Chapter X: Introduction (7)

The projector at the Cotton States Exposition was not well received. The show finally burned up in a fire that swept the area. Fifteen hundred dollars was borrowed from Armat’s brothers to continue activities. Jenkins went home to Richmond, Indiana, for his brother’s wedding, taking one of the projectors with him.

Meanwhile, Armat hit upon a loop to ease the strain of projection. Jenkins gave a demonstration of the projector on October 29, 1895, and by November 22nd, Armat and Jenkins had disagreed. Jenkins tried to patent some modification on his own, without his partner, but found that he was in interference with the Armat-Jenkins projector patent and signed a concession of priority. From his invention Armat made a great profit which was obtained not without many law suits. Later Jenkins produced a non-intermittent projector of clever but impractical design. He also contributed some original ideas to television development but again the results were not very practical.

Certain other attempts were made to achieve projection of the magic shadows and complete the motion picture system at this time. Most of them also were stimulated by the exhibition of Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope. One of these was made by Rudolph Melville Hunter (1856–1935), a consulting engineer and inventor of considerable prominence in America. In 1883 Hunter had suggested a Dover-Calais tunnel, something that might have made the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940 much easier; the year before, 1882, he had suggested torpedo boats; later he devised smokeless powder for the French Government and sold some 300 patents to the General Electric and Westinghouse companies. He was also a consultant on acoustics. In his biography, last printed in the 1920–21 edition of _Who’s Who_ (at which time he evidently retired), Hunter asserted that he “designed and built the first motion picture projector in the world in 1894.” His show, scheduled for Atlantic City, never opened. No details are known of his projector.

In the Summer of 1894, two gay young men, Grey and Otway Latham, drug company salesmen operating out of New York, became concessionaires for the Kinetoscope and formed the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company. That firm’s chief purpose was to photograph and exhibit prize-fight films. In September of 1894 the young Lathams decided that there never would be much to the peep-show motion picture business and determined to try to get life-size pictures on the screen. They called upon their father, Major Woodville Latham, for assistance.

Major Latham had had a distinguished career as an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. For a time he was professor of chemistry at the University of West Virginia.

In December, 1894, the Lathams formed the Lambda Company--the Greek “L” for Latham--and a start was made in their quest for a motion picture projector. Dickson was in on the deal although he was still working for Edison. Eugène Lauste, a somewhat secretive friend of Dickson, who was born in Paris in 1857 and had come to the United States in 1887, was the mechanic who worked in Latham’s shop. Lauste previously had been employed by Edison.

By the end of the Winter of 1894–95 the Latham project was showing signs of success. A demonstration was held on April 21, 1895, at 35 Frankford Street, New York City and on May 20, 1895, a public showing opened in a small store at 153 Broadway. The Latham projector was found to be inadequate and the following comments were made in the _Photographic Times_ for September, 1895: “Even in this, the latest device, there is considerable room for improvement and many drawbacks have yet to be overcome.” Specific objections were made to the grain of the film, the fact that it was not entirely transparent, and other factors. It was noted that Major Latham was “persevering” in efforts to improve the device. But some word of encouragement was given: “Even in the present state the results obtained are most interesting and often startling. Quite a crowd of people visit the store at each performance, many making their exit wondering ‘How it’s done’.” It is worth noting that no illustration of the Latham machine was given but instead the Reynaud Optical Theatre of Paris was shown. Latham’s projector was called the Pantoptikon and later the Eidoloscope. Latham indignantly denied that parts of his device were borrowed from Edison’s machines. It is likely the Major was not aware of all that went on in his work shop.

Dickson eventually joined an organization called the KMCD syndicate, for E. B. Koopman of the Magic Introduction Company; Henry Norton Marvin, a former Edison Associate; Herman Casler, the actual inventor of a camera designed to evade Edison methods, and Dickson. The Casler camera or Mutograph, and the peep-show viewer or Mutoscope, sought to evade the Edison patents, so everything that Edison had they tried to avoid. The Mutoscope in its simplest form was really a step backwards to the old Thaumatrope principle of flashing successive card views before the eye. The Casler camera used unperforated wide gauge film with the pictures irregularly spaced. This made no difference, for the pictures were each mounted on cards.

