primary source materials into the early development of film technology. Thanks to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the SMPTE, and June Marie Sobrito and Director Barbara Lange, for their research assistance into the early days of this motion picture technical support organization. It was through their journal that I was able to learn what the Hollywood professional–technical community was being told about the evolving art and technology of the sound movie. Thanks to Libby Wertin and Kristine Krueger of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, AMPAS, archives and the Margaret Herrick Library for details on the de Forest Oscar. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce looked into their records for information on the de Forest star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Film producer Ray Pointer shared with me the largest collection of restored de Forest Phonofilms from the Maurice Zouary archive at the Library of Congress. The Antique Wireless Association, AWA, in Rochester, New York has some original de Forest materials in the Bruce Kelley Collection and for that help, I thank Michael Csontos. Other de Forest information was provided to me by Joe Knight, Lewis Bodkin, Gary Burrell, and Adam Boyce. Access to some of the papers of the late Maurice Zouary was provided by Stan Rubenstein, President, Radio Club of America. Raymond Fielding of the University of Southern California, who “wrote the book” on the transition to sound films, gave me much advice and recommended further exploration. For my earlier research work in radio history, I returned to some of the de Forest story I had collected at the Clark Radiana collection of the Smithsonian History Center. Paul Bourbin furnished his complete collection of radio periodicals, plus his early wireless and phonograph instruments used in some of the photographs. Historian and inventor Stewart Oliver allowed me full access to photograph his collection of priceless Audions and transmitters and receivers made by the de Forest companies. The California Historical Radio Society Jim Maxwell Library in Berkeley gave me unlimited access to early wireless and radio technology books and periodicals, and I thank Society President Steve Kushman for his guidance. Thanks to Ioan Allen, Bill Wray, and Scott Robinson of Dolby labs, and thanks to fellow historian Gordon Greb who is the only living person I know who met and interviewed Lee de Forest. Thanks to historian Donna Halper, and ongoing thanks to Christopher Sterling of George Washington University, for his wise advice and his support of my work. Finally I want to thank my readers, reviewers, editors, and others who have helped me fashion my research into a book that attempts to put into a greater perspective, the life and career of one person and his influence on

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modern entertainment. Dr. John Staples, a physicist and electronics historian at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, always “the smartest guy in the room,” read the manuscript and offered excellent comments. Historian and attorney Bart Lee also reviewed the work and did point me in some new directions and conclusions, and for his wise counsel I tasked him to write the Foreword to the book. Dr. Noah Arceneaux, a communications professor at San Diego State University, did a very rigorous review of my research methodology and offered many good technical suggestions. Professor of screenwriting and film producer Barnaby Dallas of San Jose State University read the manuscript as he would a screenplay, to answer these questions: Is it interesting? Is it a good story? Are the characters believable? My editors at Springer Press were always there to encourage and answer any questions I had about the production process. First and most important, Christopher Coughlin, who was my first contact, first in the proposal process, then acquisition, and then production. I also want to thank Springer Assistant Editor Ho Ying Fan for his help in the production of the book. And of course I want to thank and dedicate this to my wife Barbara, who has seen me disappear into the “writing room” more than once over the years.

Radio, Television, and Film Your author’s career has been a shadow of that of de Forest in that we worked in similar fields and I benefitted indirectly from his work. I began in radio as a disc jockey during the “golden age” of AM radio, the 1960s. De forest preceded me by 50 years as he played records to test and demonstrate his nascent radiotelephone technology. I worked for a filmmaker in the 1970s, mostly as an editor of educational films. De Forest would have been proud that I used film for educational purposes. I also created several documentaries for PBS television, so when I became a professor of radio, television and film, I was passing along to my students what de Forest and many others had created and developed, the science and art of the electronic mass media. I also benefitted from my graduate school experience in film production and scholarship at Ohio State University, where Chair Bob Wagner and Professor Clay Lowe instilled in me a solid history of both film art and technology. When I graduated, I worked in Los Angeles as an apprentice to documentary filmmaker Michael Hagopian. It was from this Harvard Ph.D. and filmmaker that I learned how to make films, how to make the scripts accurate, how to make documentaries of integrity. I have tried to apply the process of research, writing, and editing used for film directly to this book.

Appendix Notes The following documents and patents are included to show a broader perspective on Lee de Forest, the scientist and inventor. His hand-written university and laboratory notes are from the dozens of notebooks and thousands of scraps of paper he saved, most of which are now in the Perham De Forest Collection at History San Jose. Two examples from class notebooks saved from his undergraduate and Ph.D. studies at Yale. His curriculum was Physics, Electricity, and Math, all the known information prior to 1900. (This caption applies to the next 2 images, the ones on pages 484 and 485).

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Appendix Notes

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Four pages from de Forest’s doctoral thesis signed April 29, 1899. His major work in this area was a series of laboratory experiments, and the written thesis contained the results of the experiments. His work was titled: “Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires.” (This caption should start on page 486 and it goes with the 4 pages of the thesis, shown on pages 486, 487, 488, 489).

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Appendix Notes

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Appendix Notes

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A page from the de Forest inventing and wireless business. This is an accounting of the parts needed for invention and their costs. (This caption goes with the image on page 490).

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De Forest was influenced by the work of other inventors. This 1886 Bell patent for recording sound using light was one of several pre-1900 ideas that de Forest and others learned from and improved upon for successful sound motion pictures. (This caption goes with the image on page 491).

Appendix Notes

491

Pages from de Forest’s notebooks, 1914 and 1915: A radiotelephone transmitter with a “gas” microphone and a schematic showing how the “singing Audion” is used as a transmitter of radio waves. (This caption goes with the two images on page 492 and 493).

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Appendix Notes

493

A de Forest patent for generating electronic music, submitted in 1915 but not granted until 1925. (This caption goes with the image on page 494).

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A page from one of the hundreds of letters exchanged between de Forest and Theodore Case during their collaboration on Phonofilm, 1921–1925. For a few years the two corresponded weekly, exchanging ideas toward the improvement of their sound-on-film system. (This caption goes with the image on page 495).

Appendix Notes

495

The original de Forest patent for his sound-on-film process, filed in 1919, granted in 1923. The entire patent is shown here, and it is remarkably complete, describing an entire system of variable density recording and playback on film. This patent was based on his 1918 laboratory notes shown in Chap. 6. (This caption goes with the images on pages 496 through 501).

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Appendix Notes

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Appendix Notes

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Appendix Notes

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A page from his diary, August 23, 1920, telling of success in recording sound-on-film using the system outlined in his patent.

Appendix Notes

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A 1924 agreement between de Forest Phonofilm and Famous PlayersLasky for installation of sound movie equipment in their theaters.

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A collection of de Forest sound-on-film patents submitted between 1923 and 1935, and granted between 1927 and 1936. In this collection is a patent for a sound studio, sound recording attachments for silent cameras, loudspeakers, improved photoelectric cells, and methods to silence the camera for sound recording.

