Joseph T. Tykociner Papers (Audiovisual Digital Surrogates) | University of Illinois Archives
Audiovisual Digital Surrogates from the Joseph T. Tykociner Papers, includes a digitized film concerning Tykociner's contributions to research and innovation in sound recording as well as in the field of electrical engineering. The digitized film shows Tykociner's sound on film apparatus and demonstration. Includes images of J. T. Tykociner, Jacob Kunz (developer of the photoelectric cell connected with the new process), Paine reading aloud, and Manoah Leide playing the violin. This clip was produced from a videotape dub of a duplicate a film made in 1954 by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), in order to match the sounds of Mrs. Tykociner and the violinist. The original demonstration film was produced in 1921-22.
Additional material is available upon request, including a digitized audio recording concerning an interview with Professor Tykociner (March 9th 1967), concerning his early interest in the recording of sound and sound in moving picture; his experience as student, research engineer and faculty at the University; research and experiments with sound recording; career as research engineer for Marconi company, for German companies on radio telegraphy, for radio communications at Russian companies and the Army; his return to the US in 1920; his latter demonstration of sound in film; as well as about commercials and films using Tykociner's sound system.
To view an in-process film of Joseph T. Tykociner's sound on film demonstration with much of the original sound restored (with the support of a generous grant from National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) to preserve the motion picture film elements and potentially restore the unknown sound elements from Tykociner's experiments), see: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/Joseph+Tykociner%27s+Demonstration+of+Sound+on+Film+Technology/1_ggqu09n9. This film represents the latest results of an ongoing research project to decode the original audio from Tykociner's sound on film demonstration.
Note: The digitized interview recording is currently nearline due to copyright statements, but permissions are to be reevaluated at a later date.
For more information about Joseph Tykociner and his papers held at the University Archives, please see the Tykociner Papers main catalog record in Archon.
Administrative access to preservation, nearline, and access files is available to archives staff at: https://medusa.library.illinois.edu/collections/564
This version of the film was produced from a 16mm positive film, 200 feet in length, acquired from Arthur Wildhagen on December 10, 1970. That copy is a duplicate of a 16mm negative film held by the Motion Picture Service to match sound and images of Mrs. Tykociner and a violinist. The MPAA copy is itself a duplicate of the original film produced between 1921 and 1922. The sound track of the original film will not play in a modern projector.
The audio recording has a length of 32:23 min. It is available in MP3 format and has a size of 29.6 megabytes.