The Mutoscope and the Mutograph stimulated interest and competition in films, and was the father of the concern around which opposition to Edison centered. The “independents” relied on the American Mutoscope Company, or Biograph as it became, to supply films which would be outside the restriction of the Edison patents. The ensuing patent war was long and bitter but did not materially interfere with the development of the motion picture.

Meanwhile, Edison’s agents, Raff & Gammon, were becoming important. The sale of the peep-show Kinetoscopes was only serving to increase the demand for projection and it was feared that the imitators of Edison, such as Lumière, Paul and Latham and others would control the field. Edison, however, was not able--for lack of time or other reasons--to meet the demands of his film agents with perfection enough to satisfy himself. His researches continued but his agents and the public were impatient.

Gammon, of the Raff & Gammon firm, decided to investigate the Armat projector which he had heard about in Washington. A five or six minute show was given on December 8, 1895, by Armat in the basement of his real estate office. In January of 1896 a deal was made whereby Edison would manufacture the projector and it would be introduced under his name, but as “Armat designed.” The agents wanted, of course, to play up the name of Edison for commercial reasons. Edison was induced to accept this arrangement by his general manager W. E. Gilmore--who, incidentally, had discharged Dickson.

A demonstration of the Armat-Edison projector was held on April 3 and on April 23, 1896, the Vitascope, as it was called, made its debut at the Koster & Bial’s Music Hall on Herald Square, 34th Street, New York City. This was a banner day in the history of the screen. The many hesitant and uncertain steps down through the centuries quickened into an assured march of progress. The public reaction to the Vitascope was excellent, although the programs presented were crude and immature. For several years to come the films offered were only short items which found their chief use as audience “chasers,” run as the final number in vaudeville shows. (Illustration facing page 161.)

The _New York Herald_ reported on May 3, 1896, that the subjects would soon be lengthened from 50 feet to 150 feet and 500 feet. “Gone With the Wind,” the mammoth of 1941, was 20,000 feet long. New attractions promised in the first days were to include Niagara Falls, which Langenheim had photographed with marked success a half-century earlier; a steamer going down the Lachine Rapids, and an ocean liner leaving its dock.

The _Herald_ said: “The result is intensely interesting and pleasing but Mr. Edison is not quite satisfied yet. He wants now to improve the phonograph so that it will record double the amount of sound it does at present, and he hopes then to combine this improved phonograph with the Vitascope so as to make it possible for an audience to witness a photographic reproduction of an opera or a play--to see the movements of the actors and hear their voices as plainly as though they were witnessing the original production itself.”

The “world premiere” newspaper review concluded: “And when it is remembered what marvels Edison has produced, it would not seem at all improbable that he may yet add this one to his many others.”

The talking picture, however, did not make its real debut for three decades.

The _New York Tribune_ on Sunday, May 3, 1896, said: “Edison’s Vitascope has made a decided hit at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall. Tomorrow evening all the pictures will be in colors. The Vitascope, together with Albert Chevalier, is drawing large audiences.”

Raff & Gammon now had something that could be sold easily; the Vitascope was everywhere well received. Eighty projectors of the Armat design were delivered by the Edison company from April to November of 1896. And Edison started renewed work on his own “Projecting Kinetoscope,” independently of Armat.

An advertising brochure for the Vitascope told the story this way:

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.

* * * * *

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._]

Cambridge Instrument Co.

_ROBERT W. PAUL, instrument maker, constructed cameras and projectors in England._]

(The machine can be just as successfully exhibited in vacant store-rooms, etc.)

