Any ideas about this object?

[Stephen M]

Hi there, I work at a museum and came across this object in a collection that I'm currently working on. It apparently comes from an old regional theatre in New South Wales, Australia, and looks like it could be a record cutting lathe, something I know virtually nothing about. I wondered if anyone had seen anything like this, and knows perhaps where and when it might have been made, and whether it is the sort of equipment that would have been used in a theatre, perhaps to record local ads?

[displacedsnail]

Hello Stephen, how interesting! It looks to me like the kind of lathe they would have used to create records for the Vitaphone in the 1920s, an early movie projector system that used one motor to drive both the record player and the film reel so they'd be perfectly synced. Here's a video of them making a recording, and you can see what looks like your lathe starting at about 10 seconds in, in the bottom left corner.

Just a guess based on where you found it and what it generally looks like, but I don't have any other information about who made them. Hope that helps, maybe someone else knows more?

- Joe

[Stephen M]

Thanks Joe, that certainly does make sense because the projector equipment used at the theatre included a Western Electric Universal Base, which incorporated the Vitaphone system as far as I know.

Stephen

[andyburnout]

That's a cool find Stephen M, great to see it still exists. I wonder if the NFSA have any recordings from that machine.

[Aussie0zborn]

That's neat. Are you in NSW?

[trailerparkjesus]

Industrial as a lathe can get, really cool

[displacedsnail]

My partner and I are planning a trip up to NYC in a few weeks, we're planning to visit the Museum of the Moving Image, they have an operational Vitaphone on display. I wonder if they'll have one of the lathes, too? We're pretty stoked to go see it.

[Stephen M]

Thanks everyone. The lathe was originally in a Dubbo theatre as far as we know, and is now in the National Historical Collection in Canberra. I can only guess they used it to record local adds, but not at all sure. Hoping to get some advice from NFSA.