An Absurd Device to Add Dialogue to Silent Films

The motion picture industry was in full swing years before synchronized sound was developed. Many engineers were working on adding sound to movies, but one of the strangest ideas came from romance novelist and amateur engineer Charles Felton Pidgin. In 1917 he patented an idea for adding word balloons to movies by having the actors blow into inflatable tubes that had the words on them! Think of the noisemakers at children’s birthday parties that unroll a paper tube when you blow in them -yeah, that’s the idea. I’ve seen no evidence that this technique was ever actually tried on the big screen, but I can imagine that it would be way more trouble than it was worth. Read more about the Beauty of Timelessly Bad Ideas at Ptak Science Books. -via Boing Boing


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I can just imagine some of the classic movie lines done like this:

"Frankly, Scarlet: (puff puff) I don't give (puff) a damn"

“The truth?!" (puff puff) You can't han (puff puff) dle the truth!”

Or Roy Batty's "Tears in Rain" soliloquy.
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After all, what is the difference between the life that is in a cell, a chimp, a neanderthal or a modern homo sapiens? Do not come and vanishes in the same way, in one breath alone? Isn’t life a single indivisible movement, an information flow that stores and changes from a common ancestor? Or is there a unique quality in some place of the tree of life, a qualitative leap detached from all evolutionary processes and unrelated to the rest of life? If so, is it the same leap that the human language makes when differentiating between life itself and the rest of the universe? Also between human beings and the rest of animals, between food and eaters, health and disease, between life and death? Along these lines, there is a peculiar book, if you want there is a preview in http://goo.gl/rfVqw6 Just another suggestion, in order to free-think for a while.
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Don’t expect this “science” to sneak its way into the classrooms here in the South. Our Lord and Savior made it very clear there is no way we evolved from these savages. Tennessee has passed the Monkey Law legislation which ensures teachers can challenge these so-called scientists and their twisted research funded by the liberals in Washington. Read about how we’re keep Christ in the Classroom at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/04/pulpit-in-classroom-biblical-agenda-in.html
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Wow. Talk abut Neanderthals and suddenly the Wordy Wackologists bleed out of the woodwork in droves. I've seen comments like this on Amazon, usually involving mention of contrails and the Illuminati.

We are amused. Have you considered standup?
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