Theatrophone

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Theatrophone listeners to coin-operated machines, 1892

The theatrophone ( French : Théâtrophone ) was a system developed by Clément Ader for the stereophonic transmission of opera and theater performances over a telephone or the lines of a telephone network .

It was first presented in Paris in 1881 . The theater was operated commercially in Paris from 1890 to 1932, with the range being expanded to include the broadcast of church services and the reading of current news. Thus, the theatrophone is a direct forerunner of radio in terms of both content and technology . Other providers took over the technology and marketing model of the theatrophone. The system was sold under the name Electrophone in Great Britain from 1895 and was very successful there, especially in the 1910s.

Development of the theatrophone

Theater and media technology were closely linked in the 19th century. Telegraphy was used for the first time in 1865 for live reporting on the world premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera L'Africaine at the Paris Opera : "During the performance, hourly telegraphic reports about the admission of the work to the European capitals were sent." In 1878, the Swiss Bellinzona broadcast a performance of the opera Don Pasquale over a telephone in a hall adjacent to the opera. This type of transmission was not suitable for long distances or a larger audience.

Technical design

Drawing of the microphones installed in the Opéra Garnier
Drawing of the carbon microphones used by Ader

The French inventor Clément Ader took the decisive step towards using the telephone as a transmission medium for public presentations . Today Ader is best known for his pioneering work in aviation, but he had an early interest in the technology of the telephone. With the Adler telephone, he improved the telephone introduced by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 , developed a better carbon microphone and installed the first telephone line in Paris in 1880.

For the First International Electricity Exhibition in 1881, Ader developed a new telephone system for broadcasting concerts or theater performances over longer distances. He used the self-developed telephone with a horseshoe magnet and induction coil as headphones , which significantly increased sensitivity and intelligibility. The device was unsuitable as a microphone because the electrical voltage induced by the movement of the membrane could not yet be amplified. That is why Ader resorted to the carbon microphone, which varies an applied battery voltage by changing its resistance . His advancement of this device was still a carbon rod microphone like the Hughes telephone , but equipped with several rods.

Ader had installed 40 microphones at the edge of the stage at the Opéra Garnier , which broadcast the events to the Palais de l'Industrie, two kilometers away on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées , where they could be heard in special rooms equipped with earpieces. For the power supply of the microphones to put two switchable Leclanche elements , of which a battery was replaced every 15 minutes. Transformers provided a galvanic separation of these DC circuits from the telephone lines and an adaptation to their impedance . Similarly, performances of the Comédie-Française were broadcast with 10 microphones . Each microphone was connected in series with eight earphones .

There were two earpieces available for each listener, which were connected to two different microphones. Because one microphone was on the left half of the stage and the other on the right half of the stage, it was possible to locate the direction of what was being heard. Ader's demonstration was the first example of binaural sound recording . The installation of the microphones was technically very demanding. The Adler microphones threatened to vibrate with every loud occurrence on stage, which is why they were encased in lead and stored on rubber bands. When placing the orchestra, care had to be taken that the percussion instruments and brass instruments were not too close to the microphones. The gas flames, which were still used as the spotlight , disrupted the microphones considerably due to their draft and the refraction of sound due to their heat.

presentation

Schematic drawing of the theatrophone prototype

The system later called Théâtrophone was inaugurated on August 9, 1881 by the French President Jules Grévy . It quickly became a hit with the public during the exhibition. From August to November 1881, the theater was presented to the public three evenings a week. Contemporary reporters were enthusiastic about the new technology. It was considered a sensation that one could hear not only the orchestra and the actors, but even the reactions of the audience and the voice of the prompter through the theater . One of the users of the new invention was the writer Victor Hugo , who in a diary entry dated November 11, 1881, was “ecstatic” about the presentation. The science fiction author Albert Robida is also likely to have tried the invention; in 1883, for example, in his utopian novel Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century), he described a theatrophon-like image transmission system called "téléphonoscope".

