And thus the motion picture, like many another achievement of the human heart and hand and mind, has come down to us as the result of incalculable effort on the part of many. This great benefaction to humanity the world over is the realization of the aspirations of many who labored unceasingly and well down through the centuries—Archimedes, Aristotle, Alhazen, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Porta, Athanasius Kircher, Musschenbroek, Paris, Plateau, Uchatius, Langenheim, Marey, Muybridge, Edison and others. It is the creation of men of many centuries and many nations and from these diversities of time and persons it has gained its amazing power, its universal appeal.
THE END
Appendix I
MAGIC SHADOWS
A Descriptive Chronology
| B. C. | |
| ? | First artist’s aspiration to recreate life and the movement of the world of nature. |
| 6000 to 1500 | Babylonians and Egyptians acquire first scientific knowledge of the light and shadow art-science. Crude magnifying glasses are fashioned. Light and shadow are used for entertainment and deception. |
| Chinese Shadow Plays make use of silhouette figures cast on a screen of smoke. | |
| Japanese and English mirrors are devices for reflecting strange optical illusions. | |
| 340 | Aristotle gives impetus to all studies. First recorded magic shadow experiment—“the square hole and round sun.” |
| Euclid demonstrates that light travels in straight lines, a fundamental for all projection and photography. | |
| 225 | Archimedes devises the famous “Burning Glasses” for destroying ships of the enemy, which may or may not have been a factor in the defense of Syracuse. |
| 60 | Lucretius, the Roman poet, writes De Rerum Natura, “On the Nature of Things,” combining verse and philosophy and a bit of science. The work contains a reference erroneously interpreted as a description of a magic lantern show. |
| A. D. | |
| 50 | Pliny and Seneca advance scientific knowledge. The effect of the atmosphere on silver is noted by Pliny. Seneca writes on the persistence of the sensation of vision. |
| 79 | Pompeii and Herculaneum are destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius. Excavations have recovered a lens and a sound effects system probably used by the priests to trick the people. |
| 130 | Ptolemy writes the Almagest which was the standard work on optics for centuries. Subjects treated included the persistence of vision, the laws of reflection and studies of refraction. |
| 170 | Galen, an early medical authority, considers the problems of vision, fundamental to the scientific application of light to create the illusion of motion. |
| 510 | Boethius tries to measure the speed of light. Charges of treason and magic result in his decapitation in 525 at the order of his former patron, King Theodoric, Ostrogoth dictator of Italy. |
| 750 | Geber, Arabian alchemist, notes the effect of light on silver nitrate, a basis of photography. |
| 870 | Alkindi, an Arab, advances scientific learning, including work in the fields of astronomy and navigation. |
| 1010 | Alhazen, greatest of the Arab scientists in optics, advances the art-science of magic shadows and succeeds Ptolemy as the standard authority. |
| 1020 | Avicenna, another Arab, studies the movements of the eye in vision. |
| 1175 | Averroës, famed Arab philosopher, studies vision and eye movement. |
| 1267 | Roger Bacon, English Friar, describes the use of mirrors and lenses and attacks necromancers who use such devices to deceive the people. |
| 1270 | Witelo, a Pole called Thuringopolonus, writes on all phases of optics and with Bacon dominates experiments in this field for generations. |
| 1275 | St. Albertus Magnus, Dominican scholar and teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, takes special interest in the rainbow and assigned a finite but very great velocity to light. |
| 1279 | John Peckham, English Franciscan and alchemist, in his Perspectiva Communis points out that the rays of the sun can be shown in any desired place, indicating a knowledge of the “dark room.” |
| 1300 | Spectacles are introduced in Italy. |
| 1438 | Gutenberg develops printing from movable type which hastens the exchange of all knowledge, an aid to the growing interest in all light and shadow problems. |
| 1450 | Leone Battista Alberti, an Italian cleric and architect, designs the camera lucida, a light and shadow device similar to a large box camera for the use of artists in copying, drawing and nature. |
| 1464 | Nicholas of Cusa writes the first book about eye glasses. |
| 1500 | Leonardo da Vinci sets down the first accurate description of the portable or “dark room” camera obscura and shows its relation to the human eye. |
