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Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system23.7.1926
Commercial use by William Fox
Movietone entered commercial use when William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation bought the entire system including the patents in July 1926. Although Fox owned the Case patents, the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, and the American rights to the German Tri-Ergon patents, the Movietone sound film system uses only the inventions of Case Research Lab.
William Fox hired Earl I. Sponable (1895–1977) from Case Research Lab in 1926, when he purchased the sound-on-film patents from Case. The first feature film released using the Fox Movietone system was Sunrise (1927) directed by F. W. Murnau. It was the first professionally produced feature film with an optical sound track. Sound in the film included only music, sound effects, and a very few unsynchronized words.
Less than two years after purchasing the system from Case, Fox bought out all of Case's interests in the Fox-Case company. All of Fox's sound feature films were made using the Movietone system until 1931, when it was superseded by a Western Electric recording system using the light-valve invented by Edward C. Wente in 1923. However Fox Movietone News used the system until 1939, because of the ease of transporting this single-system's sound film equipment.
(photo source timemarcheson.wordpress.com)