Despite the high costs of installing and operating the system, which totaled 160,000 francs during the presentation in Paris  , Ader's invention was installed a year later at the International Electricity Exhibition in Munich to present it to King Ludwig II of Bavaria . The International Electrical Exhibition in Vienna in 1883 also presented the transmission of sounds from the Vienna State Opera . In May 1883, a demonstration system was set up in the Paris Musée Grévin , with which performances of the Eldorado variety theater could be followed. In addition, the use of the theater was reserved for a select group of people. President Grévy had lines from the Opéra, the Comédie-Française and the Théâtre de l'Odéon laid to the Élysée Palace . In 1884, theatrophones were experimentally installed in a Munich theater and with the Berlin Philharmonic . In the same year the Ministry of Railways, Post and Telegraphy installed a theater in Brussels ; The Belgian royal couple was presented with the new invention with broadcasts of performances by Rossini operas William Tell and The Barber of Seville to their summer residence.

Also in 1884 a theatrophone was installed in the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon so that King Ludwig could at least hear an opera premiere, at which he could not be present in person, from his palace. A year later, the Teatro offered the theater to private customers for the first time. Up to 90 performances were broadcast in one subscription .

First commercial use

Paris

Théâtrophone , advertising poster by Jules Chéret from 1896

After the successful operation of the demonstration system in the Musée Grévin, the theatrophone was again presented to a wider public during an international exhibition, this time at the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 . In this context, the theatrophone Thomas Alva Edison was shown during a banquet, who himself had presented his improved phonograph at the world exhibition. Edison is said to have been "delighted" with the new invention and recommended that it be introduced in New York immediately.

Coin Operated Theater Trophy

The Compagnie du Théâtrophone was founded in 1890 to further market the theater . The entrepreneurs Marinovitch and Szarvady developed coin-operated receivers with which the theater was operated commercially. With the insertion of 50  centimes , the current program could be heard for 5 minutes, for 1 franc you were connected for 10 minutes. The first of these receivers were put into operation on May 26, 1890 in the foyer of the Parisian Théâtre des Nouveautés . Other devices were installed in hotels, cafes and other public places. Broadcasts from several theaters and opera houses were offered, and during the day you could hear an electric piano playing . The latest news was read for 5 minutes between the events, which is why the theatrophone is considered the earliest example of the telephone newspapers popular at the turn of the century .

The coin-operated theatrophones technically corresponded to a normal telephone, but the connection was made via three lines. Two of them were used for the stereophonic reception of the performances, a third was used for communication between the user and the organizer. The customer could select the desired venue by operating a switch, and the beginning of the performance was then indicated by a signal lamp. The devices were portable; the connection to the Compagnie du Théâtrophone's network was made by connecting them to special sockets.

Exchange of the Compagnie du Théâtrophone (around 1892)

In order to attract regular listeners, tokens for the coin-operated theatrophones were offered at discounted subscriptions . In addition, private households could also use the theater; the annual fees of 180 francs and the usage fees of 15 francs per performance were so high that only the upper classes could afford this investment. Nevertheless, the Compagnie du Théâtrophone was able to win more than 1,300 subscribers by 1893. In the case of connections in private households, the connection to the desired event location was made by telephone operators in the central exchange of the Compagnie du Théâtrophone , which was set up in Rue Louis-le-Grand. Because the performance could initially only be increased by increasing the number of microphones (and batteries), the number of possible listeners to a performance was limited by the number of microphones installed on the stage.

Outside France

As early as 1887 a Paris opera was broadcast to Brussels. A dense network of theatricals developed in Belgium, so performances were broadcast over the telephone lines from Brussels to Ostend . The broadcasts were so popular that in 1899 Giuseppe Verdi fought for a ban on the broadcast of his opera Rigoletto . The introduction of the theater in Sweden in 1887 was similarly successful . A demonstration system in Stockholm was proudly shown to state guests such as the Saxon King Albert or the German Kaiser Wilhelm II . In the years that followed, thanks to the rapid spread of the telephone in Stockholm, music broadcasts found an ever larger audience.

