In February 1886, Muybridge visited Edison at his New Jersey laboratory and showed him plates of successive motion pictures, or, more accurately, a succession of stills of various phases of the same action.
When Muybridge lectured at the London Institution in the Fall of 1889 a complete report was published in the British Journal of Photography for December 20, 1889, in an article by W. P. Adams. From this we learn that Muybridge was then using a simple projector fitted with a gear system which revolved before the lens a glass disk of some fifteen inches in diameter on which the photos were mounted; in front of this was a zinc shutter disk with radial slits totalling one more than the number of pictures, in order to give a forward motion to the figures. That was the old Plateau magic disk idea. With the same number of openings in the shutter as pictures, the figures would appear to move their arms and legs and yet stay in the same place; if less shutter openings, there would be an appearance of backward motion. “The disks are rotated at the same speed in opposite directions, and the figures rapidly following each other appear on the screen as a continuous movement of the animal,” the English reviewer remarked. Muybridge showed slow and normal action motion. The subjects included a mule kicking, a woman emptying a pail of water, a girl walking down steps carrying a breakfast cup and saucer, and what was said to be the best of all, a little girl finding and picking up a doll. In passing, we may note that in addition to singling out Meissonier for praise, Muybridge asserted that the Japanese were far ahead of everyone else in representing motion in art!
Muybridge eventually retired to his native Kingston, England, after winning fame through his work in America. But he obtained more than fame, for he was able to leave a considerable sum of money, in addition to his instruments, to the local museum. Efforts to locate the Muybridge instruments at the Kingston-on-Thames Museum in 1943 were unsuccessful.
In 1889, Thomas A. Edison, already working on the problem of motion pictures for a year or two, visited the Exposition at Paris and there met Marey who showed him the results obtained with his methods of motion photography, and the reproduction of the scene with a Plateau-disk combined with a projector and the disk illuminated by an electric Geissler tube.
This electrically driven machine, displayed at the exhibit of Fontaine, a French engineer, showed pictures of animals in motion, as well as men and birds. The old photo stand-by of horses in motion in different gaits again was featured. This system rather pleased Marey, as he remarked that it would be hard to construct a better Wheel of Life, though Edison had even then accomplished it in his laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey. The limitations of the method, however, were fully recognized by Marey who mentioned the small number of images which could be shown, the restricted enlargement, and the intermittent movement troubles. Also, the device was noisy and the flicker had not been eliminated.
Thus the year of 1889 brought together two great figures, Marey, a pure scientist whose zeal for learning about locomotion resulted in improvements in what was to be the motion picture art-science, and Edison who invented the first entirely practical motion picture camera and the first film peep-show device which was to be the inspiration for projectors as they were finally established, setting the pattern even to our day.
XV
EDISON’S PEEP-SHOW
Edison turns to motion pictures—Donisthorpe of England works it all out on paper—Eastman manufactures film—Edison perfects a motion picture camera, the Kinetograph, and a peep-hole viewer, the Kinetoscope—World Premiere, New York—April, 1894.
In the laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison the development of a practicable motion picture camera and viewing apparatus was really achieved. Leadership in the magic shadow art-science came with Edison once again to the United States and it has not left this country since. As a sequel America and motion pictures are linked in the minds of millions throughout the world.