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“You’re very excited by this Your eyes are shining”

“You bet I’m excited It’s like you told me I could suddenly fly to the ht-hundred-foot one-reelforever in nickelodeons But there’s a potential for a huge new audience Theater- and operagoers would flock to longer two- and three-reelers Sound would let us tell bigger stories I would quit Picture World in a flash topictures”

“So young Clyde has his hands on so very valuable”

“If it works,” said Marion

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“There are three technical problems that no one has been able to solve” She enuers of her left hand, starting at her index finger and ending on her ring finger, where beside her eold band from San Francisco

“One: synchronizing the sound with the picture; the actor’s words must match the movements of his lips, just as a theater audience hears what it sees on the stage Two: a sound; ittheaters Three: fidelity; so they feel the power of human voices and the beauty of music”

“What you’d expect in a great opera house”

“Hundreds of opera houses! Si Pictures could play in every city at once Seen and heard by millions But so far, no one in Europe or A those three probleiven up, ruined Beiderbecke and Lynds’s Talking Pictures machine has to solve all three”

“If it does,” said Bell, “they own a coold mine”

“And an artistic treasure Isaac, this is so exciting”

“What do you think of Ly

nds’s scheme to sell it to Thomas Edison?”

Marion thought on Bell’s question

“It is very risky to bring a new idea to Thomas Edison He doesn’t want new inventions unless they’re his own He fights tooth and nail to keep hishis ca the competition His Motion Picture Patents Company has USpatent infringements, and he hauls independent fil The courts are on his side because he’sthe reforainst nickelodeons — But worst of all, if you’re not working under his Edison Company license, you can’t buy perforated Eastman Kodak film stock, which means that you can’t take quality pictures And frankly, that is the reason I don’twith Preston Whiteway on Picture World Edison can’t touch me Topical films occupy a separate universe, and Preston is too rich to be intimidated”