Page 38 - CINEMARECORD-100

RAYMOND COTTAM ALLSOP -

WW 1 Wireless Operator, Engineer, FM Pioneer

The following article is a partial reprint from shipboard operator in his teens and as the
a special edition of Electronics Australia inaugural chief engineer of Australia’s first
magazine, entitled “Radio Pioneers”, edited by official wireless broadcasting station, 2BL in
Neville Williams. The magazine contained 30 Sydney.
chapters, featuring the biographies of many of
Australia’s early radio pioneers. Rather than Raymond Cottam Allsop was born on 11 March
publish the entire chapter on Ray Allsop, we 1898 at Randwick, Sydney, sixth child of
have extracted the salient points relating to his native-born parents John Allsop, horse-trainer,
work on film sound. and his wife Harriet Rebecca, née Cottam.
Formally educated at Sydney Grammar School,
aymond (Ray) Allsop is well Allsop received his wireless “baptism”, while
Rremembered for his contribution to the still a schoolboy, at the hands of Father Shaw,
Australian sound-on-film industry and for his a controversial priest and radio enthusiast, who
largely unrequited love affair with FM set up an experimental wireless station at a
broadcasting. Less well known is the fact that Roman Catholic seminary in Randwick, not far
he was a licensed radio amateur at 13, a wartime from the Allsop family home.

As pictured in the 1938 World Radio Convention
Record. An IRE council member at the time, Ray
Allsop demonstrated to delegates stereo sound
reproduction and stereo film sound at Sydney’s
Plaza Theatre on 10 April 1938.

On leaving school in 1913, Allsop was
apprenticed to Father Shaw’s company, which
at the time was building Australian Coastal
Wireless stations for the Commonwealth
Government.
While still a teenager, he obtained his
Australian and New Zealand commercial
certificates and served as ship’s wireless officer
on a number of vessels engaged in the
Australasian trade, among them being the
Levuka, Riverina, Wyandra and Cooma.
His interest in telephony was actually just one
facet of a growing interest in audio technology,
extending to sound recording and the then-
intriguing subject of cinema sound – “the
talkies”. In 1921, he had worked out a scheme
for synchronising a wax cylinder with motion
picture film, but was realistic enough to admit
that sound technology had a way to go before
it could be mated successfully with film
presentation. He once described his early efforts
as “necessary dilettante dabblings”.

In his next efforts, he developed a highly
practical range of “Raycophone” supplementary
sound equipment, with which existing silent
projectors could be converted for the new
sound-on-film “talkies”.

On 10 June 1929, Allsop publicly demonstrated
his ”Raycophone” system of synchronized
sound for motion pictures at the Wintergarden
Theatre, Rose Bay. Raycophone Ltd (from
RAYmond COttam) was set up to produce the
apparatus which at £1700 was far cheaper than
the competing American system that cost
£11,000.
Raycophone sound head mounted below a Cummins & Wilson CP7 head

38 CINEMARECORD # 100