Appendix Notes

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Index

A “A” battery, 91 ABC, 396 AC. See Alternating current (AC) Academy Governor’s Ball, 413 Academy Honorary Award to Lee de Forest, 413, 414 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 337, 338, 413 Acoustical recording, 168, 200 Act, 6, 9, 19, 26, 83, 98, 127, 129, 130, 139, 159, 162, 168, 178, 189, 208, 284, 287, 289, 299, 311, 395, 396, 399, 415 Actinic, 223, 244, 266, 270 Act of Congress, 159 Actors, 80, 132, 136, 192, 212, 213, 218, 219, 240, 241, 248, 249, 262, 264, 267, 269, 272, 273, 284, 299, 320, 331, 337, 339–343, 345, 356, 357, 393, 397, 399, 402, 419, 425 Advertisers, 158, 367, 398, 401, 419 Advertising, 4, 14, 67, 102, 112, 157, 170, 187, 189, 192–194, 196, 199, 202, 212, 257, 277, 281, 282, 288, 289, 292, 296, 299, 317, 345, 380, 398, 400, 401, 404 AEO. See Alkaline earth oxide (AEO) Aeo, 239, 246, 256, 284, 287, 289, 306, 308, 309, 311–313, 325, 332 Aeo Photion, 238, 239 Aeriola Grand, 191 Aerograms, 66, 118 Aether, 10 Agnosticism, 31 Aitken, H., 10, 39, 43, 45

Alabama, 21, 22 Albany, 315 Alexanderson Alternator, 160, 169 Alexanderson, E., 99, 201 Alkaline earth oxide (AEO), 239, 276, 279, 280, 314 Allies, 154, 161, 162, 169 Alternating current (AC), 32, 60, 87, 99, 325 AMA. See American Medical Association (AMA) Amalgamated Order of Chair-Pushers, 26 Amateur, 99, 102–105, 115, 150, 159, 161, 170, 171, 173, 174, 178–181, 183, 184, 188, 190, 191, 197, 204, 237, 300, 330, 383 Amateur radio, 115, 160, 173, 176–178, 180, 181, 183, 186, 190, 386, 411 AM Broadcast band, 197 American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, 57, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71 American Institute of Electric Engineers, 101 American Marconi, 67, 169, 170 American Medical Association (AMA), 383 American Mutoscope and Biograph, 77 American Radio Relay League (ARRL), 161, 383 American Talking Pictures, 271 American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 296, 363 American Wireless Telegraph Company, 53

535

536

Index

Amet, E.H., 213–215 AMPAS, 338–340, 413 Amperes, Ampex, 410, 411 Amplification, 6, 94, 145, 149, 155, 168, 200, 204, 206, 217, 289, 297, 298, 349, 352, 382 Amplifier, 11, 47, 86, 96, 145–157, 168, 200, 201, 213, 215, 219, 223, 226, 243, 248, 251, 256, 260, 263, 264, 266, 267, 274, 277, 284–286, 289, 297, 306, 315, 318, 328, 329, 331, 339, 352, 362, 363, 369, 370, 395, 406, 409, 420, 425, 426 Amplifying, 94, 122, 145, 152, 153, 164, 263, 288, 380 Announcer, 158, 167, 192 Anode, 245, 246 Antenna, 11, 34, 44, 54, 56, 90, 94, 99, 106, 112, 114, 150, 159, 161, 162, 165, 171, 183, 185, 198, 220, 393 Antique Wireless Association, 8, 48, 218, 416 Arc lamp, 205, 209, 330, 342, 343, 358 Arc lights, 3, 7, 22, 90, 106, 206, 227, 342 Arc transmitter, 33, 112, 115, 140, 141, 157 Argon, 223, 246 Armat, T., 18 Armour Institute, 49 Armstrong, Major Edwin Howard, 4, 145, 146, 159, 169, 174, 201, 292, 296, 297, 350, 376–379, 380, 382, 385–387, 389–392, 415, 417, 418, 423 Armstrong v. Sarnoff, 392 Army Signal Corps, 61, 277 ARRL. See American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Art, 12, 16, 20, 31, 47, 52, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82–84, 122, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136– 138, 174, 176, 178, 181, 183, 190, 195, 196, 201, 213, 218, 239, 248, 250, 258, 262, 264, 269, 273, 282, 293, 299–301, 325, 329, 333–335, 337–339, 341, 343, 344, 356, 362, 383, 399, 402, 425 Arvin, W., 22, 32, 406 Associated Press, 53, 264 Atheist, 28

Atlanta Constitution, 69 Atlantic, 44 “A Trip to the Moon,” 83 AT&T, 145, 146, 149, 152, 153, 156, 159, 164, 170, 189, 193, 194, 263, 310, 317, 363, 423, 424 Auburn, New York, 229, 230, 244, 279, 284, 285, 332 Audalion, 315 Audience, 1, 47, 98, 125, 167, 203, 253, 314, 355, 389 Audio, 6, 9, 60, 89, 92, 99, 103, 114, 122, 126, 145, 149, 162, 163, 183, 197, 204–206, 217–219, 223, 241, 244, 260, 266, 300, 301, 305, 317, 318, 329, 332, 360, 364, 369, 370, 372, 373, 375, 379, 391, 400, 402, 410, 416, 422, 424, 425 Audion, 59, 85–123, 125, 168, 203, 263, 316, 362, 393 Audion Piano, 111, 154 Audo-Moto-Photo, 213 AWA, 418 B Babcock, Charles, 69 Baldwin receiver, 228 Barium, 352 Barnard College, 120 Barrymore, L., 340 Battery, 7–9, 22, 30, 34, 47, 48, 51, 59, 75, 90–92, 94, 106, 139, 172, 205, 206, 208, 213, 215, 220, 221, 227, 244, 393 “Battleship Potemkin,” 249, 250 “B” battery, 91, 92 BBC, 382, 401, 403, 404 “Behind the Mike,” 393 Bell, A.G., 3, 9, 106, 152, 153, 204–206, 216, 218, 231, 240, 276, 354, 412, 424 Bell and Howell camera, 267, 276, 287–289, 291 Bell Photophone, 105, 216 Belrose, J., 101, 115 Bergen, E., 397 Berliner, E., 6 Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator, 75

Index Binaural Recording, 285 Binns, J., 174 Biograph, 21, 77, 132, 133, 137, 148, 149, 221, 223 Biology, 20 “Birth of a Nation,” 134–137 Bitzer, B., 133 Blatch, N.S., 119, 120, 122 Blimp, 343, 373 Boardman, E., 137 Bolster, H., 309, 312, 316 Boston, 25, 152, 259, 315, 405 Branley Coherer, 37, 43, 47, 48, 64 Brant Rock Massachusetts, 100 Braun, K., 45, 87 British, 44, 45, 110, 154, 169, 216, 278, 356, 391, 404 British Phonofilm Ltd, 278 British Post Office, 43 Broadcaster, 9, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104–115, 157, 193–195, 197, 367, 391, 400, 402, 404, 417 Broadcasting, 4, 34, 84–86, 94, 98–104, 106, 108, 110, 114, 115, 120, 122, 123, 156–159, 162, 165–168, 170, 172–176, 179, 180, 183, 185, 189–193, 196, 198, 201, 202, 204, 274, 275, 290, 294, 303, 367, 376, 382, 383, 385, 386, 393, 395, 402, 404, 416, 418, 420, 421 Broadcast station, 173 Browlow, K., 133 Brown, L., 327 Bulb, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 138, 142, 223, 243, 244, 246, 251, 254, 255, 293, 312, 374, 385, 394, 422 Bullard, A.W., 169 Burlingame, 142, 143 Burlington Vt, 315 Burns, K., 417, 418 Butler, F., 61, 107, 142, 393, 395 C Cahoon, R., 414 California, 13, 83, 84, 101, 123, 125–166, 185, 188, 309, 349, 362, 366, 367, 394, 416

537

California Theater, 164, 165, 185, 187, 227 Camera, 12, 77, 125, 206, 258, 306, 350 Cameraman, 79, 133, 256, 277, 289, 306, 361 Camera obscura, 12 Cameraphone, 211, 212 Canadian Dominion De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, 117 Candlepower, 86 Cantor, E., 256, 258, 320, 414 Capacitor, 10, 32, 34, 154 Capitol Theater, 345, 346 Carbon button, 33, 114 Carbon telephone microphone, 9, 105, 106, 205, 219, 221, 265 Carborundum, 60 Cardozo (Supreme Court Justice), 378, 379, 423 Carneal, G., 20, 31, 406 Caruso, E., 113, 180 Case, 21, 59, 92, 127, 174, 203, 253–256, 305, 349, 398 Case Research Collection, 15 Case Research Laboratory, 230, 231, 268, 273, 276, 280, 307, 314, 332, 342, 344, 351, 357 Case Research Laboratory Papers, Cayuga Museum, 231 Case Research papers, Cayuga Museum, 207, 230, 234 Case, Theodore, 203, 225, 229–231, 241, 243, 251–254, 256, 267, 268, 275, 280, 281, 285–287, 303, 306, 311, 313–315, 324–327, 347, 350, 358, 386 Cathode rays, 87 Cat’s whisker, 198 CBS, 137, 197, 201, 396, 409 Cells, 9, 66, 91, 140, 179, 205, 254, 306, 350, 408 Chain broadcasting, 170 Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting, 101–105, 115, 156, 158 Chauve Souris, 301 Chemistry, 2, 12, 20, 37, 270, 333, 339 Chicago, 26, 46, 49, 51, 56, 63, 125, 180, 199, 288, 375, 380

