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      • Alexander Graham Bell
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  • Technology Timeline
    • 1800's
      • 1876: The Telephone
    • 1910's
      • 1915: First Transcontinental Telephone Call
      • 1916: Remembering Claude Shannon
      • 1917: The First Air-to-Ground and Ground-to-Air Radio Communications
    • 1920's
      • 1924: Fax Service
      • 1924: Electrical Sound Recording
      • 1926: Sound Motion Pictures
      • 1927: Negative Feedback
      • 1927: The Wave Nature of Matter
      • 1927: Long Distance TV Transmission
      • 1927: Transatlantic Phone Service
      • 1929: Broadband Coaxial Cable
      • 1929: The Artificial Larynx
    • 1930's
      • 1933: Stereo Recordings
      • 1933: Radio Astronomy
      • 1936: Synthetic Speech
      • 1939: The Digital Computer
      • 1939: High Frequency Radar
    • 1940's
      • 1940: Complex Number Generator
      • 1941: Touch Tone Telephones
      • 1946: First Mobile Telephone Call
      • 1947: The Transistor
      • 1948: Error Correction
      • 1948: Information Theory
    • 1950's
      • 1951: First Direct-Dial Transcontinental Telephone Call
      • 1951: Microwave Radio-Relay Skyway
      • 1954: The Solar Cell
      • 1956: Transoceanic Telephone Cables
      • 1958: The Laser
    • 1960's
      • 1960: Communications Satellites
      • 1962: Satellite Transmission
      • 1965: The Echo of the Big Bang
      • 1969: UNIX and the Internet
    • 1970's
      • 1970: Picturephone
      • 1976: Epitaxy Microchips
      • 1976: First Digital Electronic Switching
      • 1977: Fiber Optic Communication
    • 1980's
      • 1983: Cellular Phones
      • 1983: C++
      • 1989: HDTV
      • 1989: The Speech-Driven Robot
    • 1990's
      • 1992: The Instant Language Translator
      • 1992: Fault-Tolerance Software
      • 1993: The Computer Videophone
      • 1997: a2b Music
      • 1998: Phone Web
      • 1999: Quantum Computing
    • 2000's
      • 2000: Network Fraud Protection
      • 2001: How May I Help You?
      • 2001: Natural Voices
      • 2001: Next Gen Network Tools
      • 2002: Privacy Bird
      • 2002: CNI
      • 2003: Tomo-gravity
      • 2003: GS Tool
      • 2004: Maui
      • 2004: Internet Protect
      • 2005: Traffic Analysis Service (TAS)

1926: Sound Motion Pictures

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  • This Was The Sound
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AT&T invented the technology that brought sound to Hollywood in the 1920s.Photo: 1920s Hollywood camera crew. Originally, sound for a motion picture was recorded on disks, then replayed on a large turntable that was synchronized with a film projector. Warner Brothers became the first studio to adopt the new technology, calling it "Vitaphone." In 1926, Warners Brothers premiered Don Juan, the first full length Vitaphone film, and the first with a synchronized sound track of music and audio effects. A year later, The Jazz Singer became the first feature with synchronized singing and dialog. By the early 1930s, sound-on-disk had given way to sound-on-film, which was easier to edit and exhibit. AT&T pioneered in sound-on-film as well.

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