| 1520 | Francesco Maurolico, a mathematician and astronomer of Messina, develops the scientific but not experimental principles of light as reflected by mirrors and the use of light theatres. The next year he describes the construction of a compound microscope. |
| 1521 | Cesare Cesariano, an architect and writer on art, asserts in his introduction to a new edition of Vitruvius that a Benedictine monk, Don Papnutio or Panuce, constructed a satisfactory camera obscura. Construction details are given for the first time in a published work. |
| 1540 | Erasmus Reinhold uses a camera obscura to observe an eclipse of the sun at Wittenberg. Ancient astronomers had found it impossible to observe an eclipse unless there were clouds in the sky or the sun was near the horizon to cut down the light. |
| 1550 | Girolamo Cardano, an Italian physician and mathematician, describes how the box camera obscura can be used for entertainment purposes. |
| 1558 | Giovanni Battista della Porta of Naples writes of making many light and shadow devices and earns the right to the title, “first screen showman.” |
| 1568 | Monsignor Daniello Barbaro introduces the projection lens in the camera obscura. |
| 1585 | Giovanni Battista Benedetti, a patrician of Venice, publishes the first complete and clear description of the camera obscura or box camera equipped with a lens. |
| 1589 | Porta’s book, Natural Magic, reprinted with a new section on the use of the camera obscura for entertainment purposes. |
| 1604 | Johannes Kepler explains the use of the “dark chamber” device for astronomical work. |
| 1612 | Christopher Scheiner, a German priest, uses the device to study sun spots. |
| 1613 | François d’Aguilon, another priest, stimulates the study of all branches of optics and is the first to coin the name “stereoscopic.” |
| 1620 | Sir Henry Wotton, diplomat and author, gives one of the first descriptions in English of the camera obscura for drawing purposes. He describes a portable tent camera. |
| 1626 | Willebrord Snell promulgates his “law” on the angles of reflection and refraction, essential data for grinding and polishing lenses and other phases of advanced optics. |
| 1644 or 1645 | Athanasius Kircher invents the magic lantern at Rome. This is the first projector of magic shadows. |
| 1646 | Kircher’s book, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, “The Great Art of Light and Shadow,” is published. |
| 1652 | Jean Pierre Niceron shows how irregular figures can be made into plain figures through a mirror projection lens system. |
| 1658 | Gaspar Schott develops Kircher’s projection lantern in his Wonders of Universal Nature and Art. |
| 1665 | Walgenstein, a Dane, shows a Kircher-type magic lantern in France and elsewhere. |
| 1669 | Robert Boyle furthers interest in magic shadows with a description of a “Portable Darkened Room” in his Systematic or Cosmical Qualities of Things. |
| 1671 | The second edition of Kircher’s Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae is published with an expanded treatment of the magic lantern and specific instructions on how it may be used for entertainment and instruction. |
| 1674 | Claude Milliet de Chales, a Frenchman, describes the use of an improved projection lens system for the magic lantern. |
| 1680 | Robert Hooke develops his camera lucida in England. His plan was suggested in 1668 but by 1680 it had been improved and showed images in a room which was only partially darkened. |
| 1685 | Johann Zahn develops Kircher’s lantern to its highest state prior to the introduction of improved light sources of electricity or gas in the 19th century. |
| 1692 | William Molyneux, of Dublin, in his Dioptrica Nova introduces the improved magic lantern, scientifically described, in the British Isles. |
| 1704 | John Harris, divine and scientific writer, describes a better camera fitted with a “scioptic ball” or perforated globe of wood which could be turned in different directions to show diverse views. |
| 1711 | Willem Jakob Van’s Gravesande, a Dutchman, discusses projection and is credited with inventing the heliostat which made it possible for scientists to use the light of the sun in projection work, as well as in astronomy. |
| 1727 | Publication of the revised Dictionnaire Universel of Abbé Antoine Furetière edited by M. Brutel de la Rivière—with a description of the magic lantern spreads the use of the projector in France. |
