genuine talking picture, wholly independent of the old device of having
the actors talk behind the screen when the films were projected. By
a combination of the phonograph and the moving picture machine working
in perfect synchronism the result is obtained. Wires are attached to
the mechanism of both the machines, the one behind the screen and the
one in front, in such a way that the two are operated simultaneously
so that when a film is projected a corresponding record on the
phonograph acts in perfect unison supplying the voice suitable to the
moving action. Men and women pass along the canvas, act, talk, laugh,
cry and "have their being" just as in real life. Of course, they are
immaterial, merely the reflection of films, but the one hundred
thousandth of an inch thick, yet they give forth oral sounds as
creatures of flesh and blood. In fact every sound is produced
harmoniously with the action on the screen. An iron ball is dropped
and you hear its thud upon the floor, a plate is cracked and you can
hear the cracking just the same as if the material plate were broken
in your presence. An immaterial piano appears upon the screen and a
fleshless performer discourses airs as real as those heard on Broadway.
Melba and Tettrazini and Caruso and Bonci appear before you and warble
their nightingale notes, as if behind the footlights with a galaxy of
beauty, wealth and fashion before them for an audience. True it is not
even their astral bodies you are looking at, only their pictured
representations, but the magic of their voices is there all the same
and there is such an atmosphere of realism about the representations
that you can scarcely believe the actors are not present in _propriae
personae_.

Mr. Edison had much study and labor of experiment in bringing his
device to a successful issue. The greatest obstacle he had to overcome
was in getting a phonograph that could "hear" far enough. At the