538

Index

Chicago Tribune, 402 Chicago World’s fair, 26 Christian, 31 Chronophotographic Gun, 13 Cinema, 2, 18, 19, 76, 80, 84, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 166, 203, 206, 243, 250, 263, 298, 303, 398, 424, 425 Citizen audience, 99 Civil War, 21, 131, 134, 135, 249, 383 Clapp, E.D., 275 Clark, G., 98–99, 108–110, 170, 171, 173, 386 Clark Radiana Collection, 100, 170–172 Close up, 5, 79–81, 83, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 135, 221, 225, 245, 249, 259, 330, 399 Code, 4, 7–9, 39, 42, 45, 46, 48, 54, 61, 72, 84, 87, 89, 96, 99, 102, 115, 122, 140, 149, 158, 172, 228, 422 Coherer, 34, 37, 41, 43, 45, 47–49, 51, 52, 54, 58, 60–62, 64, 65, 71, 75, 87, 90, 99, 178 Color television, 390, 402, 408, 409, 421 Columbia, 30, 120, 158, 201 Columbia Graphophone Company, 156, 158 Concert, 2, 21, 103, 110, 154, 174, 179, 185, 189, 190, 194, 202, 277, 366 Condenser, 10, 31, 32, 120, 331 Congregational, 20 Conrad, F., 158, 170, 172 Continuous waves, 99, 105 Coolidge, President Calvin, 289–291, 302, 306, 310, 311, 316, 331, 346 Cornell University, 119 Council Bluffs, Iowa, 20, 412 Court, 42, 96, 137, 169, 204, 296, 325, 349, 389 Cowan, L., 338 Craft, E.B., 248, 277 Credit, 16, 39, 52, 64, 69, 89, 106, 171, 181, 207, 216, 254–256, 279, 281, 282, 284, 288, 289, 291–292, 306–308, 310, 313, 318, 331, 335, 339, 355, 361, 385, 392, 393, 400, 422, 423

Cresson, E., 293 Crookes, Sir Williams, 46 Crystal detector, 60, 69, 89, 188, 197 Crystal set, 158, 168, 191, 197, 198, 274 Cylinder, 4–6, 13, 14, 114, 200, 207, 209, 210, 213–215 D Daguerre, L.J.M., 12 Daguerreotype, 12 Daily Variety, 343, 369 Dallas, Barnaby, 129, 130 Dance, 77, 182–184, 190, 192, 209, 211, 256, 260, 277, 288, 289, 298, 301–303, 367, 370 Daniels, B., 387 Daniels, Secretary of the Navy Josephus, 169 Darby, S. Jr., 142, 143, 150, 220, 221, 223, 227, 238, 312, 313, 325, 326, 361, 364, 377, 391 Darwin, 28 Darwinism, 31 Davis, H.P., 101, 170, 291 DC. See Direct current (DC) de Forest, C., 67, 69 de Forest, E., 321, 323, 419 de Forest “enemies list,” 146 de Forest, H.S., 20, 121 de Forest, L., 37, 58, 70, 108, 112, 144, 156, 240, 241, 252, 260, 272, 274, 275, 279, 281, 282, 284, 294, 297, 301, 327, 351, 361, 362, 369, 407, 412, 414 De Forest, M.M., 236, 367–369, 380, 410 De Forest Phonofilm Corporation, 275, 277, 311 de Forest Phonofilm Corporation v. Fox Case Corporation, 354 De Forest Phonofilm LTD, 276 De Forest Pioneers, 412 De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company, 231, 241, 294 De Forest Radio Telephone Company, 106, 116, 296 De Forest Responder, 52, 233

Index de Forest v. Armstrong, 296, 369, 377, 378, 390, 423 de Forest v. Freeman Owens, 361 De Forest Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company, 115 DeMille, A., 132 DeMille, C.B., 131, 132 de Mille, W., 338 Department of Commerce, 159, 196, 412 Depression, 3, 155, 165, 340, 356, 365, 375, 412 Detroit News, 185, 187 “Device for Amplifying Feeble Electrical Currents,” 94 Dialogue, 83, 127, 129, 130, 135, 256, 269, 298, 301, 317, 318, 320, 331, 335, 337, 340, 343–345, 356 Diaphragm, 4, 5, 54, 114, 150, 163, 195, 209, 215, 229, 248, 265, 279 Dickson, W.K.L., 16, 18, 77–79, 125, 130, 208–212, 216, 423 Dielectric, 32, 64 Diffraction, 11 Direct current (DC), 32, 34, 60, 87, 100, 106, 220, 228, 325, 352 Director, 20, 43, 64, 71, 73, 77, 79–84, 121, 125–130, 132–134, 136, 185, 240, 241, 249, 253, 256, 262, 268, 272, 299, 301, 309, 313, 330–332, 338, 341–343, 399, 402 Disc jockey, 158, 401, 403 Dissertation, 35, 38 Dissolve, 79, 83, 128, 129 Dixon, F.W., 173 Doctorate, 29, 45, 46 Doctor of Divinity, 21 Doctor of Science, 37, 46, 123 Documentary, 18, 24, 77, 126, 127, 129, 132, 133, 136, 217, 227, 250, 299, 417, 418 Dolly, 128, 343, 373 “Don Juan,” 298, 317, 318, 330, 331, 339 Dots and dashes, 4, 7, 8, 42, 47, 75, 84, 121 Double system, 227, 372 Douglas, S., 74, 75, 98, 417

539

Drama, 24, 59, 119, 125, 129, 130, 133, 139, 167, 195, 197, 238, 239, 253, 256, 262, 268, 269, 271–273, 298, 338, 356, 357, 398–401, 407, 412 “Dream Street,” 248, 250 Dublin, Ireland, 65 Duffield, J.W., 75 DuMont, A.B., 364, 390–392 Dunwoody, General H.H.C., 60 E Earphone, 9, 48, 53, 59, 64, 90, 92, 99, 122, 146, 157, 180, 182, 183, 185, 188, 191, 198, 204, 206, 208, 217, 226, 248, 271, 339, 422 Eastman, G., 14, 15, 17, 125, 137, 209 Eastman Kodak, 242 Edison cylinder, 5, 6, 200, 210, 214 Edison effect, 86, 87, 89, 293, 422 Edison, T.A., 1–4, 14, 37, 77, 86, 138, 212, 216, 293, 422 Editing, 79, 81, 83, 128, 129, 131, 133, 135, 250, 258, 299, 320, 330, 372, 424 Eisenhower, D. D., 412 Eisenstein, S., 249 Electrical Congress of St. Louis, 63 Electrical recording, 6, 200, 215, 277, 305, 331, 425 Electrical Research Products Division, 331 Electrical Review, 54 Electrical World, 59 Electric Indicator, 86 Electricity, 2, 3, 10, 22, 23, 27, 29–34, 37, 38, 41, 46, 47, 54, 63, 74, 87, 89, 102, 220, 270, 394, 411 Electrode, 10, 22, 32, 51, 59, 90, 223, 228, 231, 380, 237251 Electro-Importing Company, 102 Electrolytic Anti-Coherer, 52 Electrolytic receiver, 63, 67, 69 Electromagnet, 7, 8, 54, 94, 148 Electromagnetic, 4, 10, 11, 51, 66, 205 Electronic-based media, 39 Electrons, 86, 94, 422

