The Coming of Sound to the Australian Cinema, 1924-1937

This book examines how the wiring of Australian cinemas for sound became tangled with questions of technological expertise, labor, and the politics of a significant media industry in flux. The story runs from 1924 to 1937 and draws on the trade and popular press, patent records, corporate filings, and the personal histories of the people who performed the work. It opens in the mid-1920s, when the Australian De Forest Phonofilms franchise gathered a cohort of skilled workers and laid a foundation for local innovation. When the Hollywood-backed conglomerates Western Electric and RCA, along with rival Pacent, moved to convert major urban theaters in Australia’s capital cities across 1928 and 1929, their push toward ruthless standardization met unexpected resistance. More than sixty-five locally developed sound systems answered the challenge. Raycophone, Australtone, Markophone, and Auditone were among the most prominent, built by inventors, engineers, theater showmen, and entrepreneurs drawn from radio and numerous other industrial fields. The wiring and servicing of Australia’s nearly 1,500 cinemas became a fiercely contested frontier in Hollywood’s global campaign. The stakes ran well beyond the machinery, reaching into national and cultural identity and the question of who would control a converging ecosystem of film, radio, and recorded sound.