Modern Electrics, June, 1913, page 238:
"MAGNAPHONE" IN NEW YORK MAKES PICTURES TALK
An audience of 600 invited guests in the "Aerial Theatre," above the New Amsterdam Theatre, in New York, marveled at a demonstration of talking motion pictures produced by a Baltimorean--George R. Webb.
Among those who watched attentively and with undisguised interest were Marc Klaw, A. L. Erlanger, Patrick Casey, Marcus Loew, W. B. Franklin and other theatre magnates.
The first number on the program was a comic operetta sketch, the scene of which was laid in England. The audience was unstinting in its applause.
The next feature, though seemed to accomplish the feat of making the spector-auditors forget that they were not, in fact, witnessing the entertainment of a performer in the flesh. An unusually pretty opera singer rendered a selection from "Pagliacci" and people in the audience forgot to wonder at the perfection of the device which caused her clear notes to burst forth in precise accord with her facial expression and commented on the excellence with which she rendered the part. No higher compliment could have been paid to Mr. Webb's invention.
The audience had forgotten the mechanism. Aside from perfect synchronism of picture movement and voice inflection, all metallic, phonographic sound had been obviated and the notes were as clear and distinct as if the actress had been behind the scenes.
The chief point of difference between this and other talking motion pictures is that the "Magnaphone," as Mr. Webb's instrument is called, and the moving picture machine are operated by the same man and run by the same motor, from the same point, the mechanical connection preventing the one from getting a fraction of a second ahead of the other, while in most of the graphophone pictures heretofore tried two operators are necessary, one at the moving picture machines and one on the stage with the graphophone, the synchronism between the two depending on the skill of the operators in starting the film and the record simultaneously and an electrical connection between the two machines to maintain synchronism after they are started properly.
The "Magnaphone" motion pictures are the result of ten years' study of scientific transmission of sound by electricity on the part of Mr. Webb. Most of his experiments have been made in Baltimore, either at his home at Garrison and Belle Avenues, Arlington, or in the Hoen Building, where he has his manufacturing plant. He was one of the organizers of the Maryland Telephone Company and of the Wilmington Telephone Company, Delaware, and his original researches were made with a view to improving the telephone.
Instruments similar to the sound producing part of the device used have for seven years been used in the Grand Central depot, New York, and in the Union Station, Washington, to announce the departure of trains.--Dr. L. K. Hirshberg.