| Johann Heinrich Schultze, a German professor of eloquence and antiquities, observes that light has an effect on a bottle of chalk and silver nitrate solution. He explains how others can duplicate his effects by concentrating the sun’s rays on a bottle of the solution by means of a burning glass. | |
| 1736 | Pieter van Musschenbroek introduces “motion” into the magic lantern by using a multiple slide system and a mechanical means of shaking one of the glass slides. |
| 1747 | Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, describes a camera for Empress Catherine of Russia. |
| 1752 | Benjamin Franklin, pioneer American scientist, writes: “I must own I am much in the dark about light.” |
| 1753 | Three different types of the camera in fixed and portable models are described in the famous French Encyclopédie. |
| 1760 | Abbé Nollet’s “Whirling Top,” a toy which shows the illusion of motion in a striking fashion, is a popular children’s plaything in Paris. |
| 1772 | François Séraphin, a magician, is credited with introducing the art of shadow plays in France. |
| 1777 | Carl William Scheele, a Swedish chemist, discusses the action of light on silver chloride. |
| 1780 | Jacques Alexandre César Charles, working under the patronage of Louis XVI at the Louvre, invents the Magascope or a projection microscope. This was a development of an earlier device he had for throwing on a screen images of living persons. |
| 1790 | Pierre L. Guinard, a Swiss glass worker, makes improvements in the processes of grinding and polishing optical glass. |
| 1798 | Etienne Gaspard Robertson resurrects “ghosts” of the French Revolution with his Phantasmagoria shows, featuring a magic lantern mounted on wheels and a screen of smoke. |
| 1802 | Tom Wedgwood repeats the experiments of Schultze and Scheele and announces a process of copying paintings on glass and making profiles by the action of light upon nitrate of silver. |
| 1807 | Dr. William Hyde Wollaston invents a new model of the camera lucida. |
| 1814 | Joseph Nicéphore Niepce begins work on photography. |
| 1815 | David Brewster, Scottish scientist, invents the Kaleidoscope, an optical device which creates colorful designs. |
| 1820 to 1825 | English and French scientists study the optical phenomena arising from the rotation of wheels. |
| 1820 | “J. M.”, anonymous English scientist, comments on wheel phenomena in the English Quarterly Journal, stimulating study of a basic factor in motion picture photography and projection. |
| 1824 | Peter Mark Roget, of Thesaurus fame, discusses wheel phenomena and gives an explanation—an early scientific account of the “persistence of vision” with regard to moving objects. |
| 1825 | William Ritchie, rector of Tain Academy, England, develops an improved lantern for “ghost” projection using a gas light source. |
| 1826 | John Ayrton Paris’ Thaumatrope, or small disk with part of the complete scene on one side and part on the other side, becomes a scientific plaything. (Charles Babbage, English scientist and mathematician, claims an earlier invention on the same lines. The invention of the Thaumatrope has also been attributed to Sir John Herschel, Dr. William Fitton and Dr. William Hyde Wollaston.) |
| 1827 | Niepce’s Heliotypes, which were photo silhouettes obtained after as much as six or twelve hours’ exposure, are shown in London. |
| 1827 | Sir Charles Wheatstone invents the Kaleidophone, or Phonetic Kaleidoscope, to illustrate “amusing acoustical and optical phenomena.” |
| 1828 | Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau, a Belgian, makes the first motion picture machine—a device which changes a distorted drawing into a correct and natural one. |
| 1829 | Niepce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a painter and showman, form a partnership for the development of photography. |
| 1830 | Michael Faraday takes up the study of wheels and spokes and motion, and the effects of motion on the human eye. |
| 1832 | Plateau and Simon Ritter von Stampfer, Austrian, independently introduce the magic disks which show real motion. These spinning wheels with a series of designs are called the Fantascope, Phénakisticope or Stroboscope. |
| 1834 | William George Horner in England devises an improved model of the magic disks by arranging the designs on a horizontal instead of vertical wheel. This made it possible for several persons, instead of one, to see the movement at the same time. |
| Ebenezer Strong Snell, a professor at Amherst, introduces the picture disks in the United States. | |
| 1835 | William Henry Fox Talbot begins his photographic investigations. |
| 1838 | Wheatstone invents the Stereoscope which gives the illusion of depth by presenting two slightly dissimilar pictures to the two eyes. |
