there was a risk of them not being able to close down the the box in time to catch their bus. The problem was solved by racking up the speed of the projectors when the main feature was having its final showing of the evening.
Although a mere 15-year old at that time, I already had 'standards' which had been impressed upon my soul by my previous chief, a bit of a tyrant, but a tyrant who was meticulous in his demands for perfect projection. I was appalled by what the Walsall procedure did to the sound, but how could a timid young lad complain? Furthermore, nobody seemed to mind, least of all those sitting in double seats (known as 'courting' seats) at the back of the circle.
If I remember correctly, cutting ten minutes out of the running time of a two hour feature meant upping 24 to 26 or so frames per second. The visuals did not seem to be too badly affected but as your members will certainly know, the sound became somewhat excruciating.

Yours sincerely

Sir SYDNEY SAMUELSON CBE
London

Dear Bob
Thank you for the latest edition of AMPS, just received. I find your items interest me more than, as a former cameraman, I would have expected! Reading AMPS has changed my sound perspective - certainly as far as my attitude to on-set techies is concerned, particularly those who created boom shadows which I then had to eliminate.
Now that cinema presentation is getting into state-of-the-art sound using DVD and other disc systems, is there yet another example of 'what goes around, comes around?' I mean, there are folk still walking around who have experience of using old-time disc cinema equipment... and I am one of them. Although the original disc sound reproduction system was discarded ten years before I started rewinding the reels at my local cinema, later on I did work in several old ABC circuit fleapits where the playing equipment was still in place. The famous Western Electric Universal Base was designed to be used to
present sound-on-disc, sound-on-film, and even silent films.
Sound-on-disc had a short working life and
was long gone when I first worked up in the box, but it did intrigue me to hear from older projies that, as a join in the film lost a minimum of two frames and as One cannot extract 'frames' of sound from a disc, in order to keep the two in
sync after a repair, it was necessary to add frames of black spacing to the film each time a join was made. It is therefore not difficult to understand why the disc system died a death so soon after its birth. Just think of it, if there was a jam in the projector mechanism and the repair of the film lost, say, ten frames, then ten black frames had to be inserted in the middle of the action no matter how dramatic or passionate the scene might be. I can claim experience of a bizarre use of the old Western Electric equipment, a use both hilarious and, for me, agonising. It was at a dirty old ABC house in 1941, the Walsall Imperial, where two
of these machines were in place (supporting Simplex heads - with uncovered shutter blades dangerously rotating in front, and Kalee low intensity arcs behind). To cope with the different speeds required for sound and silent movies the projectors had variable speed controls fitted. The chief at the Imperial, and his son (who was the second projectionist) lived a bus ride away from Walsall and, as their last bus departed before
10 pm (wartime restrictions, I suppose), if there happened to be a programme with a feature and/or a second feature each a touch on the long side,

Almost the projector Sir Sydney describes but it's a Kalee, not a Simplex head. However it has the W.E. base with a sound-on-disc attachment and the dreaded front shutter. Front shutters were also hard on film. The heat from the arc, falling directly on the film as it passed through the gate, often caused it to buckle. Rear shutters reduced the heat.

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