TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Even with the very first electric systems, such as the Vitaphone (1925), this principle of the recorded voice was preserved. As Rick Altman points out, “the first commercial use of the Vitaphone system in August 1926 offered a series of musical curtain raisers called ‘perfected radio music programs’ by Albert Warner, because he and his brothers were trying, precisely, to recreate the recent success of the Victor Hour on the radio.”^[7] In the end, when the Warner brothers joined with the Vitaphone Corporation, they sought to enliven silent cinema screenings with programs of “Vitaphone Shorts” drawing entirely on the discs and radio programs of the day, rather than to promote a new kind of cinema – sound cinema.