Before recounting presently the amazing and romantic story of the evolution of the motion picture from a plaything to a medium unrivalled for the promulgation of both good and evil, a Frankenstein created by Man’s ingenuity that must be given a soul to make it safe for the world, it may be well to pause at the outset to answer the query, frequently put to the writer, as to why what seems to be merely a popular form of amusement should be taken seriously as a factor in the struggle modern civilization is undergoing to save itself from destruction. Perhaps no better answer to this question can be given than is furnished by certain facts and figures presented by Will H. Hays to the National Education Association in session at Boston, Mass., in July, 1922, in the following illuminating words:
In a little over fifteen years the motion picture has grown from a naked idea until to-day it is the principal amusement of millions. It has become one of the greatest industries in America, having an investment of $1,250,000,000, with $75,000,000 paid annually in salaries and wages, and $520,000,000 taken in annually for admissions. In the United States, in the big cities and in those ample-shaded towns and villages which comprise America, there are perhaps fifteen thousand motion picture theatres and in those theatres more than seven million seats. Taking into account at least two performances a day, and applying the collected statistics, we estimate that every seven days between Maine and California, fifty million men, women and children look for an hour or two at the motion picture screen.
Nothing further need be said in regard to the importance of the general subject we have under consideration. A medium for expression which makes its imprint weekly upon the minds of approximately one half of our population is worthy of the closest study by the people of this country. Its origin, its early growth, its present status and its future as a universal language, destined, perhaps, to be the greatest civilizing medium the race has known, are topics the timely importance of which can hardly be overrated. To paraphrase an old political truism, as goes the screen so goes the country—and, possibly, the race at large.
Briefly the early history of the cinematograph is in substance as follows: By the revolutionary achievement of the Frenchman Daguerre, who discovered a method whereby sunlight could be made to fix a permanent image of an object upon a sensitized surface, a door was opened showing the way to the marvellous triumphs that the last century has vouchsafed to the camera. But impasse after impasse checked the progress of the pioneers of photography. When Daguerre began his historic career as the first photographer, an exposure of six hours—more than twenty thousand seconds—was required to obtain a permanent impression of the object photographed. Instantaneous photography seemed at that time as remote a possibility as photography in colors appeared to be but a short time ago. But the time came when Chemistry, the mother of modern marvels, solved the problem confronting the early photographers. The laboratory found a surface so sensitive to light that it could take and retain a picture perfect in detail in less than one thousandth part of a second—a feat which in Daguerre’s time would have required an exposure twenty million times as long. How important in connection with the eventual advent of the motion picture was Man’s mastery of the time-element in photography is tersely explained by Frederick A. Talbot, an authority on the early history of the cinematograph, as follows:
The wonderful achievement of instantaneous photography assumed at first a scientific rather than a commercial value. Many a “snap-shot” is taken which does not betray whether the plate has been exposed for six hours or only one-thousandth of a second; but, on the other hand, a “snap-shot” of a quickly moving object may seize upon and fix an interesting characteristic motion. It was this fact which led certain ingenious minds to perceive in instantaneous photography a valuable means of analyzing motion. If a single photograph reproduced the exact posture of a moving object at any given instant of time, they argued that a series of such photographs, if taken in sufficiently rapid succession, would form a complete record of the whole cycle of movements involved, for instance in the jump of a horse or the flap of a bird’s wing.
Thomas A. Edison, in an interview given to Mr. Hugh Weir and recently published in McClure’s Magazine, enlightens us regarding Mr. Talbot’s proposition. Asked what first suggested to him the idea of the motion-picture camera, Mr. Edison said:
The phonograph. I had been working for several years on experiments for recording and reproducing sound, and the thought occurred to me that it should be possible to devise an apparatus to do for the eye what the phonograph was designed to do for the ear. It was in 1887 that I began my investigations, and photography, compared with what it is to-day, was in a decidedly crude state of development. Pictures were made by “wet” plates, operated by involved mechanism. The modern dry films were unheard of. I had only one fact to guide me at all. This was the principle of optics, technically called “the persistence of vision,” which proves that the sensation of light lingers in the brain for anywhere from one-tenth to one-twentieth part of a second after the light has disappeared from the sight of the eye.
In other words, the fact that the human eye is a photographic camera possessing memory may eventually save civilization from the cataclysm of which contemporary prophets warn us, in that it has made possible a medium of communication for the race at large denied to us by the tongue.
Posterity will owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas A. Edison for various revolutionary inventions but it begins to be apparent to optimistic observers that perhaps his chief claim to the thanks of mankind will be due to the initial impetus he gave to the motion picture, vouchsafing to a bewildered race the universal language of the eye, by which, possibly, the brotherhood of man may eventually function to overcome the evils that have darkened our past. Says Edison: “I do not believe that any other single agency of progress has the possibilities for a great and permanent good to humanity that I can see in the motion picture. And these possibilities are only beginning to be touched.”
Will it not repay us, then, to examine the “possibilities” to which Mr. Edison refers, to the end that we may take the screen more seriously than heretofore, may regard motion picture theatres more attentively and hopefully as being, perhaps, civilization’s one best bet? Unless, however, we get a somewhat comprehensive view of the variegated past of the movies “the permanent good to humanity” that they can accomplish will not be apparent to us. Let us, therefore, get on with our story.