540

Index

Electrostatic, 64, 288, 291 Elwell, C., 140, 276, 278, 281 Emancipation, 21, 80 Empire of the Air, 417, 418 Emulsion, 14, 18, 227, 242, 264–266 Engineer, 16, 39, 48, 70, 87, 101, 119, 120, 125, 145, 146, 153, 170, 208, 219, 253, 256, 264, 268, 270, 277, 329, 333, 334, 338, 339, 342, 364, 375, 379, 380, 396, 411 Engineering, 30, 31, 45, 101, 102, 119, 120, 122, 253, 264, 269, 271, 339, 380, 416 England, 43–46, 54, 153, 154, 216, 221, 246, 315, 391 Engl, J., 218 Entertainment media, 1, 3, 4, 6, 12, 19, 74, 110, 114, 116, 122, 123, 126, 156, 168, 173, 182, 197, 201, 226, 257, 262, 424 Equalize, 372 ERPI, 331, 333, 339 Essanay, 137 Establishing shot, 83, 127, 128, 136 Ether, 10, 104–106, 296, 409 Etheric force, 4 European War, 160 Everson, W., 19, 133 Evolutionism, 28 Exhibitor, 288, 398 Experimentation, 12, 18, 20, 51, 56, 82, 96, 154, 201, 205, 232, 274, 277, 298, 312, 318, 382, 424 F Famous Players-Lasky Co., 286 Farnsworth, P., 274, 382, 423 Farraday, M., 51 Father of Radio, 155, 219, 406, 407 “Father of Radio,” 108, 155, 219, 274, 350, 369, 382–384, 386, 390–412, 420 Feature film, 134, 226, 269, 296, 298, 299, 320, 426 Federal Communications Commission, 197 Federal Radio Commission, 197, 376 Federal Telegraph Company, 140, 141, 278, 316

Feedback, 96, 145, 159, 247, 296, 297, 376–380, 382, 386, 391 Fessenden, R.A., 4, 11, 39, 52, 58–62, 66, 67, 69, 85, 99–102, 104, 105, 108, 110, 114, 115, 181, 201, 415 Filament, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 223, 226, 229, 243, 245, 246, 255, 270, 279, 281, 285, 289, 394, 422 Film Arts Studio, 135 Film Daily, 357 Film industry, 19, 76–84, 79, 125–140, 168, 169, 209, 211, 227, 229, 239, 240, 258, 264, 297, 299, 330, 341, 345, 346, 358, 367, 369, 396, 398–400, 424 Fiske (US Navy Admiral Bradley), 19 Flame, 34, 35, 50, 51, 55, 69, 90, 105, 145, 150, 195, 196, 203, 220, 221, 223, 226–229, 237, 251, 265, 270, 279, 411 Flame microphone, 195, 196, 279 Fleming, J.A., 86–92, 94, 98, 150, 220, 293, 422, 423 Fleming Valve, 45, 60, 90, 91, 94, 150, 151, 159, 293, 422 Flexible film base, 14, 17, 18, 138, 209 FM. See Frequency modulation (FM) FM Magazine, 391 Foothill College Electronics Museum in Los Altos CA, 420 Foothill Museum, 394 Fox-Case, 350–355, 357, 363 Fox, W., 324–327, 332, 333, 336, 344, 351, 358, 386, 424 Frame, 13–15, 78–80, 82, 84, 131, 133, 135, 136, 210, 215, 217, 267, 290, 300, 328, 333, 363, 398 France, 43, 116, 153, 154, 216, 246, 391 Franklin, B., 32 Franklin, H.B., 337 Franklin Institute, 165, 292 Freedmen, 21 Frequency modulation (FM), 60, 390–392, 401 Frequency response, 218, 265, 266 Fritts, C., 205

Index G Galbraith, C., 64 Galena, 89, 198 Galena crystal detector, 89 Gallico, P.W., 258, 259 Galvanometer, 9, 87, 89, 92, 205, 216, 217, 223, 242, 248, 270 Garden City Bank Building, 103 Garis, H., 74 Garside, J., 364 Gas-filled tube, 264–266, 327 Gatekeeper, 386, 415 Gaumont Chronophone, 211 Gaumont, L., 246 General Electric, 99, 169, 191, 277, 280, 328, 339, 424 General Talking Pictures, 356, 358, 362 Germany, 116, 216, 233, 238–240, 242, 245, 246, 256, 292, 358, 373, 382 Gernsback, H., 176–197, 412 Gibbs, J.W., 30 Gifford and Scull, 325 Gish, D., 135, 249 Gish, L., 135, 137, 249 Goldsmith, A., 328 Google Patents, 17, 89 Grant, U.S., 21, 134 Great War, 105, 159, 160 Greb, G., 416 Grid, 94–98, 145, 150, 379, 395, 416, 418, 420, 422 Griffith, D.W., 83, 130, 132–136, 248–250 Grignon, L.D., 414 Grinnell College, 20 Ground, 9, 14, 22, 51, 58, 62, 66, 90, 107, 114, 128, 159, 162, 183, 198, 220, 240, 282, 290, 362, 421 Ground conductivity, 9 H Hall, M., 337 Halper, D., 100 Hal Roach Studios, 369 Hammond, L., 111 Hammond Organ, 111, 154

541

Hand cranked, 139, 211 Harding-Cox, 158, 185 Harding, W., 158, 165, 172, 185, 236 Harvard Law, 230, 254, 307 Hayden and Stone, 309 Hays, W., 240 Headphones, 47, 89, 102, 144, 166, 168, 183, 191, 197, 198, 218, 219, 231, 274, 342 Herrold, C.D., 101–105, 108, 115, 156 Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering, 102 Herrold, S., 158 Hertz, H., 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 30–32, 35, 39, 41, 42 Hg-Neon, 309 High Bridge Election Broadcast, 158 High Bridge, New York, 156, 157, 164, 195 Hijiya, J., 28, 98 History San Jose, 23, 27, 35, 36, 38, 50, 55–57, 61–63, 69, 73, 91, 93, 95, 103, 107, 111, 113, 118, 119, 141, 143, 144, 146–148, 151, 157, 163, 187, 191, 199, 221, 222, 224, 252, 257, 259, 261, 263, 278, 300, 315, 321, 323, 345, 353, 359, 368, 370, 375, 377, 381, 384, 387, 394, 397, 403, 407, 408, 410, 413–415, 420, 426 Hodge, S., 356 Hollywood, 1, 123, 132, 137, 240, 249, 250, 269, 270, 303, 318, 320, 329, 330, 332, 337, 338, 341, 350, 362, 366–370, 374, 381, 387, 389, 396, 397, 399, 401–403, 411–413, 416 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, 412 Hollywood Walk of Fame, 412 Honest Abe, 57, 62 Honorary Oscar, 413, 414 Hoover, H., 412 Horn speaker, 146, 198, 215, 297, 339 Hoxie, 248 Hudson River, 147–149, 302 Hughes, C., 158 Hydrogen, 105, 223, 243, 246 I IMAX, 333 IMDB, 368

542

Index

Incandescence, 86 Incandescent lamp, 90, 94, 142, 223, 228, 233, 264, 265, 270, 293 Inductance, 9, 34, 51, 92, 150, 220, 231 Induction coil, 11, 51, 52, 154 Inductors, 9, 111 Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), 379 Interference, 45, 52, 53, 64, 67, 92, 104, 159, 172, 179, 197, 213, 218, 221, 254, 255, 286, 342, 361, 374, 378, 392 Intermittent motion, 15, 18, 20, 138, 223, 333 International Yacht Races, 53 Internet Movie Database, 368 Intertitles, 79, 81, 82, 130, 131, 134, 249, 250, 269, 317, 318, 320, 335, 337, 340 Inventing American Broadcasting, 418 Invention, 1, 41, 85, 139, 174, 203, 253, 305, 349, 389 Iowa, 2, 20–22, 45, 412 iPod, 2, 274 IRE. See Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) Israel, P., 18, 79 J Jenkins, C.F., 18, 264, 350, 374, 375, 382 Jewitt Radio Company, 296 Johnston, W., 334, 335 Jolson, A., 305, 318, 320, 335, 337, 425 Juvenile fiction, 138, 175 K Kalem, 137 KDKA, 98, 99, 158, 164, 170, 172, 173, 183, 185, 191 Kellum, O., 248 Kilohertz (KHz), 391 Kinetograph, 14, 209 Kinetophone, 208, 212, 271 Kineto-phonograph, 209 Kinetoscope, 14–19, 76, 77, 83, 125, 126, 207–210 Kline Optical, 137 Knowland, Senator William, 405

