Ernst Presser Selenium Cell
date: label: date made
content: 1904-1913
name: label: maker
content: Lauste, Eugene Augustin
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: This is an Ernst Presser selenium photocell used by Eugene Augstin Lauste during his experimentation with sound-on-film technology ca. 1904-1913. Lauste used these cells in recording and reproducing sound. It is a short metal cylinder painted black with metal terminals extruding from a rounded edge and flat attachment for fixture to a pole. One side (large surface) of the cylinder slides open to reveal the selenium cell, a graphite-colored disc with a spiral pattern etched into its face.
label: Description
content: The PHC’s Early Sound Cinema Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000040] includes the unit’s holdings of apparatus, film and other media related to the history of matching recorded sound to projected motion pictures. The collection includes over 50 pieces of apparatus related to Eugene Augustin Lauste’s experiments with sound-on-film technology. Lauste, a pioneering motion picture engineer, used selenium cells to record playable soundtracks alongside images on film in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Lauste failed to find commercial success with his inventions, and Bell Laboratories bought the rights to Lauste’s work and collections for patent litigation use before donating the materials to the Smithsonian in the 1930s. The collection also includes several pieces of apparatus used to record and project motion pictures with sound before the process became an industry standard, two short lengths of film used to demonstrate early processes and a film of a lecture on the history of sound experiments from 1922.
label: Description
content: This collection is one in a series documenting the PHC’s Early Cinema Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000018]. The cinema-related objects cover the range of technological innovation and popular appeal that defined the motion picture industry during a period in which it became the premier form of mass communication in American life, roughly 1885-1930. See also finding aids for Early Cinema Equipment [COLL.PHOTOS.000037], Early Color Cinema [COLL.PHOTOS.000039], Early Cinema Film and Ephemera [COLL.PHOTOS.000038], and the Gatewood Dunston Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000021].
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Motion Pictures
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
label: See more items in
content: Photography
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Bell Telephone Laboratories
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PG.4046.24
label: catalog number
content: 4046.24
label: accession number
content: 129430
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Photocell
label: Object Name
content: photocell
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)