Although the possibilities of taking pictures photographically was known as early as the third decade of the nineteenth century, drawings only were used in the many devices for rendering the illusion of movement. In the preceding chapter in which we have given a brief history of the early efforts of synthesizing related pictures, typical examples of such instruments have been given. But the pictorial elements used in them were always drawings.
It was not until 1861 that photographic prints were utilized in a machine to give an appearance of life to mere pictures. This machine was that of Mr. Coleman Sellers, of Philadelphia. His instrument brought stereoscopic pictures into the line of vision in turn where they were viewed by stereoscopic lenses. Not only did this arrangement show movement by a blending of related pictures but procured an effect of relief.
PLAN OF THE APPARATUS OF COLEMAN SELLERS FOR GIVING THE ILLUSION OF LIFE TO A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS.
U.S. Pat. No. 31357, Feb. 5. 1861
It is to be remembered that in the days of Mr. Sellers, photography did not have among its means any method of taking a series of pictures on a length of film, but the separate phases of a movement had to be taken one at a time on plates. The ribbon of sensitized film, practical and dependable, did not come until more than twenty-five years later. Its introduction into the craft was coincident with the growth of instantaneous photography.
When scientists began to study movement with the aid of instantaneous photographs, they quite naturally cared less for synthesizing the pictorial results of their investigations than they did for merely observing and recording exactly how movement takes place.
At first diagrams and drawings were used by students of movement to fix in an understandable way the facts gained by their inquiries. In England, for instance, Mr. J. Bell Pettigrew (1834-1908) illustrated his works with a lot of carefully made diagrammatic pictures. He made many interesting observations on locomotion and gave much attention to the movement of flying creatures, adding some comment, too, on the possibility of artificial flight.
Again in Paris, M. E. J. Marey (whose work is to be considered a little farther on) embellished his writings with charts and diagrams that were made with the aid of elaborate apparatus for the timing of animals in action and the marking of their footprints on the ground. Then he traced, too, by methods that involved much labor and patience, the trajectory of a bird’s wing. And in his continued searching out of the principles of flight registered by ingenious instruments the wing-movements in several kinds of insects.
In our first chapter no instructions were given as to how animated cartoons are made. And although this is the specific purpose of the book, we must again in this chapter refer but slightly to the matter, as there is need that we first devote some time to chronicling the early efforts in solving animal movements by the aid of photography. Then we must touch, too, upon the modes of the synthesis of analytic photographs for the purpose of screen projection.
Both these matters are pertinent to our theme: the animated screen artist makes use of instantaneous photographs for the study of movement, and the same machine that projects the photographic film is also used for the animated cartoon film made from his drawings.