Message reader of the telephone Hírmondó

In Germany and Austria, however, the theatrophones remained a curiosity. After the first attempts in Berlin and Munich, concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic were broadcast in the Berlin Urania until 1896. In Austria, the théâtrophone was under the Viennese musical and theatrical exhibition in 1892 in the rotunda presented, but found afterwards no commercial use. In the United States , too , the theatrophone did not get beyond the experimental stage. In Budapest , Tivadar Puskás , who had helped to set up the Parisian telephone network in the early 1880s, developed his own transmission technology, the Hírmondó telephone , which was based on the theater trophone. From 1893, Telefon Hírmondó offered not only music performances, but above all the latest news, stock market prices and other word programs and thus developed into the most successful and long-lasting telephone newspaper .

The theater had its greatest success outside of France in Great Britain, where it was marketed under the name Electrophone . In 1891 a Paris opera performance was broadcast to London for the first time . In the same year, coin operated theatrophones were installed in the Savoy Hotel in London . In 1892 the Universal Telephone Company installed a theater trophy for Augustus Harris in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and one in the Theater Royal Drury Lane . In Crystal Palace a demonstration plant has been set up, as well as musical performances from London were up by Liverpool and Manchester transmitted.

The great public interest in these demonstrations led to the establishment of Electrophone Ltd in 1895 , which offered private customers the installation of a system in their homes for £ 5  for an annual fee of £ 10. There were 18 venues in the Electrophone program , and services were broadcast on Sundays. By the turn of the century, Electrophone Ltd. 600 subscribers, including Queen Victoria .

Theatrophon and electrophone became the epitome of the modern world. While the Portuguese writer José Maria Eça de Queiroz in his posthumously published novel Stadt und Gebirg described in an ironic tone how fine Parisian society used the theater for their amusement, Jules Verne described in his utopian novel Die Propellerinsel from 1895 how with help The theater's concerts are broadcast via submarine cables to a floating city inhabited by billionaires. The British writer Ouida described in her short story The Massarenes , published in 1897, a character as “a modern woman of the world. As expensive as an ironclad and as complicated as a theater. "

The theater at the beginning of the 20th century

Electrophone Salon in London, around 1901

With the expansion of the state telephone network, the number of users of the theater also grew. It became possible to listen to the Compagnie du Théâtrophone's transmissions without an additional receiver over the normal telephone for a small license fee, but stereophonic reception was no longer possible. Households with only one telephone connection could not receive any telephone calls while the theater was broadcasting.

The Swiss manufacturer E. Paillard called his exclusive model of a phonograph in 1899 “Théâtrophone”. After the gramophone had established itself as a new entertainment medium at the beginning of the 20th century , listeners to the theater became increasingly demanding. A major drawback was the lack of a reinforcement option. The electron tube was only in the experimental stage. The first mechanical telephone amplifiers, such as the Brownian relay introduced in 1910, switched another carbon microphone into the line, which made the signal distortion and the typical noise for music transmissions too great. The writer Marcel Proust , who had been a subscriber to the theater since 1911, wrote that he once mistook the restless theater audience for a piece of music during a break because of the poor sound quality. On the other hand, he was so enthusiastic about a performance of Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande that he was following on the theater trophone that Proust recommended this work to his friends.

Spectacular campaigns were carried out both in France and in Great Britain to attract new customers. On May 21, 1913, a performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde was broadcast from the Paris Opéra in London, while at the same time the program from the London Alhambra Theater was transferred to Paris. This event caused a sensation, especially in London, and thus had the desired effect. The number of subscribers rose to over 2,000 and continued to grow when, after the outbreak of World War I, thousands of people canceled their normal telephone connections and instead used the electrophone to listen to the music halls' program by the “fireplace at home” . The British soldiers at the front were also familiar with the principle of the electrophone, the Times reported in December 1914 that the soldiers in the trenches were enjoying gramophone recordings transmitted over a distance of eight miles using the field telephone .