Kobel, P., 76, 132 Kodak, 14, 242, 362 Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, 19 Krows, A., 343 Ku Klux Klan, 134, 136 Kuntz cell, 232 Kuntz photoelectric cell, 232, 239 L Laboratory, 3, 6, 25, 27, 31, 34, 37, 48–50, 60, 64, 90, 116, 120, 122, 123, 125, 140, 145, 150, 162, 201, 208, 228, 230, 231, 238–240, 243, 245, 251, 253, 267, 268, 270–273, 276, 279–281, 288, 300, 302, 307, 312–314, 328, 332, 338, 342, 344, 351, 355, 357, 373, 376, 381, 384, 393, 395, 407, 408, 424 Laemmle, C., 262 Lake Michigan, 52–53 Lamp, 37, 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 105, 112, 142, 181, 205, 209, 223, 226, 228, 233, 237, 239, 243–246, 251, 264, 265, 270, 272, 279, 280, 285, 287, 289, 293, 325, 343, 350, 352, 355, 358, 394 Language of film, 18, 79, 83, 126–128, 132–134, 258, 259, 301, 399, 424 Lanphier, H., 323 Latham Brothers, 18 Latham loop, 137 Latham, Otway and Gray, 19 Lauste, E., 215–218, 354 Lee, B., 32, 43, 44, 60, 71 Lee de Forest vs. Tri Ergon, 373 Lee, R.E., 134, 240 Legal, 42, 60, 64, 72, 74, 86, 116, 119, 135, 141, 143, 144, 150, 189, 194, 197, 220, 235, 237, 254, 273, 294, 296, 306, 307, 311, 325, 327, 350, 358, 379, 417 Lenses, 12, 18, 233, 237, 287 Lessing, L.P., 392 Lewis Institute, 375, 380 Lewis, T., 98, 418 Lexion, 237 Leyden jar, 10, 11, 32 Library of Congress, 77, 290, 299, 300

Index Light-valve, 216, 217, 248, 270, 369 Lincoln, A., 134 Lindbergh, C., 302, 346, 349 Liquid Barretter, 59 Liquid detector, 48, 50, 59, 60, 90 Literature search, 33, 55 Lodge, O., 34, 42, 54, 56 Loew’s Incorporated, 358 London, 85, 87, 90, 208, 216, 276, 278, 281 London Times, 65 Long shot, 80, 81, 84, 127, 128, 212, 219, 259, 299, 320, 330, 374, 424 Los Angeles, 29, 78, 109, 131–133, 135, 137, 161, 164, 210, 214, 237, 245, 261, 267, 274, 283, 295, 366, 368, 369, 405, 407, 411, 416, 419, 420 Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, 419 Los Angeles Examiner, 185, 411 Los Angeles Times, 239, 362, 368, 369, 383, 407, 412 “Lost Souls,” 249 Loud speaker, 11, 149, 157, 168, 183, 188, 191, 198, 200, 204, 226, 243, 248, 260, 264, 297, 298, 306, 315, 318, 331, 339, 352, 360, 374, 426 Lubin, 137 Lubitsch, E., 250 Luce, T., 323 Lumiere Brothers, 18, 19, 76 Lumiere, L., 18 M Magnavox, 188 Magnetic cone loudspeaker, 331 Magnetic phonograph cutter, 331 Magnets, 22, 54, 75, 99, 111, 416 Marconi, G., 11, 39, 42, 43 Marconi Lizard Point Wireless Station, 32 Marconi Wireless telegraph Company of America, 67 Marey, E. J., 13, 14, 16, 138 Margaret Herrick Library, 413–414

543

Marriage, 86, 117–120, 122, 132, 140, 141, 146, 155, 164, 235, 368, 369, 380, 412 “Mary had a little Lamb,” 6 Massole, J., 218 Maxwell, J. C., 4, 10, 30, 41 Mayo, M., 146, 148, 155, 164, 366, 380 Mazarin, M., 113 McCandless, H., 94 McCarty, F., 140 McGonigle, W.J., 383 McKinnon, J., 323 McQuiston, J.C., 193 Mechanical syntony, 34 Media, 1, 3–6, 12, 19, 39, 74–76, 82–84, 99, 110, 114, 116, 122, 123, 126, 128, 129, 133, 156, 168, 173, 176, 180–182, 184, 192–194, 197, 198, 201, 202, 206, 226, 241, 257, 262, 269, 303, 352, 384, 393, 396–402, 404, 419, 424–426 Medium shot, 80, 127–129, 131, 219 Megahertz (MHz), 390–392 Méliès, G., 83 “Men and Women Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory,” 19 Meneratti, H.J., 109, 110 Mercury, 45, 104, 244, 246 Metropolitan Opera, 112, 114, 115 MGM, 340 Microphone, 9, 11, 33, 34, 99, 105–107, 109–112, 114, 148–150, 158, 168, 182, 185, 191, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 212, 213, 218–221, 226–228, 243, 256, 260, 264, 265, 270, 276, 279, 286, 288–291, 300, 306, 308, 318, 325, 328, 329, 331, 339, 341–343, 352, 373, 374, 393, 395, 398, 409, 416, 426 Mighty Wurlitzer, 203, 248 Mignon, 117, 118 Milwaukee, 48, 49 Minow, N., 404 Mirror galvanometer, 87, 217, 223, 248 Missing voice, 167, 241 Modern Electrics, 115, 176 Modulated light, 9, 106, 204, 206, 218, 231, 237, 246, 265, 270, 354

544

Index

Monaural, 372 Montage, 128, 131, 250, 261, 299, 300 More Treasures from the American Film Archives, 77, 210 Morse Code, 7, 42, 46, 84, 102, 115, 422 Morse, S.F.B., 7 Mosquini, M., 367–369, 412 Motion picture, 1, 74, 98, 131, 167, 206, 253, 310, 351, 396 Motion Picture News, 334 Motion Picture Patents Company, 137, 169 Motors, 22, 75, 131, 206, 296 Movie camera, 16, 211, 227, 236, 237 Movie director, 240 Movietone, 326, 328, 329, 331–333, 336, 347, 349–351 Mt. Hermon Preparatory School, 25 Multiple exposure, 83 Multi-track, 369, 370 Museum of Modern Art, 76, 80 Music, 2, 47, 85, 129, 170, 203, 256, 317, 356, 393 Mutual, 46, 384, 423 Muybridge, E., 13, 14 Myers, E. (Dr.), 149 Myers, S., 149 N NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) NAB. See National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Nalley, E.J., 170 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 135 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), 383, 402, 404 National Education Association, 239 National Film Preservation Foundation, 210 Navy Department, 160 NBC, 197, 328, 384, 393, 396, 397, 409

NEA, 240 Negative, 12, 82, 86, 122, 225, 260, 264, 288–290, 316, 352, 361, 372, 421 Negroes, 21, 22, 292 Nettie, 365, 366 New Amsterdam, 20 New Haven, 27, 28, 32, 285 New York, 19, 53, 85, 125, 174, 204, 253, 306, 349, 393 New York American, 158 New York Attorney General, 311 New York City Board of Works, 120 New York Electrical Society, 256 New York Evening Post, 343 New York Herald, 282, 283 New York News, 258 New York Sunday Mirror, 381 New York Times, 60, 65, 71, 258, 324, 337, 346, 378, 406, 419 New York Tribune, 321 New York World, 114, 119, 279, 383–387 Nickelodeon, 82 19th Century, 1, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20, 33, 37, 39, 122, 206, 352, 355, 424 Nitrate film, 228 Nitrogen, 223, 244 Nobel Prize for Physics, 45 Nolan, W., 338 Nursery Favorites, 212 O Odessa Steps, 250 O’Neil, J., 100 One reeler, 81, 133, 211 Opera, 5, 47, 74, 98, 108, 110–116, 137, 146, 164, 177, 180, 181, 185, 193, 195, 204, 209, 238, 240, 296, 298, 303, 329, 343, 367, 370, 400, 403, 424 Optical effect, 83 Optical printer, 82, 227 Optical projector, 206 Orange Chronicle, 209 Orange New Jersey, 79, 208 “Orphans of the Storm,” 249 Oscar, 413, 414

