The Boy's Book of New Inventions

by Harry E. Maule

PERILOUS AND EXCITING TIMES IN OBTAINING MOTION PICTURES.—HOW THE MACHINE CAME TO BE INVENTED, AND THE NEWEST DEVELOPMENTS IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

WITH a clear understanding of the mechanism of the various motion-picture machines in mind, we are free to go on with the scientist and our young friend to the exciting times experienced by actors and photographers in making the pictures that delight people all over the world. First, however, let us briefly look back over the history of the art, for there is nothing more interesting than to follow up the experiments upon which Thomas A. Edison based his invention of the original cinematograph or kinetoscope.

Long ago, even before Edison was born, scientists tinkered with devices that would picture apparent motion, but they were rude attempts and little progress was made for many years. The first man to take a decisive step toward practical cinematography was Edward (or Eadweard) Muybridge, a photographer who lived in Oakland, Cal.; so he is rightly called the father of motion pictures.

Muybridge had been experimenting with snapshot cameras, as in those days instantaneous photography with wet plates was comparatively new, and, being something of an artist as well as a photographer, he decided that snapshot photographs of animals and men while running, jumping, and walking would greatly aid artists in transferring to their canvases the exact positions of the figures they wished to paint. In 1872 the people of California were considerably excited over the feat of Governor Leland Stanford's trotting horse Occident, which was the first racer west of the Rocky Mountains to make a mile in two minutes and twenty seconds, and the Governor was having him photographed on every occasion.

Governor Stanford also wagered that at one time during the trotter's stride all four feet were off the ground. Muybridge suggested his plan for photographing the animal's every movement, while running, trotting or walking, as a means of settling the bet, and the Governor, very much pleased, gave him free access to the stables and race course.

The photographer built a studio at the course and systematically went to work. First, he built a high fence along the track and had it painted white. Then he securely mounted twenty-four cameras side by side along the opposite side of the course and stretched thin silk threads from the shutter of each camera across the track about the height of the horse's knees. Occident was then led out and ridden along the course so that he would pass between the white background and twenty-four cameras. As he came to each silk thread his legs broke it and opened the shutter of the camera to which it was attached. Thus the animal photographed himself twenty-four times as he passed over the track and showed that Governor Stanford's contention regarding his movements was correct.

Laid in consecutive order in which the photographs were taken, each picture showed a different stage of the horse's movements, and if the series of photographs was held together and riffled over the thumb, so that each one would be visible for just the fraction of a second, the impression received, thanks to the persistence of vision, was that of a horse in motion. When Muybridge went to Paris the year after taking the photographs of Governor Stanford's horse he received a warm welcome from some of the greatest French painters of the day. He gave several exhibits of his photographs, but carried the work no farther.

Almost one hundred years before this, several brilliant Frenchmen were groping in the darkness for some way of showing motion by means of pictures, and brought forth a device known as the "Wheel of Life," or the Zoetrope. It was simply an enclosed cylinder, and upon the inner lower face, which was free to rotate, were placed a series of pictures showing the stages of some simple animation, in sequence, such as two children seesawing, or a child swinging. The upper surface was pierced with long, narrow slits, and when one looked through the slits, and the lower surface with the pictures on it was rotated, one actually saw only one picture at a time, but as they passed before the eyes the appearance was of motion. Various improvements on this idea were made, and silhouette paintings even were thrown on a screen so as to give an illusion of motion.

The development of photography was necessary, however, before motion pictures ever could be a success. About the time Muybridge took his pictures the old wet plate was superseded by the dry plate we know to-day, and scientists began the search for some material from which they could make film base.

Before the invention of films, motion pictures, as they were known at that time, were used chiefly by scientists in trying to analyze motion which cannot be traced by the human eye. Among the leaders in this work was the French scientist Dr. E. J. Marey, who studied the flight of birds and the movements of animals and men so carefully that he wrote a book entitled "Movement," which is still used by authorities in scientific research.