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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.6
Dead medium: the theatrophone; the electrophone
From: bruces_AT_well.com (Bruce Sterling)
Source: WHEN OLD TECHNOLOGIES WERE NEW: Thinking About
Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by
Carolyn Marvin
Oxford University Press 1988 ISBN 0-19-504468-1
pages 209-210
"The most popular feature of the Paris Exposition
Internationale d'Electricite of 1881 was such an
arrangement, variously described as the theatrophone and
the electrophone. From August to November crowds queued
up three evenings a week before two rooms, each containing
ten pairs of headsets, in the Palais d'Industrie. In one,
listeners heard live performances of the Opera transmitted
through microphones arranged on either side of the
prompter's box. In the other, they heard plays from the
Theatre Francais through ten microphones placed at the
front of the stage near the footlights. Not only were the
voices of the actors, actresses, and singers heard in this
manner, but also the instruments of the orchestra, the
applause and laughter of the audience == 'and, alas! the
voice of the prompter too.'
"Efforts to reeach extended audiences by telephone
required elaborate logistical preparations. Its
application to entertainment, therefore, remained
experimental and occasional. In Europe entertainment uses
of the telephone were often an aristocratic prerogative.
The president of the French Republic was so pleased with
the theatrophone exhibit at the Paris Exposition that he
inaugurated a series of telephonic soirees with
theatrophonic connections from the Elysee Palace to the
Opera, the Theatre Francais, and the Odeon Theatre.
"The King and Queen of Portugal, in mourning for the
Princess of Saxony in 1884 and unable to attend the
premiere of a new Lisbon opera, were provided with a
special transmission to the palace through six microphones
mounted at the front of the opera stage. The same year
the manager of a theatre in Munich installed a telephone
line to his villa at Tutzingen on the Starnberger Sea in
order to monitor every performance and to hear for himself
how enthusiastically the audience applauded. The office
of the Berlin Philharmonic Society was similarly connected
to its own distant opera house. In Brussels, the
Minister of Railways, Posts and Telegraphs and other high
public officials listened to live opera thirty miles away
at Antwerp.
"Beginning in 1890, individual subscribers to the
Theatrophone Company of Paris were offered special hookups
to five Paris theatres for live performances. The annual
subscription fee was a steep 180 francs, and 15 francs
more was charged to subscribers on each occasion of use.
"In London in 1891, the Universal Telephone Company
placed fifty telephones in the Royal Italian Opera House
in Covent Garden, and another fifty in the Theatre Royal,
Drury Lane. All transmitted exclusively to the estate of
Sir Augustus Harris at St. John's Wood, with an extension
to his stables. By 1896 the affluent could secure private
connections to a variety of London entertainments for an
inclusive annual rent of ten pounds sterling in addition
to an installation fee of five pounds. The queen was one
of these clients. In addition to having special lines
from her sitting room to the Foreign Office, the Home
Office, the Board of Green Cloth, and Marlborough House,
Her Majesty enjoyed direct connections to her favorite
entertainments."
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| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |