Towards a Single Support for Every Sound and Image: Oscillography and What Came After it - Text 5
We should also note the work of the Swedish researcher Valdemar Poulsen who, in 1899 (when he was an engineer with the Swedish telephone company), created a device, the telegraphone, which used a small electromagnet to record sounds on a steel wire. This was the first step towards the future magnetic recording system, which slumbered for thirty years and found fame after 1948, when magnetic recording became the principal process used in sound film. These few early researches gave incredible impetus to later work. In less than a decade (from 1919 to 1926) the system for synchronizing sound and image was finally found by a handful of researchers supported and greatly encouraged by large production companies: Tri-Ergon in Germany; Fox, Western Electric and Warner Bros. in the United States; and the Franco-Swedish firm Gaumont-Petersen-Poulsen.
At the end of this parcours, we can conclude that the most decisive progress was due to the work of researchers who, “by chance,” because their goal was something different (knowledge of the properties of selenium, the behaviour of alternating currents), contributed the principle of the definitive solution to recording sound photographically.
