Vitaphone was a
sound film system used for
feature films and nearly 1,000
short subjects made by
Warner Bros. and its sister studio
First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog
sound-on-disc system and the only one which was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack was not printed on the film itself, but issued separately on
phonograph records. The discs, recorded at 33 1/3
rpm (a speed first used for this system) and typically 16 inches in diameter, would be played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film was being projected. Many early
talkies, such as
The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound".