Several years ago Mr. Edison conceived the idea of projecting moving figures and scenes upon a canvas or screen, before an audience.
Owing to the pressure of his extensive business, he could not fully develop his inventive ideas at the time. However, he put his experts to work upon a machine which should reproduce moving pictures upon a small scale, and the Kinetoscope was the result.
After perfecting the Kinetoscope, Mr. Edison turned his attention to his original plan of inventing a machine capable of showing the moving figures and scenes, life-size, before a large audience. His ideas soon took practical form, and as long ago as last Summer a very creditable result was obtained; but Mr. Edison was unwilling to give his unqualified approval until the highest practicable success had been achieved. Since then, Mr. Edison’s experts have been putting his ideas and suggestions to practical test and execution and, in addition, some of the original ideas and inventive skill of Mr. Thomas Armat (the rising inventor, of Washington, D. C.) have been embodied in the Vitascope; the final result being that today it can almost be said that the impossible had been accomplished, and a machine has been constructed which transforms dead pictures into living moving realities.
On the last page of the advertising brochure for the Vitascope it was asserted that the rights were controlled for the world. If that had been true the Edison firm would have reaped an incalculable fortune. But by this time many projection machines and cameras by diverse manufacturers were coming into use in many countries.
Magic shadows—living reproductions of people and the world—at last had reached the screen.
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But there still remained a long and important step to be taken in order that the true fidelity of living pictures could be achieved. Sound needed to be added to sight. So again, thirty years later, magic shadow history was made—this time at the Winter Garden theatre in New York City, on October 6, 1927. The event was the premiere of “The Jazz Singer,” starring Al Jolson and presenting the Vitaphone system of talking motion pictures. This rounding out of the faculties of magic shadows came through the enterprise of the Warner brothers—Harry, Sam, Albert and Jack—and the technological achievements of Dr. Lee DeForest, Theodore Case, Charles A. Hoxie and the others who gave the screen its voice.
French Information Service
LOUIS LUMIERE, inventor of the Cinématographe camera and projection system.