In France, interest in the theatrophone also remained high. In 1914, the Hotel Wagram had theatrophones installed in all rooms. Despite the use of increasingly sensitive microphones, the Compagnie du Théâtrophone soon reached the limits of its capacity. The number of subscribers had to be limited because the number and performance of the microphones that could be used on the stages were no longer sufficient to meet the demand. Only after 1923 was the number of participants who could hear a performance significantly increased by further technical improvements. The first tube amplifiers made it possible to increase the output without increasing the number of microphones. By 1930 headphones were increasingly being replaced by loudspeakers , so that more than 300 listeners could be connected to a single opera performance at the same time.

Competition from radio

Newspaper advertisement for the theater from 1927

The high popularity of the theater at the end of the 1920s was surprising in that it had been broadcasting regular radio programs in Paris since 1921. In London the situation was different. While the first broadcasts of the Marconi station, which was put into operation in 1920, were no competition for the electrophone due to the regular station failures , a serious opponent arose with the establishment of the BBC at the end of 1922.

As early as 1910, the American inventor Lee De Forest had attempted to wirelessly transmit opera performances from the Metropolitan Opera based on the theater . However, the quality of the transmission was still disappointing, since detector receivers were common at the time, which were difficult to set and had poor selectivity. Only with the introduction of the powerful audio receiver at the end of the 1910s could music programs be transmitted in acceptable quality. When an opera performance was broadcast on the radio for the first time in London on January 8, 1923, Electrophone Ltd reacted calmly, as it was assumed that it would be a long time before radio could achieve the technical brilliance of the electrophone. In fact, the end of the electrophone came within two years; on June 30, 1925 operations ceased.

In other countries the transmission of music over the telephone had gained acceptance with varying degrees of success, but was also gradually supplanted by the radio (see History of Radio ). In various European countries, salons were set up under the name Pathéphone , in which music recordings from records were offered via telephone lines. A similar system with phonograph recordings existed in the United States from 1910. Two years later, based on the Hungarian telephone Hírmondó , the New Jersey Telephone Herald was founded in the United States, its own telephone newspaper , but it was short-lived. In Italy, the telephone newspaper l'Araldo Telefonico was founded in 1910 , which switched from telephone to wireless transmission in 1922 and was later incorporated into the RAI . In Sweden, at the beginning of the 20th century, music broadcasts over the normal telephone network were very popular, so in 1915 around 10,000 Stockholmers followed a concert on Swedish Children's Day over the telephone at the same time. Regular broadcasts continued until 1925, after which the radio took over this function.

In Paris, the theater trophone lasted seven years longer. Further improvements to the speaker system ensured that it could keep up with the development of radio and that both systems existed in parallel. In fact, in the early years of radio, the same technology was used to record live events as with the theater. And in 1930 the president of the Compagnie du Théâtrophone was still convinced that the theatrophone was the simplest and most reliable technology for the transmission of sounds. But the independence of radio from fixed lines for transmission was ultimately to be decisive, and with the sound film a competition arose which also provided the audience with the images for the sound. In addition, the company now had to pay such high copyright levies to SACEM that it was no longer competitive. At the end of 1932 the Compagnie du Théâtrophone had to surrender and, as before, ended Electrophone Ltd. their service.

Similar technologies in the succession

The Hungarian telephone Hírmondó remained as a telephone-based information and entertainment medium for a long time after the breakthrough of radio; the program of this telephone newspaper was continued into the 1940s. In Switzerland, the telephone broadcast was used from 1931 to supply mountain regions with radio programs. As a technical improvement, low frequency transmission was replaced in 1940 by high frequency transmission ( wire radio over long wave ). This meant that radio programs could be received over the same line in parallel to the telephone calls. Only the introduction of ISDN and ADSL put an end to this technology. Wire radio was widespread in Germany during and shortly after the Second World War; in Italy it is still used today as a filodiffusion .

Even if the technology of the theater was quickly forgotten, the idea of ​​this distribution channel for entertainment programs and their marketing remained for a long time. The theater was the first medium to demonstrate the economic potential of home entertainment . In some hospitals, church services are still offered over the house phone today, and today's media scholars see Clément Ader's vision in the music downloads .

