EUGENE LAUSTE

FATHER OF SOUND ON FILM

Bob Allen

Ken Loach and Lauste Cinema 100 plaque at the Roxy Cinema, Brixton

On the evening of January 29th last, a Cinema 100 plaque organised by AMPS to commemorate the life and work of French inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste was unveiled by Ken Loach at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton.

Lauste was born 140 years ago on January 17th 1857 in Montmartre, France. After an already distinguished career in France, with 53 French patents for various inventions, he emigrated to the USA where in 1887 he joined the Edison Laboratories, becoming chief mechanical assistant to Laurie Dickson.

He and Dickson worked on the moving picture idea that Edison wanted to go with the phonograph. The result of their work, which Edison took the credit for, was the famous Kinetoscope.

In 1892 Lauste left the Edison workshops to develop a petrol engine that he designed in association with another French engineer. Their model worked but they became discouraged when 'experts' assured them that an engine of this type, with it's noise and inflammable potentialities could never be commercial because it wouldn't be permitted on the streets.

His next employer was Major Woodville Latham, a schoolteacher who was interested in step photography. Latham had no mechanical knowledge or experience but had conceived the idea of devising a projector for the Kinetoscope. Lauste designed and built the first film projector for Latham, the Eidoloscope. It was Lauste who devised the idea of a loop to feed the film smoothly into the intermittent movement but it was Latham that got the credit and it became known as the 'Latham Loop'. However in 1927 Laurie Dickson made it clear that Lauste was responsible for the loop invention. The loop is still a fundamental feature in cinematograph projectors.

Lauste also built wide film cameras and film printing equipment for Major Latham. Public exhibitions were given with the Eidoloscope at 153 Broadway, New York in May 1895 and later in a tent at Coney Island. Pictures shown were of the Griffo-Barnet prize fight photographed by Lauste on the roof of the old Madison Square Garden.

In 1896 Lauste joined the American Biograph Company with which he was associated for several years. Much of the time he was in charge of their Laboratory experimental plant back in France.

He came to Britain in 1900 and settled in Brixton where he set a workshop at his home in Melbourne Square.

According to Lauste himself, he first conceived the idea of recording and reproducing sound photographically in 1888 while working for Edison. He found a back issue of Scientific American dated May 1881, in a cellar of the Edison Workshops. In it was a description by Alexander Graham Bell of his successful transmission of sound by light using a microphone and a selenium cell. Lauste reasoned it should be possible to photograph the sound modulated light beam and reproduce the photographed record by means of the selenium cell. Could this be the way to give the Cinema it's voice?

In 1890 Lauste designed and made his first light gate but it was not until 1904 in Brixton that he was able to build his first experimental recording and reproducing apparatus. It was crude 'little more than a toy' he later said. It consisted of a box with a narrow slit behind which the film passed, a crank to wind the film and an adjustment for a mirror fitted on a diaphragm which reflected light across the slot in response to sound vibrations. It worked well enough to prove his idea

In 1905 he built a complete experimental apparatus for recording and reproducing pictures and sound simultaneously on the same film. The actual recording device, referred to as a 'sound grate', consisted of two slotted iron grids through which a light beam passed on to the film. One of the grids was fixed while the other, under the influence of the field on an electromagnet modulated by the output of a microphone, slid up and down over the surface of the fixed grid. This resulted in a variable density-type of sound track.

The results were still crude but reassured Lauste that if he could record sound accurately, he could reproduce the recordings. In August 1906 he applied for a British patent which was granted in August 1907.

Patent No 18057 - this invention relates to a new or improved cinematographic and phonographic method or process for recording and reproducing simultaneously the movements or motions of persons or objects and the sounds produced by them....

The problem with the light grate-type modulator was that its inertia was too high, making it impossible to respond satisfactorarily to higher frequencies. Lauste tried many variations of the grate method of modulating without success.

By 1910 he had reached an impasse which he believed was the end of his work. Many scientists and engineers had assured him that his ideas would never work, and on top of this the London Cinematograph Company who had backed him since 1908 were in financial difficulties and could no longer provide him with the means to continue his experiments.

Then came the breakthrough. Lauste later related how the idea, which was to prove the answer to his problem, based on the principle of the string galvanometer, came to him in the early hours of the morning as he lay in bed. He arose and at 2AM was back at work in his laboratory.

He used a silicon bronze wire to which a small mirror was attached, the wire being stretched between the poles of an electromagnet. Signals from the microphone applied to the electromagnet caused the wire to react and reflect a light beam across the slit in front of the constant moving film.

Lauste later recalled how when he had completed his first mechanism of a string galvanometer he recorded a few words from a gramophone record. When he reproduced the film recording, to his amazement he heard through the headphones distinctly spoken words. He could hardly believe his own ears and called for his wife and son to come and listen.

Reproduction of the recordings doesn't seem to have caused anything like the problems that recording did. While the selenium cell wasn't a particularly efficient light sensitive device, it did work. In 1910 Lauste obtained a cell from Bronk of Berlin which gave results far superior to the cells he had previously used.

Further financial support became available again this time from a Mr Weiss, and a Mr Salmon, a Belgian broker who entered into an agreement with him to improve his equipment.

Lauste did everything himself, designing patterns for castings, all the delicate and precision mechanical work, all the electrical fitments, coils, transformers etc. Between 1910 and 1913 many thousands of feet of synchronised sound and picture tests were shot in the back garden at Brixton.

Synchronisation was achieved by photographing the sound and picture on the same strip of film. Lauste's film format was most generous to sound as the track occupied half the width of the standard 35mm film allowing only the other half for a much reduced size of picture.

Lauste's format on 35mm film

In 1911, having further improved the equipment he took it to the USA in search of support and funds. However despite making what can be regarded as the first American sound film while he was there, his inventions were not taken up and he returned to Britain.

Development work continued and in 1912 two further patents were filed and granted in 1913. Both were for methods of improving the frequency response of his recordings,

Cinematograph speed at this time was a nominal 60ft/min. Because of this and the practicality of making a small enough recording slit, upper frequency response was seriously limited. His new patents No 10526 and No 16942 explained a method of directing light from the modulator through a rotating cylindrical lens which exposes the sound track diagonally across the film, thus increasing the velocity of the track so enabling higher frequencies to be recorded. Lauste thus predated helical scan as used in video and DAT recording by many years.

Besides lack of funds and enthusiasm from others in the film industry, Lauste's inventions were also hindered by problems of amplification; the electronic age had not yet begun. The reproduced sound had to be listened to on headphones or a poor loudspeaker with a range of only a few feet. The final blow was the declaration of war in 1914.

Had it not been for these limitations the Cinema may well have found it's voice and talking pictures got going ten years earlier than they eventually did.

Because he was the first to record sound and picture synchronously on the same piece of film Eugene Lauste may justifiably be called the Father of Sound-on-Film.

He died in 1935.

BOB ALLEN

Eugene Lauste 1857-1935