On this plan of a rotating disk, Muybridge constructed his zoöpraxiscope by which he projected some of his animal photographs. Another expedient tried by some one was that of putting a string of minute pictures spirally on a drum which was made to turn in a helix-like fashion. The pictures were enlarged by a lens and brought into view back of a shutter that worked intermittently.
Although the dry plate assuredly was a great improvement over the slow and troublesome old-fashioned wet plate, there was felt the need of some pliant material that could be sensitized for photography and that could furthermore be made in the form of a ribbon. The suitableness of the paper strips for use in the zootrope and the praxinoscope obviously demonstrated the advantages of an elongated form on which to put a series of related pictures.
Experiments were made to obtain a pliant ribbon for the use. Transparent paper was at one time tried but found unadaptable. Eventually the celluloid film came into use, and it is this material that is now generally in use to make both the ordinary snap-shot film and the “film stock” for the motion-picture industry.
Edison’s kinetoscope of 1890, or more particularly its improved form of 1893, that found immediate recognition on its exhibition at the World’s Fair at Chicago, was the first utilization on a large scale of the celluloid film for motion-pictures. It is to be remarked, however, that in the kinetoscope the pictures were viewed, not on a screen in an auditorium by a number of people, but by one person at a time peering through a sight opening in the apparatus. It was the kinetoscope, it appears, that set others to work devising ways of using celluloid bands for projecting pictures on a screen.
While some inventors were busy in their efforts to construct workable apparatus both for photography and projection, others were endeavoring to better the material for the film and improve the photographic emulsion covering it.
There is no need in this book, in which we shall try to explain the making of animated screen drawings, to recount the whole story of the progressive improvements of the machines used in the motion-picture industry. But a short notice of the present-day appliances will not be out of place.
PLAN OF EDISON’S FIRST KINETOSCOPE.
Modified from the Patent Office drawing.
The three indispensable pieces of mechanism are the camera, the projector, and the printer, or apparatus that prints pictures photographically. All three in certain parts of their construction are similar in working principles. The mechanical arrangements of the camera and projector especially are so much alike that some of the first apparatus fabricated were used both for photography and projection. A few early types of cameras served even for printers as well.