Direct transmission of theater performances was part of the early history of radio and television in German-speaking countries too . Since these media have emancipated themselves from the means of attention for the purpose of attention, the broadcast of theater performances without "media-appropriate" processing has been avoided.

The tradition of the theater was revived in 2005 with the Dial-a-Diva art project , which offered musical performances over the phone worldwide. The project is part of the Stavanger 08 art program of the European Capital of Culture Stavanger in 2008. The Lisbon Teatro Nacional de São Carlos also recalled its tradition by broadcasting the opera premiere The Fairy Tale by Emmanuel Nunes live in January 2008 in 14 Portuguese theaters and cinemas let. In July 2008, the Bayreuth Festival broadcast a live stream on the Internet with the slogan: " Richard Wagner's vision becomes reality."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Robert Hawes: Radio Art . Green Wood Publishing, London 1991, ISBN 1-872532-29-2 , p. 24.
  2. ^ Carl Dahlhaus, Sieghart Döhring (ed.): Piper's Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters , Vol. 4, Munich: Piper 1991, ISBN 3-492-02414-9 , p. 164
  3. ↑ Anton A. Huurdeman: The Worldwide History of Telecommunications . Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken 2003, ISBN 0-471-20505-2 , p. 182.
  4. ^ Charles Henry Cochrane: The Wonders of Modern Mechanism: A Résumé of Recent Progress in Mechanical, Physical, and Engineering Processes . JB Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1896, pp. 396-397. Other sources mention 10, 12, 14, or 80 microphones.
  5. ^ A b c Théodore du Moncel: The Telephone at the Paris Opera . In: Scientific American , December 31, 1881, pp. 422-423; accessed on March 9, 2008.
  6. ^ Carl Friedrich Baumann: Light in the theater. From the Argand lamp to the incandescent lamp headlight , Steiner, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-515-05248-8 , p. 98.
  7. ^ Marvin: When Old Technologies Were New , p. 209.
  8. ↑ Victor Hugo: Choses vues. Souvenirs, journaux, cahiers. 1849-1885 .
  9. ^ Vanessa R. Schwartz: Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris . University of California Press, Berkeley 1998, ISBN 0-520-22168-0 , p. 115.
  10. ^ Scientific American : Opera by Telephone, June 14, 1884, p. 373; accessed on March 6, 2008.
  11. ↑ a b c K.V. Tahvanainen, stereophonic music by phone.
  12. ^ The Theatrophone. The Electrical Engineer dated Aug. 30, 1889; accessed on March 5, 2008.
  13. ↑ a b M. Perron: Le théatrophone. In: Le Magasin pittoresque. Année 60, 1 Ser. 2, T. 10, Paris 1892, pp. 180-181.
  14. ↑ a b M. Testavin: L'Organisation actuelle du théâtrophone. In: Annales des postes, télégraphes et téléphones. January 1930, p. 27.
  15. ^ André Lange: Stratégies de la musique. Mardaga, Brussels 1986, ISBN 2-87009-264-4 , p. 117.
  16. ↑ Hubert Reitterer, Vlasta Reittererová: Miscellanea Smetaniana. In: Miscellanea theatralia: Sborník Adolfu Scherlovi k osmdesátinám Divadelní ústav, Prague 2005, ISBN 80-7008-180-5 , pp. 360–387.
  17. ↑ Wanted, a Theatrophone. Electrical Review of July 5, 1890; accessed on March 6, 2008.
  18. ↑ a b Luca Gábor, Magda Gíró-Szász: Telephonic news dispenser. Hungarian Broadcasting Company, Budapest 1993, ISBN 963-7058-05-2 .
  19. ↑ P. J. Povey, R. A. J. Earl: Vintage Telephones of the World. Peter Peregrinus, London 1988, ISBN 0-86341-140-1 , p. 67.
  20. ↑ José Maria Eça de Queiroz : City and Mountains in the Gutenberg-DE project
  21. ↑ Jules Verne: The Propeller Island. (PDF; 12.3 MB) in the Arno Schmidt reference library.