Index “Oscillation Responsive Device,” 90 Oscillator, 105, 146, 150, 156, 266, 267, 362, 364, 369 Oscillion, 157, 181 Oscilloscope, 87 Owens, F., 277, 361 Owens, H., 256 Oxide-coated, 255 P Pacific, 110, 152, 367 Pacific Wireless, 110 Pallophotophone, 248, 339 Palo Alto, 13, 28, 96, 125, 140–142, 145, 146, 236, 276, 278, 362, 380, 415, 420 Pan, 128, 129, 133 Panama Pacific International Exhibition, 152 Panoptikon, 19 Pantomime, 240, 268, 269, 271, 298, 331, 335, 345, 356, 357, 363 Parker Building, 384, 393, 395 Parmly, George, 143 Patent(s), 3, 43, 86, 137, 168, 204, 254, 306, 350, 390 Patent infringement suit, 59 Patent interference, 64, 92, 159, 213, 218, 221, 374, 392 Patent Office Report, 22 Pathe, 137, 308, 334 Pathe-Freres, 137 Pathe News, 308 Paul Bourbin collection, 5, 177, 184, 186, 196, 319 Penny arcade, 18, 76 Perham, D., 415 Perham Foundation de Forest papers, 23, 27 Persistence of vision, 13, 16, 20 Ph.D., 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 39, 45, 65, 251, 281, 418, 422 Phenakistoscope, 13 Phonautograph, 6 Phonofilm, 41, 106, 149, 176, 203–303, 305–347, 349–387, 399

545

Phonofilm Canada, 307 Phonofilmed, 260, 301, 310, 356 Phonograph, 1, 76, 94, 150, 168, 204, 259, 305, 354, 393 Photion, 237–239, 246, 254–256, 264–266, 277, 313, 316 Photocinemaphone, 216, 217 Photo electric cell, 225, 231, 232, 239, 242, 264, 265, 267, 268, 273, 276, 280, 285, 350, 352, 355, 372, 408 Photograph, 8, 12, 37, 126, 218, 230, 239, 244, 251, 265, 268, 357 Photographic film, 106, 205, 225, 352, 360 Photographophone, 206, 208 Photography, 11, 12, 16, 39, 126, 238, 260, 355 Photophone, 9, 105, 216, 217, 328, 329, 333 Photoplay, 129–131, 239, 256, 282 Physicist, 10, 108, 418 Physics, 2, 12, 20, 25, 27, 34, 38, 41, 45, 47, 102, 107, 270, 333, 339, 360 Piano, 2, 108, 111, 119, 129, 154, 191, 203, 243, 260, 284, 288, 320, 330, 342 Picturephone, 211 Pittsburgh Press, 57 Plate, 4, 12, 14, 47, 86, 87, 89–92, 94, 96, 97, 145, 223, 379, 416, 422 Pointer, R., 299 Poldhu, England, 44 Popov, A., 11 Porter, E.S., 79–83, 132, 136 Positive, 3, 12, 14, 20, 22, 25, 33, 57, 86, 94, 122, 123, 140, 213, 238, 242, 260, 264, 271, 288, 324, 361, 374, 406, 407, 417 Poulsen arc, 54, 103, 104, 140, 141 Poulsen, V., 33, 56, 105, 140 P.P.I.E., 152, 153 Preece, 9, 106, 143 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 90 Professor, 13, 27, 30, 45, 47, 48, 59, 98, 101, 140, 218, 243, 270, 354, 360, 361, 396, 416, 417 Program Director, 185

546

Index

Propagation, 10, 45 Przybylek, S., 355 Publisher’s Press Association, 53 Pulitzer Prize, 393 Pupin, M., 59, 120 Q Quest of the Golden Girl, 117 Quirk, James R., 282 R Radio, Radio Act of 1912, 178 Radio Act of 1927, 173, 197, 201 Radio Amateur news, 177, 178, 181, 183, 186 Radio broadcast(ing), 4, 34, 84, 86, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 108, 110, 114, 120, 122, 123, 156, 162, 166, 167, 170, 172–176, 179, 183, 185, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 202, 274, 290, 293, 294, 303, 367, 382, 383, 385, 386, 395, 420 Radio Club of America (RCA), 108, 168–172, 189–191, 193, 194, 201, 217, 333, 363, 364, 373, 376, 382, 409, 423, 424 Radio concerts, 103, 179, 185, 189, 194 Radio corporation, 169, 170, 178, 201, 324, 328 Radio Corporation of America, 169, 190 Radio-Electronics, 109 Radio frequencies, 32, 45, 60, 66, 87, 89, 99, 106, 111, 379, 408 Radio magazines, 176, 199 Radio music box, 170, 193 Radio news, 176–192, 194–197, 245, 406, 412 Radiophone fan, 198 Radio programming, 176, 197, 202, 292, 389, 402 Radio receiver, 60, 102, 114, 158, 170, 171, 174, 188, 197, 294, 329 Radio simplified, 191 Radiotelephone, 34, 35, 47, 54, 60, 72, 84, 92, 99–112, 114–117, 120–122, 140–142,

149, 156, 159, 161, 168, 174, 179, 181–183, 185–187, 190, 194, 201–203, 220, 227, 257, 266, 279, 292, 316, 384, 386, 395, 421, 423 Radiotelephone stock trial, 150 Radiotrola, 189 Radio Visor, 375, 382 Radio World, 195 Rainey, P.M., 331, 332 Ramsaye, T., 334 Rankine, A.O., 246 RCA. See Radio Club of America (RCA) RCA Photophone, 217, 333 Receiver, 7–9, 43, 44, 47, 49, 52–54, 58, 60, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 82, 89, 90, 106, 111, 114, 115, 120, 150, 152, 157, 171, 178, 180, 188, 190, 191, 197, 198, 206, 215, 228, 274, 294, 329, 354, 382, 393, 409, 426 Record(ing), 2, 50, 90, 126, 168, 203, 254, 305, 349, 389 Recording Sound for Motion Pictures, 339 Rectifier, 60, 87, 92, 98, 99, 150, 422 Reflection, 11, 35, 49, 338 “Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires,” 35 Refraction, 11 Regeneration, 145, 296, 298, 350, 369, 376, 391, 423 Regulation, 178, 196, 197, 201 Reproducing, 4, 197, 204, 216, 222, 223, 225, 231, 243, 264, 265, 276, 315, 329, 338, 350–352, 354, 355, 361, 370, 372, 410 Resonator, 31 Responder, 47–50, 52, 58, 59, 90, 106, 418 Reynolds, W., 317, 364 Rhumkorff coil, 178 Rialto theater, 256, 302, 308 Ries, 218, 325, 352, 354, 357, 360–362 Ries, E.E., 218, 313, 326, 352 Riesenfeld, H., 256, 258, 262, 282, 289, 309

