MUSEUM OF SOUND ®

"Time and space travel provided by your hearing; the music will move you."

The Museum of Sound is a registered trademark and its unauthorized use is a violation of law. The contents of this website is copywritten. Unauthorized use of its contents is also prohibited by law. The Museum of Sound and its research arm, The Historical Institute for the Study of Sound, the H.I.S.S., were created to research, preserve, chronicle, teach and demonstrate the story of electro-acoustics,or the art of electrically amplified sounds.This purely American artform has its roots firmly planted with the patenting of the triode vacuum tube by Dr. Lee de Forest in 1907 and the patenting of the moving coil loudspeaking telephone (speaker) by Peter Laurets Jensen and Edwin Stuart Pridham in 1913. Many items have been collected since that fateful rainy Saturday morning in May of 1959 when three twelve year old boys went into the El Portal theater on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, California to hear and see their favorite movies. As Leo the MGM lion roared on the screen, one of the boys, somewhat braver than the others, snuck down to the front of the theater and crawled up the stairs that led to the back of the screen. There, he saw what gave the movies their sound. A giant horn and equally large bass bin provided the thundering commentary of the lion and the equally inspiring "Get 'em up Scout" offered by Tonto to the unfolding plot of the Lone Ranger. On the way home, one of the boys stopped by the back of a radio/t.v. repair shop and was sold his first radio, an all-american five-tube by the owner for 50 cents. This radio became the first item in the Museum of Sound and is still in the Museum's collection today. 48 years of scholarly accumulation have created in the Museum of Sound a collection that demonstrates electrically amplified sound reproduction from its birth to the present day. The Museum's horns from the teens, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and later beckon to the listener and harken an earlier time when auditioned.

In research, nothing is entirely worthless. Even a watch that has stopped is correct twice a day...The Grey Ghost

p. o. box #29303
san francisco, ca  94129

Museum visitors and Royal Listening Society