In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

As I am no longer financially interested in the cement gun, I may say with pride that there are now approximately 1,250 machines in use, not only in the United States, but also in the principal foreign countries. In addition to the use for which it was originally designed, that of restoring masonry and concrete structures, many other important purposes are now served by this mechanism. In coal mines it is being used to keep slate roofs from falling and to fireproof the timbers. Irrigation ditches and reservoirs are being lined and dams are being faced and protected against the destructive action of water and frost by this method. In tunnel construction, a lining put in with the cement gun prevents falls and insures an absolute sealing. It protects steel, protects piles against teredo and fire, protects structures against acid, restores boiler settings and preserves them from further action of the heat, rebuilds baffle walls, makes economical floor and roof slabs, and is being used extensively in putting up walls of buildings that are permanent and fireproof.

My next trip to Africa in 1909 also served to develop another activity besides taxidermy. One of the principal objects of this trip was to get moving pictures of the Nandi spearing lions. However, I found that you can't stage a native lion hunt with any certainty, for neither the lion nor the native, once the action begins, pays any attention to the movie director. In order to have even a fair chance of following the action with a camera you need one that you can aim up, down, or in any direction with about the same ease that you can point a pistol. There were no movie cameras like this, and after failing to get pictures of several lions I determined not to go to Africa again until I had one.

When I got home I set to work on the problem and after much experimentation completed a working model that bore no likeness to the conventional motion-picture apparatus. To one familiar with the old types of camera the Akeley resembled a machine gun quite as much as it resembled a camera. During the war I used to say that the boys who operated it would be well protected and Photoplay in January, 1919, related a story of the American advance in France which bore out my opinion. While setting up the machine to make some shots in a still-burning and newly occupied village, a young lieutenant was confronted suddenly by seven Germans. Mistaking his formidable film apparatus for a new type of Yankee machine gun, they threw up their hands and surrendered. The story is probably all the better because its truth is doubtful.

Since its perfection the Akeley camera has been carried into many of the far-away corners of the globe by museum expeditions and explorers. The Katmai Expedition of the National Geographic Society, the Mulford Biological Expedition to the Amazon Basin, the Third Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, the MacMillan Arctic Association, and the British Guiana Tropical Research Station at Kartabo under the direction of William Beebe, are some of those which have been equipped with Akeleys. In taking "Nanook of the North," the picture made for popular distribution by the Revillon Frères Arctic Expedition, Mr. Flaherty used two of my cameras. Martin Johnson, whose motion pictures of the South Sea Islands and of Africa have won him renown as a "camera hunter," is planning to include three in the equipment for his next African expedition. To a degree at least, the camera is accomplishing the purpose for which it was designed.

While I had little idea at first that this camera would fill any other needs than my own, as it has been perfected it has proved its practicability for general use. The fundamental difference between the Akeley motion-picture camera and the others is a panoramic device which enables one to swing it all about, much as one would swing a swivel gun, following the natural line of vision. Thus instead of having to manipulate two cranks with the left hand, one to tilt the camera and the other to move it horizontally, the operator by means of a single control secures a steady movement which may be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal, and which enables him to keep a moving object always in the centre of the field. This flexibility especially adapts the camera not only for wild animal photography, but also for studio work, where an erratic follow-up is to be accomplished, and for news reel photography. It was this advantage, combined with another special qualification, the freer use of the telephoto lens—which brings a distant object into the foreground on the screen—which made possible a successful picture of the Man-o'-War race and the Dempsey-Carpentier prize fight. Anthropologists have found the telephoto lens useful in making motion pictures of natives of uncivilized countries without their knowledge. Because of the difficulty of securing the proper lighting in the woods, I had paid particular attention to the shutter so that as perfected the shutter admits thirty per cent. more light than the usual camera shutter. This characteristic also has commended the camera to general use. In out-of-door photography on a dark day as well as in the studio, where the lighting is one of the greatest items of expense, its advantage is obvious. Tom Mix and Douglas Fairbanks are both making extensive use of the camera now and a recent feature directed by Lawrence Trimble was made with it.

I was working on the camera, modelling a little and mounting the elephant group, when the war came on us. That meant a call for every man's energy and brains. I was keen to do something, but there popped into my head an old unfortunate phrase that had long held lodgment there. "Nothing but a taxidermist." That was the sentiment of an editorial published in the Youth's Companion, a magazine which was almost my Bible, some fifty years ago. As a youngster I always had to combat the feeling that taxidermy was of no importance, both on my own part, when I was not completely lost in the joy of my work, and also on the part of those about me. But, inasmuch as it had been the advertisements of books on taxidermy in the Companion that had given me my first encouragement, I felt a particular resentment toward a magazine which would so betray its advertisers and its readers.

My conviction that museum exhibition is playing an important part in modern education has long since satisfied me that the work which I have chosen as mine is worth while, but all through my experiences at Ward's and in Milwaukee the doubt persisted. Was I not wasting my life on something that did not count? And, needless to say, my own doubt was deepened by the indifference of others.

With the war came the cessation of all normal life. An occupation popularly considered as unessential as mine ought to stop among the first. Anyway, I had to get into it. The only way to be happy was to get into it, but there was something rather ridiculous about the idea that an African naturalist and a "good-for-nothing taxidermist" could be of much service in wartime. At first it did not strike me—or any one else, for that matter—that the principles I had worked out for taxidermy, for the cement gun, and for the camera might be applied to the mechanical devices of warfare.

But work began with an order from the Government for a lot of Akeley cameras. A call from the Signal Corps of the War Department asking me to bring them down took me to Washington shortly after war was declared, with the result that I accepted a contract whereby the entire output of the camera shop was turned over to the United States Government.

Soon after I became a Specialist on Mechanical Devices and Optical Equipment in the Division of Investigation, Research, and Development of the Engineer Corps. My chief was Major O. B. Zimmerman, who thirty years before had been my student in Milwaukee. He had wanted to become a taxidermist, but in those days taxidermy seemed a mighty poor game and I did my best to dissuade him from any such mad career. His wisdom in following my advice is proved by the fact that when the war broke out he was in Belgium as one of the leading engineers for the International Harvester Company. I had a desk in Major Zimmerman's office, but my actual work was done in the camera shop in New York, in the American Museum of Natural History, and in various laboratories. At least once each week I rode back and forth from Washington to New York. My duties were those of a consulting engineer, but they were much varied, for we had several things under way all the time. Wherever a problem, mechanical or otherwise, arose, I went to look things over, and if I had any suggestions to make, I was assigned to that job. I spent several weeks at Brunswick, Georgia, where concrete ships were under construction and where my experiments with the cement gun served me in good stead. The fact that the concrete ships were not successful was not the fault of the concrete gun. It did its part.