| Abbé François Napoléon Marie Moigno, in France, uses magic lanterns made by François Soleil, Parisian optician and father-in-law of Jules Duboscq, to illustrate chemical reactions. | |
| 1839 | Talbot in England and Daguerre in France announce practical photographic systems which make it possible to permanently record the age-old images of the “dark room” or camera obscura. Hippolyte Bayard experiments with paper photographic prints. |
| 1845 | Johann Müller in Germany uses the Fantascope disks to study the wave motion of light. Similar work is carried out by others. |
| 1848 | E. M. Clarke demonstrates, at the London Polytechnic Institution, a good magic lantern fitted with an oxygen-hydrogen lamp. He publishes a booklet on lantern projection—“Directions for using the philosophical apparatus in private research and public exhibition.” |
| 1849 | Brewster introduces a binocular camera for photographing stereoscopic pictures. It is copied in Paris by M. Quinet, a photographer, who calls it the Quinetoscope. |
| 1850 | Frederic and William Langenheim, of Philadelphia, patent the Hyalotype, a process for making positives on glass slides suitable for use in the magic lantern. This makes it possible to combine photography and the Plateau-Stampfer disks. |
| Wheatstone shows in Paris an improved stereoscope which uses photos specially made for it. | |
| 1852 | Photographs instead of drawings are used in the magic disks by a number of scientists and photographers, including Wheatstone, Jules Duboscq in Paris, Antoine François Jean Claudet. The imperfect photographic equipment as well as the limits of the individual disks resulted in unnatural moving pictures. |
| 1853 | Franz von Uchatius, an Austrian army officer, develops a motion picture projector which combines the Plateau-Stampfer disks and the magic lantern of Kircher. |
| 1854 | Sequin, a Frenchman, obtains a patent on an improved projector. |
| 1860 to 1865 | Claudet, Duboscq, Shaw and others experiment with the magic disk and the stereoscope in an effort to combine the illusion of motion and the illusion of depth. |
| 1860 | Thomas Hooman Dumont draws up on paper a motion picture camera. Other attempts are also made but the apparatus is not yet ready. |
| Pierre Hubert Desvignes obtains a French patent on a system which suggests the use of an endless band and an apparatus for looking at stereoscopic views and small objects in motion. He also used models instead of designs or photographs in his efforts to recapture motion. | |
| 1861 | William Thomas Shaw announces the Stereostrope which mounted eight stereoscopic pictures on an octagonal drum. These were viewed in an ordinary Wheatstone Stereoscope. “The effect of solidarity is superadded so that the object is perceived as if in motion and with an appearance of relief as in nature.” |
| Coleman Sellers in the United States patents the Kinematoscope which is a toy using a paddle wheel action to show “posed” motion pictures. | |
| 1864 | Louis Ducos du Hauron patents a motion picture photography-projection system, but there are no adequate materials available to make it practical. |
| 1865 | James Laing announces the Motorscope—another solid-plus-motion device akin to that of Shaw. |
| About this time the following also showed similar devices: Léon Foucauld, French astronomer, the Stereofantascope or Bioscope; Cook and Bonelli, the Photobioscope; Humbert de Moland, Reville, Almeida, Seely and Lee. | |
| A. Molteni, optician, of Paris, invents the Choreutoscope Tournant which uses a Maltese Cross movement, a type which was of considerable importance in the development of intermittent movement in projectors. | |
| 1866 | Lionel Smith Beale, a specialist in the use of the microscope, perfects the Molteni turning wheel. |
| 1868 | John Wesley Hyatt of New York invents celluloid while seeking a substitute for ivory for billiard balls. (Prior to this time Alexander Parkes in England worked on a product somewhat similar to celluloid but the process was different.) |
| Langlois and Angiers patent an improved Thaumatrope which uses microscope views seen through a lens system. | |
| Linnett develops the Kineograph or little book which, when thumbed rapidly, flashes successive pictures before the eye, creating an illusion of motion. | |
| 1869 | O. B. Brown obtains the first U. S. patent on a projector—it is the old familiar model of Uchatius and uses hand-drawn designs. James Clerk Maxwell, famed for his work in color and electricity, develops what is hailed as the perfect Zoetrope or Wheel of Life by substituting concave lenses for the slots in order to eliminate distortion. Hand drawn figures were projected in a similar system. |
