Often the best way to understand a new technology is to compare it to an older one already understood. Frequently when writers in the late 1920s introduced the talkies, the simile of choice was the automobile. George Klee used the car to illustrate his point that the talkies were still in an embryonic stage: "The talking film may by no means be compared to the present film in the same way as the electric engine to the steam locomotive or the airplane to the automobile."¹ On the subject of the part-dialogue film, "it was as if Henry Ford had tried to ease into production on his new car by sending out his old model with a new gearshift, promising a complete model in a few months."² Jesse Lasky of Paramount also used the car as a paradigm: "It would be foolish to pretend that the talking...