Histories
Live from the Paris Opera
Sickly and often bedridden, by February
1911 French novelist Marcel Proust had
one constant companion in the solitary
confines of his cork-lined Paris sanctuary:
a mysterious contraption that he kept by
his bed. When he wasn’t labouring over
his magnum opus, A la recherche du
temps perdu, Proust would collapse into
bed, grasp a pair of wires trailing into a
primitive headset, and lose himself in
Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et
Mélisande. What he heard was no
scratchy gramophone recording, but a live
broadcast – and in stereophonic sound.
PARISIANS who stepped off the custom-built enthusiasts elsewhere quickly followed suit.
electric tram at the International Exposition But Ader’s exhibit was different: Parisians
of Electricity in 1881 could have been forgiven were asked to place a pair of receivers over
for believing the future had just arrived. both ears for what was dubbed “binauricular
The exhibition boasted eight apartments audition”. He had stumbled on the concept
equipped with everything from electrically after hearing two microphones together on a
operated kitchens to a billiards room with pair of receivers. The result, reported Scientific
an electric scoring system. But the star American, was that “singers place themselves,
attraction was altogether more exotic: crowds in the mind of the listener, at a fixed distance,
queued behind 20 telephone receivers to some to the right and others to the left. It is
hear a live performance from the Paris Opera. easy to follow their movements, and to
Inventor Clement Ader had placed dozens of indicate exactly, each time they change their
microphones among the Opera’s footlights position, the imaginary distance at which they
and run telephone cable through the Paris
sewers to the exhibition hall, delivering music
appear to be.” Exposition-goers were hearing
stereo sound broadcast for the first time.
into the ears of transfixed listeners. Ader and other would-be broadcasters were
The idea of broadcasting music is as old as dogged by technical difficulties: the music
telephony itself. On 22 March 1876, just 12 days came through faintly, and amplification
after Alexander Graham Bell’s momentous technology was so rudimentary that the
“Watson, come here, I want you” ushered in quality of the signal quickly degraded, even
the telephone era, The New York Times was with only a few listeners on the line. “Prima
predicting a wired future where multichannel donna by telephone is not, as a rule, so
entertainment was a household utility like gas satisfactory,” grumbled one writer for
and water. “By means of this remarkable London’s Daily News. There were problems
instrument, a man can have the Italian opera, placing the microphones in theatres too:
the Federal Congress, and his favorite whenever the music swelled, the primitive
preacher laid on in his own house,” the paper transmitters shook in their housings, and they
proclaimed. “Fifty eminent preachers, of had to be hung from rubber bands to isolate
different denomination, can be kept them from vibrations. The instruments of the
constantly on draught.” Within a year, pianist orchestra presented their own challenge, and
Frederick Boscovitz had phoned his rendition one early engineering note directed that the
of Yankee Doodle from Philadelphia to a rapt microphones should “not be fitted in close
audience in Washington DC, and telephone proximity to the bass drum or the trombone”.
44 | NewScientist | 12 January 2008
But by 1890, the Theatrophone home
stereo system was ready to make its debut in
Paris. For a hefty annual fee of 180 francs –
equivalent to about three months’ rent for a
comfortable Paris apartment – plus 15 francs
per performance, subscribers received a
phone box with a headset and a transmitter so
they could tell a Theatrophone operator which
venue they wished to listen in to. For most
Parisians, though, the Theatrophone was far
too expensive to install at home. For their
entertainment, coin-operated Theatrophone
listening stations were installed in hotel
lobbies and cafes across Paris; 50 centimes
bought two and a half minutes of listening
time. Curiously, the company found that one
of its most popular offerings wasn’t even the
shows; it was the player-piano music that ran
between performances. “The artistry was not
important,” recalled one customer. “It was
new, and that was enough.”
Interest quickly spread across the Channel
to England. In 1892, crowds at the Crystal
Palace pleasure grounds were treated to a
demonstration line from the Lyric Theatre,
and in 1894 Electrophone Ltd launched a
London service. For £10 a year you could
purchase four receivers and a multiheadset
“electrophone table” for family listening –
and service direct from 18 London theatres.