| 1870 | Henry Renno Heyl, of Philadelphia; Bourbouze, French scientist; Sequin, a printer and artist, and others combine “posed” motion pictures with the magic lantern so that flickering, brief and imperfect moving images appear on the screen. Bourbouze uses pictures at the Sorbonne University to show the actions of pistons, vapor and air machines. |
| 1872 | Eadweard Muybridge or Edward James Muggeridge and others make progress on the road to the photographing of successive still pictures of objects in motion. |
| Lionel Smith Beale, in England, despairs of obtaining enough light by ordinary methods so he cuts his images on a thin brass rim and uses a primitive intermittent movement and shutter in projection. Device was called the Choreutoscope. | |
| 1874 | Pierre Jules César Janssen, French astronomer, perfects the photographic-revolver, a fixed-motion picture camera, to photograph the transit of Venus in Japan. |
| 1875 | Caspar W. Briggs, successor to the Langenheims in Philadelphia, brings out a projector. |
| 1877 | Thomas A. Edison invents the Talking Phonograph. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, an English lawyer, suggests the Kinesigraph to combine the effects of the phonograph and the magic lantern. |
| Charles Emile Reynaud develops the Praxinoscope, an ingenious arrangement of the Plateau-Stampfer magic disks, using a mirror set in the center. | |
| 1878 | Muybridge and John D. Isaacs, an engineer, achieve photographic success with a “battery” of still cameras hooked up to take successive pictures of moving objects. Etienne Jules Marey, physiologist, in Paris analyzes the motion pictures made by the Muybridge-Isaacs system by means of the magic disks. |
| 1879 | Reynaud works out a projection model of his Praxinoscope. |
| 1881 | Jean Meissonier, French painter, uses a magic disk device with photos to analyze motion and assist him in his work. |
| 1882 | Muybridge, guided by Marey in Paris, mounts his photographs on a Uchatius magic lantern and actual motion pictures briefly are thrown on the screen before an audience with the Zoopraxiscope. |
| Reynaud has a projector called the Lamposcope—as all early projectors, limited to showing the one scene made up of a set of stills mounted on the edge of a disk. | |
| 1884 | George Eastman begins at Rochester, New York, the manufacture of roll paper film for use in his Kodak camera. |
| 1887 | Hannibal Williston Goodwin, an Episcopalian minister, obtains a patent on Photographic Pellicle which is described as transparent, sensitive and like celluloid. His efforts came after becoming interested in photography through magic lantern entertainments he conducted for his congregation. His patents ultimately led to the business of Anthony & Scoville, now known as Ansco. |
| Marey, in France, achieves first success with his chronophotographic or motion picture system using slips of coated paper film. | |
| Edison begins experiments aimed at producing an apparatus which would do for sight what the phonograph had done for sound—i. e., motion pictures; and a device which would combine both—i. e., a sound motion picture system. | |
| 1888 | John Carbutt achieves success in his efforts, started several years before, to treat with photographic chemicals long strips of celluloid obtained from the Hyatt Company. |
| Eastman continues work which lead to successful motion picture film. | |
| Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince patents a multiple lens camera-projector system which, however, never produced satisfactory results. | |
| 1889 | Ottomar Anschütz stimulates interest in motion pictures with his Electrical Tachyscope—a good viewing apparatus for a series of pictures successively illuminated by a Geissler tube. This device was the progenitor of modern stroboscopic photography. |
| Edison and Kennedy Laurie Dickson, his assistant for motion picture research, continue investigations. Film stock is ordered from Eastman. First successes are claimed. In Paris, Marey shows Edison a magic disk equipped with photos and lighted by electric flashes. | |
| Eastman applies, on December 10, 1889, for a patent on “the manufacture of flexible photographic films.” The patent was not issued until 1898 and a long legal battle ensued with the Goodwin estate until a compromise was reached. | |
| 1889 to 1894 | Edison investigations aimed at producing a motion picture camera and projector continue. |
