What appears to have been the first use of photographs to give a screen synthesis in an auditorium, was that on an evening in February, 1870, at the Academy of Music, in Philadelphia. It was an exhibition given by Mr. Henry R. Heyl, of his phasmatrope. He showed on a screen, life-sized figures of dancers and acrobats in motion. The pictures were projected, with the aid of a magic-lantern, from photographs on thin glass plates that were placed around a wheel which was made to rotate. A “vibrating shutter” cut off the light while one photograph moved out of the way, and another came in to take its place. The wheel had spaces for eighteen photographs. It was so planned that those of one set could be taken out and those of another slipped in to change a subject for projection.
The photographs used in the phasmatrope were from posed models; a certain number of which were selected to form a cycle so that the series could be repeated and a continuous performance be given by keeping the wheel going. At this period there were no pliant sensitized ribbons to take a sequence of photographs of a movement, and Heyl had to take them one at a time on glass plates by the wet collodion process.
A notable point about this early motion-picture show was that it was quite like one of our day, for according to Heyl, in his letter to the Journal of the Franklin Institute, he had the orchestra play appropriate music to suit the action of the dancers and the grotesqueries of the acrobats.
Better known in the fields of the study of movement and that of instantaneous photography and pictorial synthesis are M. Marey, already mentioned (1830-1904), and his contemporary, Mr. E. Muybridge (1830-1904). While Marey conducted his inquiries in Paris, Muybridge pursued his studies in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
Marey, who in the beginning recorded the changes and modification of attitudes in movement by diagrams and charts, later used diagrams made from photographs and then photographs themselves. He studied the phases of movement from a strictly scientific standpoint, in human beings, four-footed beasts, birds, and nearly all forms of life. And he did not neglect to note the speed and manner of moving of inorganic bodies, such as falling objects, agitated and whirling threads.
OSTRICH WALKING.
Part of a plate in Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion.” Published and copyrighted by him in 1887.
An imposing work, made under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, of more than 700 large plates. It was the first comprehensive analytical study of movement in human figures and animals.
Muybridge, on the other hand, seemed to have a trend toward the educational, in a popular sense of the word; and had a faculty of giving his works a pictorial quality. He showed this in the choice of his subjects and the devising of machines that combined his photographs somewhat successfully in screen projection.