Western Electric

Western Electric 35 mm film projector. The machine was modified in line with the technological development of the time and is therefore not the original version. The lower part of the machines, the sound equipment, is original, made by Western Electric in the United States. The curved housings are of the Cyclex model, manufactured in New York. The projection heads are from Bauer, manufactured in Germany. The machines are also equipped with an amplifier, speaker, and motor control unit from Western Electric in the United States. The machine was run in tandem with a sister unit, and each machine played up to 20-minute reels of 35mm film. Four such machines were imported into the country in 1930, two for Nýja Bíó and two for Gamla Bíó. They were the first motion picture projectors in the country to play sound from the film. Until 1930, only silent films were shown in the country, and they were accompanied by musical instruments or a gramophone, with various methods used to create sound effects. In 1927, talkies, which were then gaining ground in America, were first mentioned. Only three years later, in 1930, the directors of Gamla Bíó, Peter Petersen, and the director of Nýja Bíó, Bjarni Jónsson, went to Denmark and familiarized themselves with these innovations in the art of cinema, and were therefore considered very forward-thinking. They decided to buy the most expensive and best equipment available, which was from Western Electric in the United States, which had an agency in Denmark. The equipment from Western Electric is marked „Tilbehører Western Electric København,“ which indicates that it was rental equipment. The machines arrived in the country in July 1930 on the Dronning Alexandrine, along with a Danish engineer, Hans Ræbild, who was responsible for outfitting and installing the equipment. The equipment from Western Electric cost about 50,000 Danish kroner at the time, and the purchase included a 10-year lease agreement and the condition that a man would be sent to the country for inspection to check the equipment every month. The supervisor of the projection equipment and Western Electric's representative from 1930 to 1945 was the rocket scientist Guðmundur Sigmundsson. The first projectionists were Ólafur L. Jónsson and Magnús Magnússon from Ofanleiti, who was the projection manager at Gamla Bíó until 1940. Ólafur Árnason later became the projectionist; he started showing films on the projectors at Gamla Bíó in 1931. On September 1, 1930, the sound projectors were used for the first time at both Gamla Bíó and Nýja Bíó, marking the first sound films shown in Iceland. The first sound picture shown at Gamla Bíó was called Hollywood Revue, and the first at Nýja Bíó was called Sonny Boy, both of which were American musicals. At first, the sound pictures were shown only in English or German; subtitles were shown occasionally and were then in Danish. It was expensive to rent the projectors from Western Electric, but the profit was good nonetheless. Attendance was sometimes so high that short films had to be dropped to make room for more main features on the schedule.