London churches were also wired for sound
with microphones hidden inside a dummy
Bible on the pulpit. By the turn of the century,
the service had 600 well-heeled subscribers,
“Prima donna by
telephone is not, as a
rule, so satisfactory”
including Queen Victoria. The company also
ran a plush public Electrophone saloon at the
former Pelican Club in Soho’s Gerrard Street,
where listeners could relax in stereophonic
bliss by the club’s old fireplace. For the less
affluent, coin-operated machines were fitted
at the Earl’s Court entertainment grounds.
Despite the US’s pioneering role in
musical telephones and a short-lived service
based in New Jersey, numerous broadcasting
schemes failed to get off the ground. Yet they
found success in other countries, most
notably Italy and Hungary. Driven by the
prolific Hungarian inventor Tivadar Puskas,
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 You can see clients enjoying the Electrophone experience at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/census/living/time/s44L.htm
the Telefon Hirmondo service became
Budapest’s byword for news, music and
entertainment. Beginning in 1893 and
eventually building up to 15,000 subscribers,
its receivers were a familiar presence at the
city’s public establishments. Hirmondo’s
broadcast schedule, with time checks, news
and sporting updates every 15 or 30 minutes,
and long musical performances in the
evening, proved remarkably prescient of later
radio programming.
Still, some artists were worried that
listeners at home might empty the theatres.
One of the final acts of Giuseppe Verdi’s career
was to sue a Belgian telephone music service
in 1899 for broadcasting his opera Rigoletto.
And private Theatrophone services were
regarded by many as a plaything for the rich
and idle. Harper’s Weekly joked that Telefon
Hirmondo had made the city of Budapest “the
finest for illiterate, blind, bedridden and
incurably lazy people in the world”.
French novelist Marcel Proust could
certainly vouch for the bedridden, as he
constantly requested opera programmes from
his bedside Theatrophone. These broadcasts
were one of his great solaces as he poured his
STEFANO BIANCHETTI/CORBIS LEFT: JULES CHERET (1836-1932)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN
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strength into A la recherche du temps perdu,
even if the sound quality was sometimes so
poor that, as Proust admitted in 1911, he had
once mistaken a noisy crowd for a song:
“I thought the rumblings I heard agreeable if
a trifle amorphous until I suddenly realised
it was the interval!”
Even as it improved its sound and gained
subscribers, the health of telephone
entertainment was as precarious as Proust’s.
True, the invention of the vacuum tube
dramatically increased the strength of the
signal, allowing large numbers of people to
share the same system. By 1914, the Hotel
Wagram in Paris boasted a Theatrophone
service in all 200 of its rooms. As the number
of subscribers grew, prices fell and London’s
Electrophone service eventually had more
than 2000 customers.
But with the advent of cheap and
portable wireless broadcasting, as early as
1923 The Times in London noted that radio
broadcasting “seems likely to seriously invade
the province of the Electrophone”. Promoters
Posh Parisians don their headphones for a live
performance direct from the opera house
dismissed such concerns, arguing that “it
would be a long time before broadcasting
by wireless of entertainments and church
services attained the degree of perfection
now achieved by the Electrophone”. In fact,
it took less than a decade. Telefon Hirmondo
disappeared amid mergers, and by 1932 both
the Electrophone and Theatrophone lines
had gone dead.
For the next four decades consumers could
reflect ruefully that their grandparents had
stereo sound and they didn’t. Listeners would
not catch up again until the roll-out of FM
stereo broadcasting in 1961. Years more passed
before stereo recordings became the norm.
Perhaps Ader’s invention has only truly
arrived with today’s music downloads via
souped-up phone lines and cables. Proust
would hardly have been surprised by our iPod
era: photographs from 1901 show clients at
the Electrophone saloon in Soho bearing
distant expressions on their faces; they
neither talk nor look at each other. Change
their headsets for earbuds, and their
petticoats and frock coats for T-shirts and
jeans, and you have the very picture of
modern commuters. Paul Collins ●
12 January 2008 | NewScientist | 45