The Boy's Book of New Inventions

by Harry E. Maule

"Also exploring parties and parties that go into remote places to search for additions to our store of scientific knowledge invariably carry motion-picture outfits. One of the most notable examples of this was the expedition of Lieut. Robert F. Scott in his search for the South Pole. Lieutenant Scott carried many hundreds of feet of standard film, a good camera, and a portable developing outfit, with which he made pictures of the Antarctic Continent, in order to show the world the things that he and his men risked their lives to see.

"As I said before, the cinematograph is rapidly growing as an educational force, and Thomas A. Edison, the pioneer inventor and the leader in the development of the cinematograph, declares that it will in a short time completely do away with books in the study of geography. It is already in use in several special school and college courses, and with the improvements in the non-inflammable film, which will be explained later, it can be taken up far more extensively."

The man went on to say that in this connection Mr. Edison, who had been watching the schoolwork of his own twelve-year-old son Theodore, recently said in the magazine The World To-day (now Hearst's Magazine):

"I have one of the best moving-picture photographers in the world in Africa. I told him to land at Cape Town, and to take everything in sight between there and the mouth of the Nile. His pictures will show children what Kaffirs are and how they live. He will show them at work, at play, and in their homes. They will be life-size Kaffirs that will run and skip or work right before the children's eyes. But the Kaffirs will be but the smallest part of what the African pictures will show. The biggest beasts of the jungle—the elephants, lions, rhinos, and giraffes—will be shown, not in cages, but in their native haunts. The city of Cape Town will be shown with its characteristic streets and its shipping. The broad veldts over which Kruger's armies marched will be shown just as they are, with here and there a burgher's cottage. Every step in the process of mining gold and diamonds will be put upon the film. The Nile will be shown, not as a small black line upon a map, but as a body of beautiful blue water, alternately plunging over cataracts and creeping through meadows to the sea. Then will come the Pyramids, with natives and tourists climbing them, and, lastly, the great cities of Alexandria and Cairo. Would any child stay at home if he knew such a treat as this was in store for him at school? Would he ever be likely to forget what he had learned about Africa?"

"Of course," continued the man in the laboratory, "this is but an example of the use of motion pictures in schools. Many of you boys have probably seen them in special lectures on other subjects, for they can be used to show how people live and work in every part of the world and how the various commercial products that so largely govern our lives are made."

But the motion-picture man, he explained, is not at all dependent upon what really happens for his films, because if he cannot train the eye of his camera on some occurrence that he desires to transfer to a film, he reproduces it in a studio, spending thousands and thousands of dollars, if necessary for actors, scenery and stage fittings. Nothing is too difficult for the motion-picture man, and he has never proposed a feat so daring but what he could find plenty of actors willing to take the necessary parts. Battles, scenes from history, sessions of Congress, railroad wrecks, earthquakes and hundreds of other spectacles have been planned, staged and acted out by the makers of cinematograph films, while, of course, all the plays that we see on the screen are planned and carefully rehearsed before they are photographed.

This all means that cinematography has become a gigantic industry, giving employment to hundreds of actors, photographers, and the army of men and women engaged in making and showing the films, to say nothing of the thousands of picture theatres that have sprung up in every city and town in the country.

While the boy's friend was telling him these things about the adventurous life of the motion-picture man, the listener sat spellbound.

"I'd love to see some motion pictures made," he said. "The machines must be wonderful."

"Well," answered the scientist, "we can do that, and if you'd like we can go up to one of the motion-picture studios some day soon and see the whole process from beginning to end."