This Day in History 1923 : First movie with sound recorded on film

On this day in 1923, inventor Lee de Forest demonstrates Phonofilm, the first film capable of taping sound. Music was recorded on a narrow strip at the edge of the film. The demonstration showed a man and woman dancing, four musicians playing instruments, and an Egyptian dancer, all accompanied by music but no dialogue.
Feature films with sound would not debut for several years, as movie studios sought to avoid a standards war.
Until the 1920s, any sound associated with motion pictures either came from live actors and musicians or from phonographs synchronized to the action onscreen. In 1889, an assistant of Thomas Edison demonstrated the Kinetophonograph, a phonograph synched to Edison's early movie projector, the Kinetoscope. De Forest's development of film that could carry sound was acquired by Fox and evolved into the Movietone sound process, introduced in 1927.
By 1927, several different types of movie sound systems had been developed, which proved a problem for silent movie theaters. Fitting a movie theater for a sound system was extremely costly-to wire a movie house for Warner Bros.' Vitaphone sound system, for example, cost about $20,000.
Several studios, including MGM, Paramount, and Universal, agreed to wait to make talkies until they agreed on a single audio standard, but Warner Bros., not part of the agreement, released the earliest sound films. For Warner Bros., then in difficult financial straights, sound was a matter of survival: The struggling company had staked everything on acquiring the Vitaphone system and publicizing its early sound movies. The first, Don Juan (1926), starring John Barrymore, featured sound but no dialogue. The following year, the studio released The Jazz Singer, which included music as well as about 350 words of dialogue. Only about 200 theaters nationwide were equipped for Warner Bros.' Vitaphone, so a silent version of the movie was also distributed. The company was lucky to have made the gamble--sound caught on and revived Warner Bros.' fortunes.