A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DClément Ader : 1841 - 1925
In 1881, French inventor Clément Ader builds an ultra-sensitive microphone and with it, discovers the stereo effect. He uses twelve of these microphones to transmit the sounds of the Paris Opera, via lines laid through the Paris sewers, to the Exhibition Hall at the Palais de l'Industrie. Up to 48 listeners can hear the opera using two receivers each, one for each ear. * Ader called his system the Theatrephone. This is the first public broadcast entertainment.
Feedback: Russell Naughton answered:
Dear Olivier, "The musical telephone" was a major attraction at the International Electrical Exhibition in Paris in 1881, where the French engineer Clément Ader demonstrated stereophonic transmission by telephone direct from the stages of the Paris Opera House and the Comédie Francaise. In 1890, a commercial company, Compagnie du Theatrophone, was established in Paris, distributing music by telephone from various theatres to special coin-operated telephones installed in hotels, cafés etc., and to domestic subscribers. The service continued until 1932. Elsewhere, trials of concerts by telephone were held, not only on a local basis but also with distribution over longer distances, e.g. from Paris to Brussels in 1887, and from Paris to London in 1891. A mixed service of news, telephone concerts and lectures was opened in Budapest in 1893.
'Stereo', in the sense of two transducers picking up signals from two points close to each other, had been demonstrated as early as 1881, when Clément Ader had relayed music from the Paris Opera via phone lines to the Paris International Exhibition of Electricity (see Tony Askew's 'The Amazing Clement Ader', Studio Sound, September 1981, p.44). But this was nearer to 'two channel mono' than true stereo.
Clément Ader (b. Feb. 4, 1841, Muret, France--d. March 5, 1926, Toulouse), self-taught French engineer and inventor, and a pioneer of flight before the Wright brothers. Ader was an early enthusiast of aviation who constructed a balloon at his own expense during the Franco-German War of 1870-71. In 1876 he quit his job in the Administration of Bridges and Highways to make more money to support his hobby. His early inventions in electrical-communications included a microphone and a public-address device. He then focused on the problem of heavier-than-air flying machines and in 1890 built a steam-powered, bat-winged monoplane, which he named the Eole. On October 9 he flew it a distance of 50 m (160 feet) on a friend's estate near Paris. The steam engine was unsuitable for sustained and controlled flight, which required the gasoline engine; nevertheless, Ader's short hop was the first demonstration that a manned heavier-than-air machine could take off from level ground under its own power.
Le téléphone (ou électrophone Ader-Gower): 1878 Voici ce qu'Ader écrivit sur ses recherches :
J'avais, au milieu d'une planchette, enfoncé une pointe qui venait s'appuyer contre une deuxième planchette semblable plantée sur un bout de buis, le tout formant pupitre avec les deux pointes reliées en circuit. Le recepteur ne ressemblait en rien à celui de que Bell venait d'imaginer, ni comme principe ni comme forme.Ader déposa de très nombreux brevets et amélioration sur cette invention qui fît sa fortune. Il s'associa avec l'entreprise de Graham Bell en 1879. Pour la petite histoire, c'est Ader qui installa le premier téléphone de l'Elysée. Il devint alors très ami du président Grévy, avec qui il jouait souvent au billard.
On peut considérer que cet appareil est l'ancêtre de la radio. Cette invention consiste à transmettre aux abonnés un concert ou une pièce de théatre par téléphone en stéréo. Pour cela, il convenait de placer 2 séries de micros sur la scène et de disposer d'un standard téléphonqiue. Le théatrophone, présenté à l'Exposition Internationale d'Electricité de 1881, eut un succès fou. Chaque scéance coûtait la bagatelle de 5 frs de l'époque, c'est à dire 800 frs d'aujourd'hui. Ce brevet fut vendu partout dans le monde et le théatrophone fut utilisée jusqu'en 1926, à Moscou et 1937 à Paris. Bien sûr, son succès déclina beaucoup après la découverte des ondes hertziennes. Pour d'avantage de précisions, visitez le telemuseum de Suède. Ader fut surpris de cet engouement, autant qu'il fut surpris de l'échec commercial de certaines de ses inventions. Mais grâce au théatrophone et au téléphone, Ader devint multimillionaire.
