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Tykociner

Name: Joseph Tykociner

Nickname/Alias: born: Joseph Tykocinski-Tykociner

Achievements:  Sound on film

Born: 1867; Poland

Died: 1969; Illinois (Aged 102)

Field & Discipline: Engineering; Invention

Language: Polish; Russian; German; English

Father: Unknown

Mother: Unknown

Siblings: Unknown

Spouse: Helena (d. 1953)

Children: Unknown

Education: Unknown

Major Work:

"Photographic recording and photoelectric reproduction of sound" (1923)

Life & Times:

In 1885, at the age of 18, Tykociner left Poland and emigrated to America. During this first period in America (1885-1900), Tykociner found work in the electrical industry and is known to have seen public exhibitions of the Edison phonograph, and to have met [met] Tesla* in New York City. In 1897, while living in New York, he saw his first silent motion picture and first considered the problem of sound in synchronism with visual images.

While still in the U.S., he first experimented with a manometric flame, with the idea of photographing on a moving film strip the fluctuations caused by sound waves hitting a diaphragm. After processing the film, he then planned to run it through a mechanism incorporating a light source, which would transfer the variable density of its photographed sound image to a crude selenium cell (a photoelectric device used to generate or control an electric current).

In 1900 Tykociner returned to Poland, and studied briefly in Berlin.  The

following year he worked for a year as a junior engineer with the British Marconi Company in London. As a result, he was with [worked for] Marconi* in London in 1901, at the time of the first transatlantic radio message.

In 1902, now known as a pioneer of short-wave radio, he was invited to Russia in order to found a technical laboratory for wireless research at [worked for] Wehrner Siemens*  in St. Petersburg. Here he quickly rose to the position of Chief Engineer and Director of Research at Siemens, and was responsible for equipping the entire Russian navy with radio prior to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), for which he received a gold watch from Czar Nicholas II.

During World War I, Tykociner was made head of the Russian Signal Corps, and it was at this time that he met and befriended the young engineer [a pal of] Zworykin*.   After the Russian Revolution Tykociner moved to Poland in 1918, where during the next two years he collaborated in establishing the Polish national radio network.

In 1920 he emigrated permanently to the United States, briefly joining Zworykin at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until in 1921 he was offered the post of first research professor of electrical engineering at the University

of Illinois.

At the University of Illinois, Tykociner was able to resume his investigations into photographing sound onto a motion picture film, now aided by the availability of the stable and sensitive photoelectric cell invented in 1913 by Jacob Kunz, a professor of physics at Illinois.

Tykociner began to develop a [first developed] sound-on-film* system utilizing a mercury vapour lamp that could be modulated for recording,  the recently perfected vacuum tube amplifier invented by [used work of] De Forest*, and an oscillator developed by Edward Wente at Western Electric.

On 9 June 1922, before the Urbana Section of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Tykociner held one of the earliest public showings of a talking motion picture, by projecting and reproducing a composite print of both motion-picture and variable-density soundtrack.

Although the sound reproduced was far from perfect, it proved that a system employing a modulated mercury arc light for recording and a Kunz photocell for reproduction could work as a system for recording and reproducing synchronized sound on motion-picture film, provided there was additional electronic improvement.

However, Tykociner failed to patent his invention, and it was De Forest's Phonofilm (in which, similar to Tykociner's system, a sound track was photographically recorded on the film by a beam of light modulated by the sound waves, and the sound reproduced during projection by directing a beam of light through the sound track onto a photocell, the response of which was electronically amplified) that was demonstrated in theatres between 1923 and 1927, and became the basis for the process eventually adopted by the motion-picture industry.

During the following years at Illinois, Tykociner continued to research in electronics, revolutionizing the design procedures for radio antennas, and in the 1930s (building on the work of [work related to] Marie Curie* in Paris) pioneering the use of microwave radiation.

Assessment: Had he patented his idea he might have been known as the inventor of [invented] sound on film*.

Oneliner: Joseph Tykociner, sound recording pioneer

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