The new innovations and changes that occurred in American life in the 20th century had a critical impact on the time and place of the film industry explosion of the 1920s. New technologies like automobiles and radios would help adapt Americans to the future film industry and put them in a position to connect and travel like never before. The ability to have faster transportation to public places and easily maintain connections between people prepared the film industry for the boost it would soon experience. During the mid-1890s, the first image projectors nicknamed Kinetoscopes became readily available to the public. Although in total silence, “people appreciated these and similar machines as technological innovations; a movie advertisement, for example, describes the film's excellent documentation of water being sprayed from a sprinkler" (Halperin). The 1900s were the time when people began to care about plots and characters, and only in the 1910s and 1920s, when more advanced technology became available, films became very popular. Adding any type of sound to films was primarily handled through the use of musical instruments, such as the organ or piano,. and it wasn't until 1923 that films actually contained music or voices. After decades of research into synchronizing sound with films, Lee De Forest found an effective way to do it. Contrary to what he believed, however, the film industry had little interest in its innovation. It wasn't until "Warner Brothers, a newcomer to the struggling industry, turned to sound as a way to compete with its larger rivals" (Mintz). A pre-recorded musical soundtrack eliminated the expense of live entertainment. In 1926, Warner Brothers released the movie Don Juan and made history. Being the first film with a... synchronized paper medium, it dictated their life. At work and off, the studios had a lot of control over what happened and how the stars would behave. This system was created primarily to quench the thirst many Americans had for information about their favorite stars. This is considered the main reason why celebrity gossip, couple names and scandals are the way they are today. The first successful feature film was called Birth of a Nation. With a running time of just over three hours and making nearly $100,000, this film grossed over $18 million and set a standard for future films. This highly racist story was considered very powerful and profound. The film adapted much of the plot from the book The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon. Controversial, exciting and interesting, this film showed every reason to be one of the best of the years '20.