Vitascope Brochure, 1896

_VITASCOPE, Edison made, Armat designed, as an artist saw it in action--drawn for the first advertising promotion booklet, New York in 1896._]

Generally, the motion picture industry was skeptical of talking motion pictures and their future. But soon public opinion registered emphatically and the addition of sound was accepted as an indispensable faculty of the medium of the screen. And now finally the ancient and persevering urge for true living pictures was satisfied.

* * * * *

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 Babylonians and Egyptians acquire first scientific knowledge
to of the light and shadow art-science. Crude magnifying
1500 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 Athanasius Kircher invents the magic lantern at Rome.
1645 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 English and French scientists study the optical phenomena
1825 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 Claudet, Duboscq, Shaw and others experiment with the
to magic disk and the stereoscope in an effort to combine the
1865 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 Edison investigations aimed at producing a motion picture
1894 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.

Special thanks are due to members of the faculty of Georgetown University for making available works in the Riggs Memorial Library of that institution and giving assistance on special aspects of the subject. The writer likewise is grateful for having had the opportunity of consulting books in the splendid Epstein Photographic Collection at the Columbia University Library, and for biographical notes on Robert W. Paul secured through the Cambridge Instrument Company. Appreciation is expressed to Rev. Hunter Guthrie, S.J., dean of the Graduate School, Georgetown University, and to Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith, consulting engineer, for kindness in reading proofs and offering invaluable suggestions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following is a list of books, arranged according to the chapters of this story, which may serve to disclose any particular part of the subject to readers who wish to make a detailed study. In general articles in the various periodicals give the first, and often most complete, publication of each development. This list represents only a limited number of the books and publications consulted, but the principal titles are included:

GENERAL

TERRY RAMSAYE. _A Million and One Nights._

New York, 1926.

A standard history of the motion picture and a special source
of material on Edison, Muybridge, Armat, Latham and other early
American experimenters.

JOSEPH ANTOINE FERDINAND PLATEAU. “Bibliographie des principaux
phénomenes subjectifs de la vision depuis les temps ancients
jusqu’à la fin du XVIII siècle,” _Mémoires_. Académie Royale
des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique.
Brussels, 1877–1878. A most complete, annotated list of works
on vision.

LYNN THORNDIKE. _History of Magic and Experimental Sciences._

New York, 1923–41.

A monumental reference work of particular interest to scholars.

HENRY V. HOPWOOD. _Living Pictures_: their history,
photo-reproduction and practical working. London, 1899.

ROBERT BRUCE FOSTER. _Hopwood’s Living Pictures._

London, 1915.

The original edition of this book and the revised edition both
include a general review of early activity plus a valuable
bibliography of the period from 1825 to 1898.

G. MICHEL COISSAC. _Histoire du Cinématographe_ de ses origines
jusqu’à nos jours. Paris, 1925.

The first half of this book is an important historical work,
written from the French point of view. An appendix lists
French cinema patents issued from 1890 to 1900.

MAJOR GENERAL JAMES WATERHOUSE. “Notes on the early history of the
camera obscura,” _Photographic Journal_, Vol. XXV, No. 9.

London, May 31, 1901.

GEORGES POTONNIEE. _Les Origines du Cinématographe._

Paris, 1928.

WILFRED E. L. DAY. _Illustrated Catalogue of the Will Day
Historical Collection of Cinematograph and Moving Picture
Equipment._

London.

SIMON HENRY GAGE AND HENRY PHELPS GAGE. _Optic Projection._

Ithaca, N. Y., 1914.

This book has a good historical bibliography.

Periodicals which contain important papers include:

_Philosophical Transactions._ Royal Society of London. London.

_Journal._ Royal Institution of Great Britain. London.

_Comptes-rendus._ Académie des Sciences (Institut de France).
Paris.

_Cosmos_; revue des sciences et de leurs applications. (Also
known as _Les Mondes_). Paris.

_La Nature._ Paris.

_Scientific American._ New York.

_U. S. Patent Office Gazette._ Washington, D. C.

_Photographic Journal_, including the transactions of the Royal
Photographic Society of Great Britain. London.

_Photographic Journal of America._ Philadelphia.