Brunswick Seville phonograph and an AMAZING FIND INSIDE!

[Lyn]

I found a Brunswick Seville phonograph at an estate sale on Thursday, April, 20, 2023.

 

Took it home and opened it all up. Down inside were these following items.

 

I am guessing that they have been there since about 1929 and were used to play and project the music -maybe for silent movies.

 

( NOTICE THE NEEDLE IN THE REPRODUCER)

 

In 1929, Western Electric entered as a market competitor for early cinema sound systems.[5] It created the Western Electric Universal Base, a device by which early silent cinema projectors could be adapted to screen sound films.[110] Western Electric designed a wide-audio-range horn loudspeaker for cinemas.[110] This was estimated to be 25% efficient,[110] thus allowing a cinema to be filled with sound from a 3-watt amplifier. This was an important breakthrough in 1929 because high-powered audio valves (tubes) were not generally available.[111]

In addition to being a supplier to the Bell System, Western Electric played a major role in the development and production of professional sound recording and reproducing equipment, including:

Engineer E. B. Craft holding a soundtrack disc during a demo of the Vitaphone projector in 1926.

the Vitaphone system which brought sound to the movies;

the electrical recording technology adopted by record companies in the late 1920s.

Thanks for any comments and ideas to  lyn@levens.com  

 

Kind regards,

 

Lyn Levens

 

[CurtA]

Not sure what I'm looking at... the first item looks like a sound input plug of some sort.  It is marked "Weston" Electric and the reproducer is marked "Webster" Electric - nothing its marked "Western Electric".  

 

In my opinion, this is an adapter designed to "play" records through a radio, similar to modern Bluetooth adapters and nothing leads me to believe it has any connection to silent movies or Western Electric.  A theater wouldn't use a Brunswick upright to play movie soundtracks and silent movies did not have specific soundtracks.  Usually a "theater" organ played live was common.

[Roaring20s]

Here's an article found on-line. Some company history.

https://warci.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/sept14.pdf

and an ad ...

https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Service-&-Sales-IDX/Archive-Radio-Retailing-IDX/IDX/20s/Radio-Retailing-1929-04-OCR-Page-0118.pdf

 

James.

[CurtA]

Thanks for the links, James...

[CurtA]

At the time of these ads, phonographs were going out of style and being replaced by radios.  These pick-ups to play through radios were apparent attempts to revive the usefulness of outdated phonograph technology.  Most people already had some sort of record player, so why not make use of that big thing in the living room?

 

We have the same issues today - what do you do with outdated computers, TVs or cell phones?

Edited April 23, 2023 by CurtA