A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was achieved in a commercially practical way. The first commercial screening of movies with fully synchronized sound took place in the United States in April 1923. In the early years after the introduction of sound, films incorporating synchronized dialogue were known as "talkies." The first feature-length movie originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial systems.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1862: American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862))

1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright aboard the Wright Flyer conducted the first successful flight of a powered fixed-wing aircraft. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers)

1944: Malmedy massacre: Waffen-SS troops under Joachim Peiper shot at about 150 unarmed prisoners of war with machine guns near Malmedy, Belgium. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre)

1989: The Simpsons made their debut as an animated series on the Fox television network. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening... The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it. -- Wilbur Wright (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilbur_Wright)