  22. ^ A modern woman of the world. As costly as an iron clad and as complicated as theatrophone. Quoted from André Lange: Histoire de la Television ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / histv2.free.fr
  23. ↑ http://www.radiophonomania.ch/ctheatrophone.htm , accessed on May 1, 2008
  24. ↑ http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/mechamp/mechamp.htm , accessed on August 24, 2008.
  25. ^ William C. Carter: Marcel Proust: A Life . Yale University Press, New Haven 2000, ISBN 0-300-08145-6 , pp. 497-499.
  26. ↑ Tim Crook: Radio Drama , p. 19.
  27. ↑ Daily Mail, April 4, 1916, quoted from Tim Cook: Radio Drama , p. 18.
  28. ↑ The Times, December 16, 1914, quoted from Tim Cook: Radio Drama , p. 20.
  29. ^ Jim McPherson: Before the Met: The Pioneer Days of Radio Opera . In: Opera Quarterly . Vol. 16, No. 1, 2000, pp. 5-23.
  30. ^ The Times : Entertainment by Wireless: The Future of the Electrophone, January 10, 1923; accessed on March 10, 2008.
  31. ^ Gert J. Almind: Coin-Op Telephone Line Music . Danish Jukebox Archives ; accessed on March 18, 2008.
  32. ↑ Popular Mechanics: Phonograph Selection by Telephone . Popular Mechanics , April 1910, pp. 489-490; accessed on March 18, 2008.
  33. ^ G. C. B. Rowe: Broadcasting in 1912 . In: Radio News , June 1925, pp. 2219-2220; accessed on March 18, 2008.
  34. ^ Comitato Guglielmo Marconi International: Le origini della radiodiffusione in Italia , accessed on March 13, 2008.
  35. ↑ Time : "Lindbergh" & "Massacre!" Of December 31, 1928; accessed on March 18, 2008.
  36. ↑ Patrice Carre: Le téléphone, entre public et privé, ou la mise en scène d'une technique , accessed on May 1, 2008
  37. ↑ Paul Collins: Theatrophone - the 19th-century iPod. New Scientist 2008; 2638:
  38. ↑ on television, see for example: Doris Rosenstein: 'Theater im Fernsehen'. Concept of a phase structure for the history of theater broadcasts on television in the Federal Republic of Germany (1953–1989). In: Helmut Kreuzer , Helmut Schanze (ed.): Television in the Federal Republic of Germany. Periods - caesuras - epochs (= Siegen series. Volume 104). Winter, Heidelberg 1991, ISBN 3-533-04369-X , pp. 76-93.
  39. ↑ Homepage of Dial-a-Diva ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 27, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dialadiva.net
  40. ↑ Peter P. Pachl: Be reminded of nothing and everything  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.nmz.de   . In: Neue Musikzeitung , Volume 57, No. 3, 2008, p. 45.
  41. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 15, 2008.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / live.bayreuther-festspiele.de

literature

  • Danièle Laster: Splendeurs et misères du "théâtrophone" . In: Romantisme No. 41, 1983, pp. 74-78. (French)
  • Karl Väinö Tahvanainen: Stereophonic music by telephone , originally published in Jan-Erik Petersson (Red.): Tekniska museets årsbok , Daedalus, Stockholm 1987. (Swedish)
  • Carolyn Marvin: When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century , Oxford University Press, New York 1988, ISBN 0-19-504468-1 , pp. 209-212. (English)
  • Catherine Bertho-Lavenir: Innovation technique et société du spectacle: le théâtrophone à l'Exposition de 1889 . In: Le Mouvement social No. 149, 1989, pp. 59-69. (French)
  • Tim Crook: Radio Drama . Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-21602-8 , pp. 15-20. (English)
  • Paul Collins: Theatrophone - the 19th-century iPod . In: New Scientist , No. 2638, January 12, 2008. (English)

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