Claude Hamilton Verity (1 May 1880 – 15 August 1949) was a hardware merchant, engineer and inventor, working mainly in Harrogate and Leeds, England.

[14] By 1891 the family had moved to number 34 in the same street, his brother, Charles Frederick,[nb 8] was apprenticed as an ironmonger, and Claude (now spelled with an "e") was a scholar at board school.

[24] His father Edwin died suddenly of heart failure in 1909,[12] and he and his brother inherited the family business, but by 1910 he was describing himself as an "engineering draughtsman" at Seacombe, Liverpool.

[8] It so happened that Verity grew up in Roundhay where Louis le Prince, the inventor of an early motion-picture camera, had lived.

It also happened that Verity's workshop in Briggate was close to Leeds Bridge where le Prince had shot his film of traffic in the late 1880s.

Important though those efforts were, it was the general opinion that synchronisation was less than perfect, and it was this problem that Verity attempted to overcome in his laboratory [in Harrogate].

[8] The main laboratory for his inventions between 1915 and 1920 was at the back of his home in Harrogate where, according to historian Malcolm Neesam: "it was reached by an external folding staircase which guaranteed complete privacy".

[30][31] In April 1922, the Yorkshire Evening News said that Verity was looking for financial backers, but "did not intend to work on the lines of a monopoly in regard to his invention".

The newspaper described the effort and expense of Verity's inventive efforts, without the support of a large organisation:[8] For over three years [Verity] has been perfecting his idea [of synchronising sound with film], and so far it has entailed a cost of £7,000 (equivalent to £482,815.16 in 2023) but now to quote his own words: With my system of synchronisation I can guarantee to keep this relation of sound and lip movement under synchronous control to within one-twenty-fourth of a second for any length of time ...

[8][23]In 1921 and 1922, Verity was showing his synchronisation of sound and movement in film, first in Harrogate as described above, then in Bradford, London and Leeds, where "[his] system worked well and was popular".

Verity, the inventor of an apparatus which has made the synchronisation of film and gramophone a practical proposition, is the head of a Leeds firm of hardware manufacturers and merchants.

Mr Verity claims that the cost of these productions will be no greater than that of making silent films, because it is cheaper to help out scenes and actions by words than by the multiplication of dumb show.

Films were purposely broken this afternoon to demonstrate to cinema exhibitors to show that when projection began again, synchronisation had not been interfered with in any way by the most common of camera mishaps.

The Civil & Military Gazette of Lahore published a description of Verity's demonstration in the Waldorf Hotel, London, naming the apparatus as the Veritiphone.

In this chamber is placed an electric element, and, by means of suitably-arranged holes in the sound-box and tone-arm, induced draught passes through, so that the apparatus is working under similar conditions to the human throat.

[38] On 9 November 1923 Verity embarked for New York City on the RMS Aquitania, to be met on Ellis Island by J. Stuart Blackton, the vice president of the Vitagraph Company of America.