ResonantLive Sound Archive

Equipment file · Sound-on-film theatre system

Photophone theatre system

RCA · 1928

Evidence status · documented

Identity and core specifications are documented; some historical fields remain unavailable.

RCA Photophone was RCA's variable-area optical sound-on-film system, marketed from 1928 against Western Electric. RCA also supplied complete theatre equipment: amplifiers, sound heads and horn loudspeakers.

Introduced
1928
Category
Sound-on-film theatre system
Intended use
Optical film sound recording and theatre playback
Production
RCA Photophone Inc.

Equipment photographs · 1

"RCA Photophone" ad in The Film Daily, Jan-Jun 1929 (page 1313 crop)

1 / 1 · "RCA Photophone" ad in The Film Daily, Jan-Jun 1929 (page 1313 crop)

"RCA Photophone" ad in The Film Daily, Jan-Jun 1929 (page 1313 crop)·RCA Photophone, Inc. (The Film Daily, 1929)·Public domain

Why it mattered

  1. 01

    Its rivalry with Western Electric during the conversion to sound pushed theatre amplification forward.

  2. 02

    RCA's theatre work fed its portable PA products such as the [[rca-pg-63|PG-63]].

Engineering record

Recording chain
Variable-area track with condenser microphones and a photographic recorder[1]

Original pricing

No reliable period price located

2026 equivalent

Not calculated without a reliable original price.

Public price evidence was not sufficient to publish a defensible original figure.

Use in the field

No named deployment could be tied to this exact item by a checked source yet. Know of one? Suggest it on the contribute page.

Manuals & original documents

No authoritative manual or original document has been located for this profile.

Sources

  1. 1The RCA Photophone SystemWireless World (reproduced at r-type.org) · technical paper · 1931

Contribute to the record

Know more about Photophone theatre system?

Corrections, firsthand information, original documents, and credited photograph sources are welcome.

Your email is private and will not appear in the archive. Contributions are not published automatically.

Back to all equipment Back to The public-address age

Help build the archive

A missing piece? A correction?

Contribute to Resonant

Support the archive

Resonant is built one verified record at a time: research hours, archival image rights, and the hosting that keeps every era, equipment file, and citation free to read. If this archive is useful to you, a donation of any size keeps the next entry moving.

How donations are used
Venmo@mercer-aplinOpen Venmo, tap the pay field, type the handle, then send any amount.Send any amount · no account needed to viewCash App$MercerAplinOpen Cash App, tap the $cashtag field, type the tag, then send any amount.Send any amount · no account needed to view

Payments go directly to the archive’s editor through Venmo and Cash App. Resonant is an independent project rather than a registered charity, so donations are not tax-deductible and nothing is sold or subscribed to in return.