| 1889 | Wordsworth Donisthorpe and Croft obtain the first real motion picture patents in England but never had sufficient financial backing to perfect the system or even make an efficient model. |
| 1890 | John Arthur Roebuck Rudge and William Friese Greene and Mortimer Evans, in England, construct a simple, limited motion projector. |
| 1891 | Edison’s Kinetograph camera and Kinetoscope viewing apparatus completed and the patent application made. The patent was not issued for two years. |
| 1892 | Reynaud runs the Théâtre Optique in Paris, the first film theatre which uses hand-drawn and not photographed pictures. |
| 1893 | Marey develops a motion picture projector which uses the sun for its light source. |
| Greene patents a camera and projector system which is limited in scope. | |
| 1894 | Edison peep-show Kinetoscopes go on display on April 14th, at 1155 Broadway, New York, and later that year on Oxford Street, London, and in Paris. These demonstrations influence a number of scientists and photographers who finally solved the problem of screen projection of continuous motion pictures. |
| Anschütz patents an early projection model in France. | |
| Demeny uses a camera and projector system somewhat similar to that developed under Marey. | |
| 1895 | Successful projection of motion pictures onto a screen achieved by Louis and Auguste Lumière with the Cinématographe, in France; by Robert W. Paul with films made by Birt Acres in the Bioscope, in England; by Thomas Armat, C. Francis Jenkins, the Lathams, and others in the United States. |
| 1896 | Screen projection of motion pictures becomes a commercial reality and the magic shadow art starts on the way to becoming the greatest entertainment medium ever known. In New York the premiere is held at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, Herald Square, New York City, on the evening of April 23, 1896. |
| In addition to those named, the following, among many, were also working on screen projection in the 1895–96–97 period of success: Georges Melies, who brought the spirit of Phantasmagoria to the modern motion picture; Max Skladanowski, who claimed a projection show at the Wintergarten in Düsseldorf in the Fall of 1896; Owen A. Eames, of Boston; Edwin Hill Amet, of Chicago; Henri Joly, W. C. Hughes, Cecil M. Hopwood, Carpentier, Drumont, Werner, Gossart, Auguste Baron, Grey, Proszynski, Bets, Pierre Victor Continsouza, Raoul Grimoin-Sanson; Perret & Lacroix; Ambrose Francis Parnaland, Sallé & Mazo; Pipon; Zion, Avias & Hoffman, Brun, Gauthier, Mendel, Messager, Cheri-Rousseau, Mortier, Wattson, Maguire & Baucus, Phillip Wolff, F. Brown, F. Howard, Ottway, Rowe, Dom-Martin, Appleton, Baxter & Wray, Riley, Prestwich, Newman & Guardia, Rider de Bedts, Noakes & Norman, Clement & Gilmer, etc., etc. | |
| Thus the chronology of magic shadows, or the origin of the motion picture, concludes with a roll of names of men of many nations, a point illustrative both of the universal appeal of the motion picture and of the long and diverse collection of individuals who contributed to the development of the art-science. |
Appendix II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
and Acknowledgements
The pursuit of the story of the origin of the motion picture has been carried on intermittently since the Winter of 1936–37. As historical books must be, it is based mainly on the written record. Efforts were made, whenever possible, to go directly to the source material. The whole field of books on the motion picture, as well as standard biographical and scientific works, was surveyed.
Research was conducted principally at the following libraries: Library of Congress, Georgetown University, Surgeon General’s, in Washington, D. C., New York Public and Columbia University in New York City. Work was also done at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood; New York Engineering Societies, the British Museum, London; Trinity College, Dublin, and Vittorio Emanuele—formerly Collegio Romano—library, Rome. Part of the original Kircher Museum at Rome, was inspected in the Summer of 1939. (The early projector models, according to the evidence now available were destroyed shortly after Kircher’s death.) The 1939 exhibit of the works of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan was visited.
Terry Ramsaye, author of A Million and One Nights—A History of the Motion Picture, and editor of Motion Picture Herald, is responsible for suggesting lines of study which led to the decision to write this book. Also, he has rendered valuable guidance and assistance especially in connection with the early American motion picture pioneers, and in reading the manuscript and contributing the foreword.