# Sound Recording By "WESTERN ELECTRIC"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sound-recording-by-western-electric/252305>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 26, 2004, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sound-recording-by-western-electric/252305 "2004-06-26T12:40:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sound-recording-by-western-electric/252305/1 "2004-06-26T12:40:56Z")

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I watch a lot ofold movies (my TV set is set to AMC and TCM). Anyway, the closong credits always show that the sound recording for the movie was done by Western Electric…is this the same company that made telephones for the Bell System?  
Does the company still exist? I understand that before about 1950, the sound track for motion pictures was optically encoded…now it is magnetic…which of these was the Western Electric system?

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**Author:** ![adirondack\_mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5a626/32.png) [@adirondack\_mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adirondack_mike)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2004, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sound-recording-by-western-electric/252305/2 "2004-06-26T13:18:25Z")

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A [Western Electric website.](http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/westernelectric_history.html)