Movietone sound system
[1] Although modern sound films use variable-area tracks instead, modern motion picture theaters (excluding those that have transitioned to digital cinema) can play a Movietone film without modification to the projector (though if the projector's sound unit has been fitted with red LED or laser light sources, the reproduction quality from a variable density track will be significantly impaired).
He created the thalofide cell, a sensitive photocell that was utilized by the U.S. Navy during and for some years after World War I as part of an infrared communication system.
During that year, Case was approached by Lee de Forest, who had been trying since 1919 to develop an optical soundtrack for motion picture film in a system he called Phonofilm.
Among Case's other inventions, he contributed the thalofide photocell and the Aeo-light, a light source that could be easily modulated by audio signals and could finally be utilized to expose the soundtrack in the film of sound cameras.
This technology printed an optical soundtrack on top of the 35mm full aperture, which was colloquially referred to as the "Movietone ratio."
The sound galvanometer, made by RCA, was designed to produce good to excellent results when the kinescope film negative was projected, thereby avoiding the need to make a print before the delayed replay.
After parting ways with de Forest, Case made changes to the Movietone projector soundhead by positioning it below the picture head, with a sound-picture offset of approximately 14+1⁄2 inches (370 mm) (close to the present-day standard).
The first feature film released using the Fox Movietone system was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), directed by F. W. Murnau.
This innovation allowed speakers to be placed behind the screen to enhance the illusion of sound emanating directly from the film action.
However, the museum's first director, who oversaw it for 50 years, decided to put the laboratory's contents into storage and converted the building into an art studio.
The Case Research Lab sound studio was located on the second floor of the estate's carriage house, which had been rented to a local model train club until the early 1990s.
Sponable had done very little to establish the historical record of Case Research Lab inventions, apart from his April 1947 article in The Journal of the SMPE.
It was also in 1947 that the Davis Loop Drive was introduced to Western Electric licensees, including Twentieth Century-Fox (WECo RA-1231; still made by a successor company).
The collections include letters from Thomas Edison, a copy of the Tri-Ergon patents, and an internal document from Fox Films written in the 1930s.
Several films owned by Case Research Lab and Museum were restored by George Eastman House in Rochester, New York and are in their collections.
Phonofilms that were produced using Case Research Lab inventions are in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute.
For this reason, archives, have opted to remaster original VD tracks to VA negatives for preservation and the creation of new prints.
