In July, 1882, Marey proposed the use of a band of sensitized paper in the camera. For various reasons the paper was not satisfactory and, of course, was impractical for direct projection as it might be set on fire by the projection lamp. The Langenheims of Philadelphia had solved the problem of projecting photographs in the magic lantern by devising a method of printing the picture on glass. However, a projector equipped, as the original model of Uchatius, with a revolving disk could only hold a few glass slides. This limited the projected pictures to brief action.
In 1887 and 1888 Marey achieved his first real success in what he called chronophotography, using a box machine which took eight pictures a second on a single metal plate, or on a sensitized paper band. Marey had difficulty controlling the paper film because it was not perforated and the pictures were not equally spaced. This, however, made no difference to Marey since his main purpose was to obtain data for physiological study, and not entertainment motion pictures.
In 1888 Marey obtained a successful series of photographs of fishes swimming, taken with intermittent action on a paper roll film. The images were taken at the rate of either twenty or sixty per second. This method of using paper strips obviates the necessity of operating in a dark camera chamber. At first the paper photographic strips were loaded in a dark room, limiting the scope of the camera, but later light-proof cameras were perfected. Marey also proposed an optical system featuring a turning mirror which would make intermittent action unnecessary. But this method was wasteful of film.
A contemporary of Marey and Muybridge, and a skilled photographer in his own right, was Ottomar Anschütz (1846–1907), a German who worked out one of the best systems for exhibiting a series of pictures prior to Edison on whom he had an influence. Shortly after the Muybridge pictures came to Europe, Anschütz began similar experiments. According to Marey, he achieved better results than Muybridge, though the results were not perfect, having a certain amount of distortion. Anschütz obtained sharper photographs of action than Muybridge for his pictures could be used in the Plateau magic disk or the projector without being copied as silhouettes as was done with Muybridge’s photographs until a late date.
In 1883 Anschütz tried to use a single camera on the Marey gun principle but achieved better results with a battery of as many as forty-eight cameras. The shutter openings in the Zoetrope or magic disk were modified according to the number of pictures in the particular series.
Anschütz’s chief claim to fame rests on the fact that he was the first to combine successfully the instantaneous pictures of an object in motion with the brilliant intermittent flash of the electric Geissler tube. Heinrich Geissler (1814–1879), a German mechanic and physicist, about 1854 invented an electric tube for the purpose of studying discharges in rarefied gases. The apparatus consisted of a thin tube of glass, equipped with platinum wires sealed into each end and filled with a rarefied gas, and an electric battery connection.
In 1889 Anschütz announced the Electrical Tachyscope, a motion picture viewing machine which became popular all over the world. His action photographs were mounted on a wheel and were lighted successively by a Geissler tube’s intermittent electric flash. The large photographs were viewed directly by the audience in an adjoining room. Anschütz’s device was first depicted in the United States in the Scientific American of November 16, 1889. A slot machine model was also devised and was shown at Frankfurt, Germany in 1891, and at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, where several persons saw it and were given the idea of attempting to achieve projection of life-size motion pictures of complete actions instead of mere phases of motion. (Illustration facing [page 149].)
The general technique developed by Anschütz in his Electrical Tachyscope is now used in the taking of stroboscopic motion pictures. It also may be applied in new photographic, motion picture and television processes for increased depth of field.
In 1893 Muybridge lectured at the World’s Fair in Chicago at the Zoopraxographical Hall, where hundreds of his pictures were shown. The same material was published by the University of Pennsylvania under the title of Descriptive Zoopraxography, or the science of animal locomotion made popular.
Muybridge had settled down in 1885 with a position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he took many pictures with the same battery system, borrowing, however, some ideas about the studio arrangements from Marey. Muybridge never improved his technique or realized that such a cumbersome method could not produce satisfactory results. This did not seem to disturb him for there is no evidence that he sought large screen projection of the magic shadows before audiences.