The Discovery of Sound.

As you probably know, or at least have heard about, films used to be silent. The theatres that would show films would have a house piano player that would play along with the images to give the audience at least some audible stimulation. The speech was often written on "Intertitles", the words on screen in between the pictures. Sometimes a live raconteur would narrate the on-screen actions to the audience.  Film makers and inventors alike were keen on coming up with an idea that could make moving images and sound play in sync at the same time. Unless you haven't read a book or watched TV since you were a baby you will have heard of Thomas A. Edison, usually referred to as simply Edison(if you're thinking why does that name ring a bell then A. It's safe to say you should read more and B. He invented the light bulb). He invented the Kinetophone along side the quite eccentrically named film-maker William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson and together they used this device to record the first known film as well as live sound at the same time way back in late 1984 or early 1985. It is known as the Dickson film experiment. This was the first attempt at recording moving images and sound simultaneously and the clip of this experiment is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s
 Edison tried to get sound and film to mesh a long time before it was a commercially viable concept. He was trying to get sound and image to work from the very beginning cinema, way back in the late 19th century. The difficulties with getting sound incorporated into films were many. Technology was the biggest stumbling block but even audience satisfaction was a point that had to be dealt with. Audiences weren't left wondering why there wasn't sound in film and had got used to the sound being provided live. Films had become far better in terms of story telling as well and films were being edited in ways to provide all the information the audience needed with minimum use of Intertitles. But again it was the technology available that was the hardest obstacle to overcome.
 The problems were with amplification and synchronization. It was no good having sound that was out of sync or at the wrong volume. Several American corporations began to really tackle these issues: RCA, Western Electric, AT&T and Warner Brothers. Western Electric were looking in to both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc technology. Since Edison had already invented the phonograph it made more sense to use disc technology, as the phonograph was made for discs. The phonograph was an invention Edison came up with to play back telegraph recordings and to automate speech sounds by telephones. This was the first device that could record and playback sound, so it wasn't a huge leap for the machine to be used in the film business. Warner Brothers bought Western Electric and together they came up with a viable sound system: Vitaphone. It was essentially a phonograph platter hooked up to a projector so that the disc that contained the sound would play at the same time as the images. In modern day terms it would be like playing a DVD with no sound and playing a CD at the same time with the sound at the same time, from the same machine.
 Even after its invention, sound presented a host of problems. The early sound cameras and equipment were big and noisy, and had to be kept in their own soundproof room, called a "blimp." It took a while for someone to figure out that you could move the microphone around by placing it at the end of a stick—called a "boom"—just above the range of the camera. This made early sound films seem very static because actors had to speak to a stationary mike, and the cameras movement no longer had that graceful and supple fluidity it had been developing over the years. Another obvious problem was that certain actors didn't sound the way they looked, which really unsettled audiences as they couldn't look at the actor in the same way. Some actors struggled with the new demands of sound in film, such as remembering lines, getting the timing of speech right and also while some actors in silent films were very good, they couldn't speak convincingly. It's one skill to act physically and another to deliver speech effectively. 
 The first sound films, or "talkies" as they are sometimes called, found getting the balance between dialogue and action hard to get right. This made film producers fear the loss of audiences as all the issues of the first talkies could potentially put audiences off, whereas silent films had an automatic audience. 
 Sound in film did catch on though. Audiences weren't deterred and so came a new wave of film making. Scenarists now had to be well versed in script writing, actors now have to have a sense of delivery and certain stereotypes were no longer seen as acceptable or usable. Asian vamps were in some of the silent films but they didn't transfer well to the talking pictures. Also some accents and dialects weren't clear and sounded like gibberish through the eras primitive microphones. In paved the way for some of the most highly regarded writers of recent times to come and write for the big screen, such as the revered Ernest Hemingway. (5)(6)(7)
 Technology got better and better and the methods improved with time as well. Booms became more popular, acting techniques got better, scripts were being written by talented writers and editing became a tool of mighty importance to all. The introduction of sound has made the world of film better in many ways and while we take it for granted, it can be a tool that changes how we feel about the images we see, how we react to them and how we perceive them when used effectively.
 I think it's important just to give Thomas A. Edison a special footnote as it was inventions and innovations, as well as his obsession with sound, that helped the film industry to be what it is today.