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One town, one house-line, one answer at directory strength: sound came to Walkerton through the town's only picture house — the house listed as the Lincoln in 1916 and trading as the Rialto by 1947 — because there was never a second house to bring it first. By the dated evidence, sound was fully established here by 30 October 1947, when the Rialto's advertised program (Republic, RKO Radio, and Twentieth Century-Fox product, a Technicolor musical among it) is inconceivable as a silent bill. The installation itself — the year the house wired for sound, the system it chose, the first talkie it advertised — is not in the record reached, and the pioneer flag is therefore planted at exactly this strength: the Lincoln/Rialto house was this town's sound pioneer by sole occupancy, its sound course dated only at its far end, 1947. The settler is named and reachable: the Independent's advertising run of 1928–1932, digitized on Hoosier State Chronicles, where a small-town house announced its conversion in display type the week it happened; joined by the Film Daily Year Book lists, which marked sound-equipped houses in those years. Until that run is read, no conversion year is printed, and any source that offers one without the advertisement is not followed.
Sources: Walkerton Independent, 30 October 1947 (Rialto sound-era program); Polk 1916–17 (Lincoln, sole house); Hoosier State Chronicles run of the Walkerton Independent and Independent-News (located November 2026; sound-era advertising run named as settler).