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 hammer, but also the instruments of the orchestra, the applause and laughter of the 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 Paris 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 transmittted 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."
"Commercial interest in a larger, less exclusive audience [ for the theatrophone ] was not far behind. 'Nickel-in-the-slot' versions of the hookups provided by the Theatrophone Company of Paris to its individual subscribers were offered as a public novelty at some resorts. A franc bought five minutes of listening time; fifty centimes brought half as much. Between acts and whenever all curtains were down, the company piped out piano solos from its offices. "In England in 1889 a novel experiment permitted 'numbers of people' at Hastings to hear The Yeoman of the Guard nightly. Two years later theatrophones were installed at the elegant Savoy Hotel in London, on the Paris coin-in-the-slot principle. For the International Electrical Exhibition of 1892, musical performances were transmitted from London to the Crystal Palace, and long-distance to Liverpool and Manchester. In the hotels and public places of London, it was said, anyone might listen to five minutes of theatre or music for the equivalent of five or ten cents. One of these places was the Earl's Court Exhibition, where for a few pence 'scraps of play, music-hall ditty, or opera could be heard fairly well by the curious.'
"Informal entertainments were sometimes spontaneously organized by telephone operators during the wee hours of the night, when customer calls were few and far between. On a circuit of several stations, operators might sit and exchange amusing stories. One night in 1981 operators at Worcester, Fall River, Boston, Springfield, Providence and New York organized their own concert. The Boston Evening Record reported:
'The operator in Providence plays the banjo, the Worcester operator the harmonica, and gently the others sing. Some tune will be started by the players and the other will sing. To appreciate the effect, one must have a transmitter close to his ear. The music will sound as clear as though it were in the same room.' "A thousand people were said to have listened to a formal recital presented through the facilities of the Home Telephone Company in Painesville, Ohio, in 1905. And, portent of the future, in 1912 the New York Magnaphone and Music Company installed motor-driven phonographs that sent recorded music to local subscribers over a hundred transmitters."
Radio Art by Robert Hawes, photography by Paul Straker-Welds Green Wood Publishing Company Ltd, London, 1991 ISBN 1-872532-29-2 from page 24 "At about the same time as the telephone and gramophone were beginning to be domesticated, a near precursor of the radio was going through a similar process. It was a home-entertainment invention of about 1893 known as the Theatrophone, a device which grew out of the invention of the telephone and was demonstrated at the World Exhibition of Electricity in 1881. "For just a few years at the start of the century, Parisians could have Theatrophone instruments installed which actually provided home entertainment, rather than mere telephone communication, by relaying live performances from theatres. However, unlike the wireless, the Theatrophone needed wires between the transmission apparatus and the receivers, rather than broadcasting via air waves. Microphones installed on the stages of such theatres as the Paris Opera picked up the sounds of live performances and relayed them by wire to the telephone exchange, where an operator was on hand to offer a selection of programmes to subscribers renting Theatrophone receivers. "Several different programs, related from various theatres, were available to subscribers who could make their own selection by revolving a switch and inserting coins into their machines to buy a fixed amount of listening time. The Theatrophone receivers, ornamental boxes with telephone earpieces attached on trailing wires, even offered stereophonic listening by the use of a pair of microphones left and right on the stage, connected by twin lines to the home receivers. These were also installed in hotel lounges and in restaurants; furthermore, programmes could be relayed to London and Brussels via normal international telephone distribution exchanges. "By 1895, Britain had its own equivalent of the French Theatrophone. It was called the Electrophone and it offered subscribers a similar service via their telephone lines and as well as receiving 'local' relays from theatres, churches and London's Royal Opera House, they could also switch to exchange programmes from Europe via a link-up with the French company. The Theatrophone idea might have proved a great success as an entertainment and news broadcasting medium if it had not been for the appearance of the wireless which nipped it in the bud."
For a timeline of Ader's life, see http://www.mairie-muret.fr/clement_ader.htm
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