Externally the Mutograph is remarkable for its size, which makes it a giant of its kind. The complete apparatus weighs, with its accumulators, several hundreds of pounds. It takes a very large picture, as animatograph pictures go—two by two-and-a-half inches, which, besides giving increased detail, require less severe magnification than is usual with other films. The camera can make up to a hundred exposures per second, in which time twenty-two feet of film will have passed before the lens.
The film is so heavy that were it arrested bodily during each exposure and then jerked forward again, it might be injured. The mechanism of the mutograph, driven at regular speed, by an electric motor, has been so arranged as to halt only that part of the film which is being exposed, the rest moving forward continuously. The exposed portion, together with the next surface, which has accumulated in a loop behind it, is dragged on by two rollers that are in contact with the film during part only of their revolutions. Thus the jerky motion is confined to but a few inches of the film, and even at the highest speeds the camera is peculiarly free from vibration.
An exposed mutograph film is wound for development round a skeleton reel, three feet in diameter and seven long, which rotates in a shallow trough containing the developing solution. Development complete, the reel is lifted from its supports and suspended over a succession of other troughs for washing, fixing, and final washing. When dry the negative film is passed through a special printing frame in contact with another film, which receives the positive image for the biograph. The difficulty of handling such films will be appreciated to a certain extent even by those whose experience is confined to the snaky behaviour of a short Kodak reel during development.
The Mutoscope Company’s organisation is as perfect as its machinery. It has representatives in all parts of the world. Wherever stirring events are taking place, whether in peace or war, a mutograph operator will soon be on the spot with his heavy apparatus to secure pictures for world-wide exhibition. It need hardly be said that great obstacles, human and physical, have often to be overcome before a film can be exposed; and considerable personal danger encountered. We read that an operator, despatched to Cuba during the Spanish-American War was left three days and nights without food or water to guard his precious instruments, the party that had landed him having suddenly put to sea on sighting a Spanish cruiser. Another is reported to have had a narrow escape from being captured at sea by the Spaniards after a hot chase. It is also on record that a mutograph set up in Atlantic City to take a procession of fire-engines was charged and shattered by one of the engines; that the operators were flung into the crowd: and that nevertheless the box containing the exposed films was uninjured, and on development yielded a very sensational series of pictures lasting to the moment of collision.
The Mutoscope Company owns several thousand series of views, none probably more valuable than those of his Holiness the Pope, who graciously gave Mr. W. K. Dickson five special sittings, during which no less than 17,000 negatives were made, each one of great interest to millions of people throughout the world.
The company spares neither time nor money in its endeavour to supply the public with what will prove acceptable. A year’s output runs into a couple of hundred miles of film. As much as 700 feet is sometimes expended on a single series, which may be worth anything up to £1000.
The energy displayed by the operators is often marvellous. To take instances. The Derby of 1898 was run at 3.20 p.m. At ten o’clock the race was run again by Biograph on the great sheet at the Palace Theatre. On the home-coming of Lord Kitchener from the Soudan Campaign, a series of photographs was taken at Dover in the afternoon and exhibited the same evening! Or again, to consider a wider sphere of action, the Jubilee Procession of 1897 was watched in New York ten days after the event; two days later in Chicago; and in three more the films were attracting large audiences in San Francisco, 5000 miles from the actual scene of the procession!
One may easily weary of a series of single views passed slowly through a magic-lantern at a lecture or entertainment. But when the Biograph is flashing its records at lightning speed there is no cause for dullness. It is impossible to escape from the fascination of movement. A single photograph gives the impression of mere resemblance to the original; but a series, each reinforcing the signification of the last, breathes life into the dead image, and deludes us into the belief that we see, not the representation of a thing, but the thing itself. The bill of fare provided by the Biograph Company is varied enough to suit the most fastidious taste. Now it is the great Naval Review off Spithead, or President Faure shooting pheasants on his preserves near Paris. A moment’s pause and then the magnificent Falls of Niagara foam across the sheet; Maxim guns fire harmlessly; panoramic scenes taken from locomotives running at high velocity unfold themselves to the delighted spectators, who feel as if they really were speeding over open country, among towering rocks, or plunging into the darkness of a tunnel. Here is an express approaching with all the quiver and fuss of real motion, so faithfully rendered that it seems as if a catastrophe were imminent; when, snap! we are transported a hundred miles to watch it glide into a station. The doors open, passengers step out and shake hands with friends, porters bustle about after luggage, doors are slammed again, the guard waves his flag, and the carriages move slowly out of the picture. Then our attention is switched away to the 10-inch disappearing gun, landing and firing at Sandy Hook. And next, as though to show that nothing is beneath the notice of the biograph, we are perhaps introduced to a family of small pigs feeding from a trough with porcine earnestness and want of manners.
It must not be thought that the Living Picture caters for mere entertainment only. It serves some very practical and useful ends. By its aid the movements of machinery and the human muscles may be studied in detail, to aid a mechanical or medical education. It furnishes art schools with all the poses of a living model. Less serious pursuits, such as dancing, boxing, wrestling and all athletic sports and exercise, will find a use for it. As an advertising medium it stands unrivalled, and we shall owe it a deep debt of gratitude if it ultimately supplants the flaring posters that disfigure our towns and desecrate our landscapes. Not so long since, the directors of the Norddeutscher-Lloyd Steamship Company hired the biograph at the Palace Theatre, London, to demonstrate to anybody who cared to witness a very interesting exhibition that their line of vessels should always be used for a journey between England and America.
The Living Picture has even been impressed into the service of the British Empire to promote emigration to the Colonies. Three years ago Mr. Freer exhibited at the Imperial Institute and in other places in England a series of films representing the 1897 harvest in Manitoba. Would-be emigrants were able to satisfy themselves that the great Canadian plains were fruitful not only on paper. For could they not see with their own eyes the stately procession of automatic “binders” reaping, binding, and delivering sheaves of wheat, and puffing engines threshing out the grain ready for market? A far preferable method this to the bogus descriptions of land companies such as lured poor Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley into the deadly swamps of “Eden.”