Videos
NIPPER RUNS AMOK!
This ‘Mutoscope’ was commissioned by the German branch of the Gramophone Company, and sent to the London branch in October 1900. It comprises 700 photographs mounted onto cards and attached to a drum wheel, when the drum is turned in a ‘What The Butler Saw’ type of machine, it gives the impression of movement.
The film shows one gentleman preparing a gramophone while another watches. These gentleman are said to be Theodore Birnbaum, then Manager of the Berlin Sales Branch and Sinkler Darby, one of the Gramophone Company’s recording experts based in Germany. Soon Nipper appears and starts to howl at the sound coming out of the gramophone. The men watch on in amusement and then lift up the dog – with hilarious results!
This table model mutoscope machine complete with the Nipper film were still at the company’s office in the 1960s, but disappeared when the record factory moved to Uxbridge Road. Happily, the mutoscope drum – albeit without the machine – has since been returned to the EMI Archive Trust. The film was on display at the EMI Centenary Exhibition in 1997.
TRAINS AT HAYES – FIRST EVER STEREO FILM
It might not seem much initially but this is ‘Trains At Hayes’, the world’s first ever piece of film shot and recorded with stereo sound. It was made by prolific engineer and innovator Alan Dower Blumlein, the inventor of stereo from his office window in the EMI building in Hayes, West London in 1935. While working at EMI Blumlein other ground-breaking inventions included electrical television and airborne radar as well as stereo. A true genius and EMI hero.
ALAN BLUMLEIN STEREO MODEL
Built by Alan Blumlein in the 1930s to illustrate the concept of his revolutionary recording invention – stereo. And still by far the easiest to understand explanation of how a stereo record works. Notice how the reading on the two dials are different representing different elements of the sound field.
ALAN DOWER BLUMLEIN – PERFECTING STEREO SOUND
As he perfected his revolutionary stereo recording technique, Alan Blumlein made these three films to show how the sound mirrored the movements of the people speaking (and moving) on screen.