Public Address Systems1

Abstract

A public address system comprises electrical equipment to greatly amplify a speaker's voice so it will reach a much larger assemblage than he could speak to unaided. Beginning with the presidential conventions of the two major parties in 1920 and the inaugural address of President Harding in March 1921, when a special address system installed by the telephone engineers enabled him to address an audience estimated at 125,000, there followed in rapid succession, many public events demonstrating the value of such systems. One of the most notable of these occurred on Armistice Day 1921, when the speeches, prayers and music at Arlington, Virginia, were heard, not only by 100,000 persons gathered there at the National Cemetery, but by some 35,000 in New York City and 20,000 in San Francisco. On this occasion the three public address systems, one for each of these cities, were joined by long distance telephone circuits. The fundamental requirements of a satisfactory public address system are naturalness of reproduction and wide range of output volume. The meeting of these two requirements for music proves more difficult than for speech. The public address system here described is most readily considered in three sections — “pick-up” apparatus which is placed in the neighborhood of the speaker and converts his words into undulatory electric currents; a vacuum tube amplifier for amplifying these currents; and a “receiver-projector” for reconverting the current into sound waves and distributing the sound over all of the audience. In the present system each of these three parts of the equipment has been designed with the intention of making it as nearly distortionless as possible, so that the various parts might be adaptable for audiences ranging in size from possibly one thousand to several hundred thousand, and might also be used in connection with the long distance telephone lines and with either radio broadcasting or receiving stations. One of the larger public address systems is easily capable of magnifying a speaker's voice as many as 10,000 times. The pick-up device whether of the carbon microphone variety or a condenser transmitter need not be placed close to the speaker's lips but will operate satisfactorily when four or five feet away. The loud-speaking receiver mechanism is so designed that it will carry a power of several watts with small distortion. Under normal conditions, 40 watts distributed among a number of receiver-projectors arranged in a circle is ample to reach an audience of 700,000 persons. — Editor.