Index Righi, A., 42, 43 Riverlue, 147, 148, 164, 293, 301, 322, 365, 366 Riverlue-on-the-Hudson, 236 Rivoli theater, 256, 257, 276, 284, 298, 320 Robbins, A., 20 Roosevelt, T., 28, 66, 160 78 rpm, 162, 201, 211, 370 33 1/3 rpm long playing disc, 201 45 rpm record, 201 Rube Goldberg, 370 Russo-Japanese War, 1904, 65 S San Francisco Harbor, 108 San Francisco World’s Fair, 125, 164, 181 San Jose, 23, 27, 35, 36, 38, 50, 55–57, 60, 62, 63, 69, 73, 91, 93, 95, 101–104, 107, 111, 113, 115, 118, 119, 141, 143, 144, 146–148, 151, 153, 157, 158, 163, 187, 191, 199, 221, 222, 224, 257, 259, 261, 263, 278, 300, 315, 321, 323, 345, 353, 359, 368, 370, 375, 377, 381, 384, 387, 394, 397, 403, 407, 408, 410, 413–416, 420, 426 San Jose Mercury Herald, 104 San Jose State University, 416 Santa Clara Valley, 103 Sarnoff, D., 108, 170, 193, 296, 367, 376, 384, 392, 412, 418 Scene, 12, 16, 19, 79, 81, 83, 84, 103, 127–129, 219, 249, 272, 311, 320, 331, 340–342, 374, 376 Schematic diagram, 33, 223 Schlesinger, M., 355, 366 Schwartz, 69 Science, 1, 2, 4, 13, 21, 22, 24, 25, 28–31, 34, 37, 39, 42, 46, 48, 49, 52, 57, 59, 74, 75, 79, 92, 94, 98, 105, 106, 123, 136, 138, 139, 150, 165, 174, 176, 183, 197, 204, 222, 223, 228, 241–247, 252, 254, 263, 275, 292, 295, 305, 312, 335, 338–340, 377, 379, 383, 386, 390, 392, 405, 406, 411–413, 418, 421–423, 425

547

Scientific American, 217, 228, 263, 392 Scientist, 3, 5, 10, 11, 26, 28, 34, 39, 42, 43, 46, 47, 54, 64, 72, 83, 84, 99, 102, 106, 114, 122, 125, 140, 145, 220, 231, 232, 242–244, 246, 251, 266, 281, 285, 292, 299, 303, 312, 313, 332, 361, 363, 376, 377, 379, 382, 390, 408, 411, 416–419, 421–423 Scott, L., 6 Screen, 19, 76, 77, 82, 125, 127–129, 132, 133, 137, 139, 180, 183, 203, 209, 211, 215, 249, 253, 257, 259, 260, 262, 264, 265, 268, 269, 271, 272, 274, 285, 302, 303, 329, 331, 334, 335, 337, 346, 352, 368, 369, 374, 376, 385, 396–400, 409 Scroll of Honor, 383, 384 Seaver Center collection, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 29, 164 Second world war, 382, 396 Selenium, 255, 354 Selenium cell, 9, 105, 139–140, 206, 208, 211, 216, 217, 223, 225, 230, 268, 354, 411 Selig Polyscope, 83, 137 Semaphore flags, 7, 42, 53 Semiconductors, 60 Senate Committee, 390, 391 Sheardown, L., 117, 119 Shockley, W., 410, 418 Short wave craft, 391 Signal Corps, 116, 181 Signals, 7, 11, 32, 42, 44, 48, 52, 53, 64, 89–91, 94, 101, 105, 145, 159, 228, 266, 330, 393 Silent drama, 253, 256, 268, 269, 338, 356 Silent film, 1, 2, 20, 76–84, 126–129, 132, 133, 138, 166–168, 180, 181, 192, 203, 209, 212, 227, 240, 248–250, 256, 258–260, 262, 263, 269, 271, 273, 274, 298, 320, 339–341, 343, 345, 367, 368, 398, 425 Silent motion picture, 11, 37, 268, 337 Silicon Valley, 101, 124, 141, 415 Silver chloride, 12

548

Index

Silver, M., 380 Silver nitrate, 12 Singing Audion, 150 Single system, 226, 227 Sirius/XM, 112 Slavery, 21, 79, 134 Slit, 205, 206, 216, 223, 227, 232, 233, 237, 244–246, 251, 264, 266, 285, 289, 311–313, 325–327, 351, 352, 354, 357, 360–362, 370 Smith, 142, 143 SMPE. See Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) SMPE transactions, 264, 266 SMPTE. See Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Smythe, E., 48 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), 264 Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE), 16, 208, 253, 256, 264–271, 297, 298, 329–333, 337–339, 343, 375, 383 Sony Walkman, 188 S.O.S., 74 Sound, 1, 47, 90, 126, 167, 203, 253, 305, 350, 394 Sounder, 7, 8, 48 Sound film, 2, 4, 6, 9, 92, 122, 148, 150, 167, 168, 195, 199, 203, 204, 206, 208–213, 218, 219, 228, 233, 239, 240, 242–244, 246–248, 258, 262, 267, 269– 271, 280, 289, 300, 317, 318, 320, 324, 326, 329, 331–333, 338–340, 342–344, 347, 350, 357, 358, 360, 372–374, 383, 414, 425–427 Sound-on-film, 35, 215–219, 221, 222, 225, 242–247, 268, 324–333, 351, 359 Sound track, 9, 14, 203, 205–208, 216, 221, 223, 225, 231, 234, 248, 260, 274, 280, 286, 312, 314, 325, 341, 369, 372 Sound vibrations, 4, 5, 106, 206, 342, 360, 409 Southern California, 84, 132, 137, 416 “Southern Man,” 135

“Space Telegraphy,” 94, 96 Spanish-American war, 30, 162 Spark, 3, 4, 10, 31, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 50–54, 56, 64, 75, 85, 87, 90, 99, 104, 105, 122, 149, 156, 168 Spark gap, 10, 39, 41, 54, 85, 99, 140 Speaking flame, 34, 105, 195, 220, 223, 226, 228, 237 Sponable, E., 246, 256, 277, 281, 288, 312, 332, 333, 354, 355, 358 Sprocketed roll film, 20 Sprocket holes, 14, 15, 227 Spuyten Duyvil, 148 “Squaw Man,” 131, 132 Squier, G., 277 Stanford, L., 13 Stanford University, 102, 125, 141 Stanton, E.C., 119 Steinhill, 9 Sterling, C., 100 Stewart Oliver collection, 8, 97, 127, 182, 188, 200 Still photograph, 11, 12, 14, 126, 274 St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada, 44 St Louis World’s Fair, 1904, 57, 62–64 Stock, 3, 49, 57, 64, 69–71, 116, 121, 140–144, 150, 192, 209, 220, 242, 255, 256, 275, 278, 295, 297, 309–311, 318, 324, 326, 394, 402, 417, 419, 421 Stone, J.S., 145, 181, 386 Stop action, 14, 82–84 Stratemeyer Syndicate, 74, 138 Stubblefield, N., 9 Studio, 81, 135, 137, 185, 191, 209, 239, 251, 252, 256, 262, 264, 267, 271, 272, 276, 279, 284–291, 299–302, 309, 310, 317, 318, 320, 324, 328–330, 332, 338, 339, 341, 342, 344, 346, 350, 351, 356, 397, 400 Swift, Tom, 74, 75, 138–140, 173, 328, 329, 406 Synchronization, 149, 208, 209, 211, 213, 215, 219, 227, 239, 260, 264, 271, 272, 274, 299, 306, 318, 328–332, 334, 343, 372, 414, 425

Index Sync-sound, 211 Syntonic aerography, 65 Syntony, 34 T Taber, J., 254, 276, 306, 307 Taggart, C.R., 302 Tainter, S., 205, 354 Talbot, W.H.F., 12 Talkies, 7, 12, 41, 76, 85, 122, 129, 147, 162, 168, 202–205, 217, 219, 226, 232, 246, 252, 259, 270, 273, 274, 291, 292, 298, 303, 305, 331, 334, 335, 337, 344–346, 354, 355, 386, 425, 426 Talking ark, 34, 35, 220 Talking machine world, 110 Talking motion picture, 37, 98, 167, 176, 197, 219, 223, 239, 258, 267, 301, 310, 351, 358, 362, 372 Talladega, 21–25 Talladega College, 21, 292 TCM, Technology, 3, 41, 85, 125, 168, 203, 253, 305, 352, 390 Telegraph, 2, 4, 7–10, 15, 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 62, 66, 67, 69–71, 74, 75, 87, 89–91, 94, 104, 105, 108, 115–117, 120–122, 140, 141, 149, 158, 171, 181, 203, 231, 241, 276, 278, 294, 296, 316, 363, 393, 395, 415, 421, 422 Telegraph key, 8, 10, 74 Telegraphone, 54, 56, 148, 219, 221 Telephone, 1, 46, 85, 139, 168, 204, 265, 306, 363, 392 Telephone flame microphone, 279 Telephone receiver, 9, 52, 54, 65, 206, 215, 233 Television, Tesla, N., 11, 33, 72 Thalofide cell, 234, 247 Thames television, 132 Theater chains, 286 “The Baby’s Lunch,” 19 The Clansman, 134, 136

