To secure the best results, the ribbon with its views should remain with a figure the longest possible time between the light and the lens, and the shifting to the next view should be as nearly instantaneous as possible. This problem has been admirably solved by C. F. Jenkins, who, in 1894, devised means for accomplishing it, and was one of the first, if not the first, to successfully project the views on a large screen adapted to public exhibitions. His apparatus is shown in [Fig. 202]. An electric motor, seen on the left, drives, through a belt and pulley, a countershaft, and also through a worm gear turns another shaft parallel to the countershaft, and bearing a sprocket pulley, whose teeth penetrate little marginal holes in the ribbon of views, and, drawing it down from the reel above, deliver it to the receiving reel on the right. On the end of the countershaft, just in front of the sprocket wheel, is a revolving crank pin or spool, which intermittently beats down the ribbon of views, causing the latter to advance through the vertical guides in front of the lens by a succession of jerks. This holds each view for a maximum period before the lens, and then suddenly jerks the ribbon to bring the next view into position. In the Kinetoscope the animated pictures not only present the movements of life, but, by a combination with the phonograph, the audible speech, or music fitting the occasion, is also presented at the same time, making a marvelous simulation of real life to both the eye and the ear.
FIG. 202.—JENKINS’ PHANTASCOPE.
Among the latest promises of the inventor is the “Distance Seer,” or telectroscope, which, it is said, enables one to see at any distance over electric wires, just as one may telegraph or telephone over them. The surprises of the Nineteenth Century have been so many and so astounding, and the principles of this invention are so far correct, that it would be dogmatic to say that this hope may not be realized.
To the sum total of human knowledge no department of science has contributed more than that of optics. With the telescope man has climbed into the limitless space of the heavens, and ascertained the infinite vastness of the universe. The flaming sun which warms and vitalizes the world, is found more than ninety millions of miles away. The nearest fixed stars visible to the naked eye are more than 200,000 times the distance of the sun, and their light, traveling at the rate of 190,000 miles a second, requires more than three years to reach us. Although so far away, their size, distance, and constitution have been ascertained, and their movements are scheduled with such accuracy that the going and coming thereof are brought to the exactness of a railroad time table. The astronomer predicts an eclipse, and on the minute the spheres swing into line, verifying, beyond all doubt, the correctness of the laws predicated for their movements. The wonders of the telescope, the microscope, and the spectroscope are, however, but suggestions of what we may still expect, for science abundantly teaches that the eye may yet see what to the eye is now invisible, and that light exists in what may now seem darkness.
No man may say with certainty what thought was uppermost in Goethe’s mind when, grappling in the final struggle with the King of Terrors, he exclaimed ““Mehr licht!”” It may be that it was but the wish to dispel the gathering gloom of his dimming senses, or perchance the unfolding of an illuminated vision of a brighter threshold, but certain it is that no words so voice the aspirations of an enlightened humanity as that one cry of “More light!”