[78-L] Bell, Western Electric and Orthophonics

[Michael Biel]

Rodger Holtin wrote:
> All the discussion of Bell and recordings prompts me to ask:
> What was Western Electric doing making experimental electrical recordings in the first place???
> Were they trying to improve their own stuff and just needed to record it to check their own progress and orthophonia was just a by-product, or were they trying to get into the commercial recording business, either by moving into studio work or by marketing their machinery?
>
> Rodger
>   


Western Electric was in other businesses beyond the telephone.  While 
they did go into the business of broadcasting, they got out of it in 
1926, being content to providing equipment.  That was also their move by 
licensing the electrical recording system to Victor and Columbia instead 
of going into business as a record company.  They had developed a Public 
Address system in the late teens, and were improving their microphones, 
loudspeakers, and amplifiers.  There initial efforts in electrical 
recording was to make experimental checks of the quality of their long 
distance lines.  That was also the reason Keller first did dual-groove 
recording, to check on the input and output of the long lines.  In 1922 
they entered the broadcasting field and presented WEAF as being a 
station with the highest quality equipment that would make sense for a 
company to buy time on the station for advertising rather than starting 
their own station as some companies had done.  They did audio recordings 
in 1922 and semi-synchronized them to an animated film explaining the 
operation of the audion tube.  One of the engineers, Stanley Watkins, 
did the narration in his British accent, and during the screening at 
Columbia University was backstage with a microphone to take over if the 
recordings failed.  They were 12-inch 78s and vinyl pressings of some 
are in the Library of Congress from the A.F.R. Lawrence collection made 
from the stampers that were at Columbia.  Bell Labs holds the stampers 
that were not at Columbia.  The first set of takes is very distorted, 
but the next set or two of takes is very good for 1922 electrical 
recordings.  They continued to experiment with electrical recordings of 
music from the weekly New York Philharmonic-Symphony on WEAF in 1923 and 
24.   These were found at Jim Hatfield's and are now at the NY Phil. 
Which reminds me that I need to transfer off the R-DAT I made of them 
when Kurt loaned them to me.  I just found that tape yesterday, in fact. 

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com