549

The de Forest Radio Manufacturing Company, 364 The De Forest Way, 206, 219–227 The Edison Company, 77, 79, 81, 130, 136, 216 The Electrician, 55, 251 “The Great Train Robbery,” 80 The Hardy Boys, 173 The Hollywood Reporter, 396, 399, 402 “The Jazz Singer,” 217, 318–320, 331, 334, 335, 337, 339, 345, 356, 425 The Moving Picture Boys, 138 The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm, 138 The New York Times, 258, 324, 346, 378, 406, 419 The New York World’s Fair of 1939, 383–387 The Radio Boys, 173–175 The Radio Boys at the Sending Station, 174 The Radio Club of America, 383 The Radio Girls, 173 The Radio Girls on the Program, 174 Thermophone, 279 Thesis, 34, 35, 38, 129, 337 The speaking film, 239, 241 35 mm film, 206, 208, 333, 370 Thompkins, 142, 143 Thompson, E. A., 241 Thomson, E., 87 Three dimensional (3-D), 258, 333, 396 Three-element vacuum tube, 86, 122, 125, 419, 421, 422, 427 Titanic, 75, 174, 178 Toll broadcasting, 170, 189, 194 Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone, 139 Tom Swift and his Talking Pictures, 328 Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera, 139 Transformer, 9, 34, 106, 150, 220, 226, 251 Transistor, 32, 390, 408, 410, 418, 421 Transmitter, 3, 11, 33–35, 44, 47, 52–54, 56, 74, 85, 103, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 114, 115, 120, 140, 141, 150, 152, 155–157,

550

Index

159, 160, 168–170, 178, 180, 182, 191, 215, 226, 266, 274, 279, 376, 382, 393, 395, 408, 409, 426 Treasures from the American Film Archives (DVD), 77, 80, 210, 290, 300, 318 Tri-Ergon Company, 218 Tuning knob, 198, 202 Turner Classic Movies, 77, 131 Turner, K., 114 Turntable, 6 TV. See Television Twentieth century, 1, 9, 39, 43, 74, 79, 84, 120, 130, 132, 136, 138, 140, 335, 381, 407, 421, 427 Two-way wireless communication, 42 Tykociner, J.T., 218, 246, 270 U United Artists, 338 United Fruit, 100, 107 United Kingdom, 193, 403 United States Patent Office, 60 University of Pennsylvania, 13 University of Southern California (USC), 416 U.S. Army Signal Corps, 61 USC. See University of Southern California (USC) U. S. Department of Justice, 160 U.S. Navy, 100, 108–115, 150, 159, 231, 393 USS Ohio, 108, 109 U.S. Supreme Court, 66 V Vacuum tube, 34, 69, 86, 87, 94, 98, 122, 125, 168, 183, 197, 203, 215, 220, 241, 272, 331, 339, 376, 380, 384, 386, 417–423, 427 Variable area recording system, 205–208, 217, 223, 248, 270, 354, 367, 369 Variable density recording system, 205–208, 218, 226, 265, 280, 306, 312, 326, 352, 359, 367, 369, 374

Vaudeville, 19, 24, 82, 192, 202, 212, 239, 256, 262, 277, 287, 298–300, 302, 305, 315, 317, 330, 356, 424, 425 Vertically integrated, 299 Very high frequency (VHF), 44 Veteran wireless operators association, 383 VHF. See Very high frequency (VHF) Vibrations, 4, 5, 32, 106, 154, 200, 201, 206, 216, 279, 333, 342, 352, 360, 409 Victor Appleton, 74, 138, 173 Videotape, 390, 410, 421 Visser, Gus, 287 Visual language, 82, 129, 399 Vitagraph, 137 Vitaphone, 211, 229, 248, 277, 305, 310, 317–320, 328–331, 333, 335, 349–352, 367, 369, 425 Vitascope, 19, 76 Vogt, H., 218 Vreeland, F., 59 W Waddell, W.E., 271, 272, 276, 282, 284, 286 Wallace, D. (W6AM), 160 Wallace, J., 45, 60 Wall Street, 310 War, 12, 65, 105, 131, 168, 205, 316, 351, 396 War Materials Act, 396 Warner Bros, 217, 248, 250, 277, 303, 305, 317–319, 322, 324, 330, 333, 335 Warner, H., 317, 318 War to End All Wars, 160 Washington, D.C., 100, 178, 187, 291, 301, 346 Watson, T.A., 152 Waves, 5–7, 9–11, 31, 32, 35, 37, 39, 47, 50, 51, 54, 66, 99, 105, 106, 110, 114, 148, 156, 172, 173, 183, 195, 205, 215, 223, 225, 230, 264, 279, 285, 312, 326, 327, 329, 332, 351, 354, 358, 362, 375, 376, 379, 383, 405, 408, 411, 422 WEAF, 189, 194, 296 Weagant, R., 323

Index Webster, D., 134 Welsbach, 51, 90 Wente (Dr.), 248, 360 West Coast Theaters, 337 Western Electric, 46–49, 53, 56, 105, 170, 189, 194, 244, 248, 256, 277, 280, 284, 297, 306, 310, 315–317, 327, 329, 331, 345, 357, 360, 362–364, 424 Western Electrician, 49, 105 Westinghouse, 101, 158, 169, 170, 190, 191, 193, 328, 391 Westinghouse Electric Company, 190 “What’s My Line?”, 412 White, Abraham, 57, 58, 64, 69, 72, 74, 86, 92, 121, 421 White House, 289, 290, 311, 346 Wilson, W., 28, 158 Wireless detector, 34, 49, 50 Wireless technology, 30, 53, 64 Wireless telegraphy, 2, 11, 42–44, 47, 57, 58, 60–62, 64, 67, 70, 75, 84, 92, 141, 174, 219, 220 Wireless telephone, 74, 85, 104–115, 142–145, 168, 181, 204, 385, 393 Wireless telephony, 9, 100, 101, 104–106, 110, 208, 354 WJZ, 190 Woods, F., 337 WOR, 195 Work print, 290 1939 World’s Fair, 350, 376, 382, 384, 393, 412

551

World War I (WWI), 115, 159, 160, 237, 313, 382, 385, 392 World War I patent pool, 168 Wright Brothers, 27 Writing with light, 205 WWI. See World War I (WWI) WWII, 148, 382 Y Yale, 2, 20, 24–36, 41, 46, 48, 58, 65, 72, 94, 102, 143, 144, 203, 220, 221, 223, 229, 230, 242, 281, 285, 316, 354, 365, 412 Yale club, 275, 312 Yale Divinity School, 21, 24 Yale Light Artillery Battery, 30 Yale Science Journal, 422 Yale Scientific Monthly, 27 Yale University, 21, 26, 27 Yale University Sheffield Scientific School, 26, 29, 34, 37–39, 42 Young, N., 135 Young, O.D., 169, 170 Youth’s Companion, 22 Z Ziegfeld Follies, 356 Zoaproxiscope, 14 Zoetrope, 13, 14, 208, 216 Zouary, M., 226, 299 Zukor, A., 262, 301 Zworykin, V., 376, 382, 423

About the Author

Mike Adams has been a radio personality and a filmmaker. Currently he is a professor of radio, television, and film at San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, where he has been a department chair and an associate dean. As a researcher and writer of broadcast and early technology history, he created two award-winning documentaries for PBS, “Radio Collector” and “Broadcasting’s Forgotten Father.” He has had published numerous articles and four books, including Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting. More information about the author and his work can be found at www.mikeadams.org and www.leedeforest.org

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