John Thomas “Tommy” Baltzell of Pathe News discovering a side effect of the new sound news camera that replaced his old light-weight silent hand-cranked Universal camera back in 1929.

The entire early sound camera outfits, when introduced in the late 1920s, weighed around 1400 pounds with the camera, microphone, sound amplifier, batteries, cables, tripods and other assorted odds and ends (though to be fair, most of the early amplifier system itself stayed in the truck).

And yes, the switch to sound was quite a learning curve…as well as giving many news photogs a life-time’s worth of hernias.

Newsreel cameraman and soundmen would welcome the arrival of more portable outfits a few years later.