The six stills were duplicated three times to fill the eighteen spaces in the wheel of the projector.
The Heyl projector had an intermittent movement controlled by a ratchet and pawl mechanism operated by a reciprocating bar moved up and down by the hand. The fast movement was used for the acrobats with a complete stop at the end of each somersault, and a slow tempo for the waltz which was accompanied by an orchestra.
The problem of a shutter to interrupt the light while the pictures were moving was solved in the following way, according to Heyl: “This was accomplished by a vibrating shutter placed back of the picture wheel that was operated on the same drawbar that moved the wheel, only the shutter movement was so timed that it moved first and covered the picture before the latter moved and completed the movement after the next picture was in place. This movement reduced to a great extent the flickering and gave very natural and life-like representations of the moving figures.”
Heyl’s Phasmatrope was an ingenious apparatus but the imagination had to compensate for its many imperfections. When it was demonstrated on March 16, 1870, at a meeting of the Franklin Institute, it created so little notice that mention of the showing was not included in the minutes. It is interesting to note it was at this meeting that Sellers was elected head of the Franklin Institute. We can wonder what his reaction was to the fact that Heyl, a man fifteen years his junior, had added projection to the principle of his Kinematoscope which had also used “posed pictures” in a peep-show apparatus.
In 1875, in Philadelphia, Caspar Briggs, who had bought out the Langenheim interest the year before, introduced a device similar to the Heyl projector which also used still photographs made of drawings to simulate motion. His most popular subject was “The Dancing Skeleton,” a selection reminiscent of Phantasmagoria and the “black arts” or necromancy. The little pictures were mounted on the edge of a mica disk which revolved before the projection lens. Briggs also improved the Langenheim magic lantern slide process and gave a further impetus to photographic activity in Philadelphia.
From the Langenheims and their contemporaries in America the spotlight of magic shadow development shifts back to the Old World, to France, and to a scientist of distinction.
XIV
MAREY AND MOVEMENT
Marey in Paris, and Muybridge and Isaacs in San Francisco, record motion by photographs—Ducos du Hauron has an idea for a complete system—Janssen makes a “movie” camera—Reynauld keeps magic shadow showmanship alive—Anschütz uses electricity.
The development capital in the story of the magic shadow art-science shifted many times. Seas, mountains, oceans and time itself were no barriers. Successively, Greece, Arabia, Persia, England, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Austria and the United States took the lead in showing the way toward the goal of genuinely life-like pictures. After the great spurt of activity in Philadelphia, during the working life of the Langenheims, the chief center of activity was Paris and the leader was Etienne Jules Marey.