Theodore Case facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Theodore Case

Born	Theodore Willard Case (1888-12-12)December 12, 1888 Auburn, New York, U.S.
Died	May 13, 1944(1944-05-13) (aged 55) Auburn, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Fort Hill Cemetery
Nationality	American
Education	The Manlius School The Cloyne House School St. Paul's School
Alma mater	Yale University Harvard University
Occupation	Chemist inventor
Years active	1916–1941
Spouse(s)	Alice Gertrude Eldred (m. 1918)
Children	4

Theodore Willard Case (born December 12, 1888 – died May 13, 1944) was an American scientist and inventor. He is best known for creating the Movietone sound system, which allowed movies to have sound directly on the film. This was a huge step forward for filmmaking!

Early Life and Learning
Family Life
His Amazing Inventions
Later Years
His Lasting Impact
See also

Early Life and Learning

Theodore Willard Case was born in 1888 in Auburn, New York. His parents were Willard Erastus Case and Eva Fidelia Caldwell Case. As a young person, Theodore went to several boarding schools. These included The Manlius School and Cloyne House School. He also attended St. Paul School to finish his high school studies.

After high school, he went to Yale University from 1908 to 1912. There, he earned a degree in chemistry. He then studied law at Harvard University for about a year. However, he soon realized he preferred science over law. Before opening his own lab, he worked with his father in labs set up in their family homes.

In 1916, Theodore's cousin passed away and left a large mansion to his father. His father then gave the property to Theodore. Theodore, his father, and Earl I. Sponable opened the Case Research Lab in the backyard of this mansion in 1916.

Family Life

Theodore Case came from a well-known family in Auburn, New York. He enjoyed playing golf and won many tournaments in his hometown. On November 26, 1918, Theodore married Alice Gertrude Eldred. They had four children together.

His Amazing Inventions

Early Discoveries

While at Yale, Theodore became very interested in how light could be used to carry sound, especially for telephones. In 1916, he opened his Case Research Lab in Auburn. There, he studied materials that changed when exposed to light.

His research led to a big invention called the Thalofide cell. This was a special tube that reacted to light. From 1916 to 1918, the United States Navy used the Thalofide cell in a top secret system. This system allowed ships to send messages using invisible infrared light.

Making Movies Talk

Theodore Case started working on how to add sound directly to movies in 1921. Many of the inventions from the Case Research Lab between 1916 and 1926 were created by Case and Earl I. Sponable. Earl worked with Case until they both moved to Fox Film Corporation in 1926.

The Navy's secret signaling system was first tested in 1917. Thomas Edison himself was there to see how well it worked. The test was a complete success, and the Navy used the system for many years. Theodore also worked with others, like Lee De Forest, to create a way to put sound onto film. This was similar to how sound films work today.

Theodore Case made several test films at his studios in Auburn, New York. These included:

Miss Manila Martin and Her Pet Squirrel (1921)
Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (1925)
Bird in a Cage (1923)
Gallagher and Shean (1925)
Madame Fifi (1925)
Chinese Variety Performer with a Ukulele (1925)

The film Gus Visser and His Singing Duck was even chosen for the National Film Registry in 2002. Sadly, hundreds of other test films made at the lab were lost in a fire in the 1950s.

Today, the Case Research Lab is a public museum. Next to it is the old carriage house, where sound-film tests were done on the second floor. This sound studio is also open to visitors. You can see a huge wooden box called a "blimp" that held the camera and operator during filming. Also on display are early amplifiers and other tools used to develop sound film.

Working with Lee De Forest

From 1921 to 1924, Case provided Lee De Forest with many inventions. DeForest was famous for inventing the audion tube, a special electronic tube. Case's inventions helped make DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process actually work.

The Case Lab turned an old silent-film projector into a recording device. With this, they created the AEO light. This light was mass-produced and used in all Movietone News cameras from 1928 to 1939. It was also used to record sound for all Fox feature films from 1928 to 1931. Movietone News used a "single-system" camera that recorded sound and picture at the same time. However, for feature films, sound was recorded on a separate machine that worked perfectly with the picture camera.

On April 15, 1923, DeForest showed eighteen short films made with the Phonofilm process in New York City. The program for this event gave credit to "DeForest-Case Patents." However, soon after, Case and DeForest had a disagreement.

The problem was that Case was not given enough credit for his lab's important work on Phonofilms. Case attended the April 1923 presentation but was never mentioned. He had warned DeForest many times to tell the truth about the inventions, but DeForest didn't listen. The films shown used the Case Research Lab's AEO Light for recording sound. They were filmed with a camera designed by the Case Lab. And they used the Case Lab's Thalofide Cell for playing back the sound.

In September 1925, Case stopped giving his lab's inventions to DeForest. This basically meant DeForest could no longer make sound films. The Case Research Lab then worked to make their sound film system even better. One of the first things Case did was change where the sound part was on a film projector. He moved it from above the picture to below it. This change helped make printing easier and prevented older Phonofilm movies from playing on Case's new equipment. Case also set a standard that the sound should be 20 frames ahead of the picture it matched. This standard was later used by all other sound-on-film systems.

Case and John Logie Baird

In June 1924, John Logie Baird, a famous Scottish inventor who helped create television, bought a Thalofide cell from Cyril Frank Elwell. This Thalofide cell, developed by Case, was a key part of the new "talking pictures" technology.

Movietone and William Fox

On July 23, 1926, William Fox, who owned Fox Film Corporation, bought Case's inventions related to sound-on-film. He then created the Fox-Case Corporation. From 1926 to 1927, Case worked with Fox's experts to develop the Fox Movietone process. Fox had also bought rights to other sound film inventions, including those from Freeman Owens and a German system called Tri-Ergon.

Later Years

On May 13, 1944, Theodore Case passed away from a lung illness at age 55. He is buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.

His Lasting Impact

After Theodore Case's death, his summer home, Casowasco, was sold to The Methodist Church by his wife, Gertrude. She sold it for $20,000. Gertrude had two rules for the sale: the church had to keep the name 'Casowasco' to honor the Case family, and the property had to be used for good purposes. Today, Casowasco is a retreat and conference center, and also a Christian summer camp.

With the money he made from selling his sound film inventions to William Fox, Case built a huge 60-room house in Auburn. It was, and still is, the biggest house in the city. This Case mansion has been used for different purposes over the years, including a mental health facility. In 2016, the church that owned it turned it into a retreat center.

The local library, the Case Memorial-Seymour Library, is named after his family and is in a building that Case helped fund. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. In 1936, Case gave his Genesee Street property to a local group. This group created an art and history museum for Cayuga County, called the Cayuga Museum of History and Art. When the Case Research Lab stopped working in 1941, the lab building and everything inside it were given to the Cayuga Museum. In the 1990s, the Case Research Lab was fixed up to look like it did originally. Now, it has an exhibit showing the amazing work of Theodore Case and his lab. The Cayuga Museum itself was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.