Chapter IX: Introduction (6)

Ingenious as this suggested combination is, I believe I am
in a position to cap it. By combining the phonograph and the
Kinesigraph I will undertake not only to produce a talking
picture of Mr. Gladstone which, with motionless lips and
unchanged expression, shall positively recite his latest
anti-Turkish speech in his own voice and tone. Not only this,
but the life-size phonograph itself shall move and gesticulate
precisely as he did when making the speech, the words and
gestures corresponding as in real life. Surely this is an advance
upon the conception of the _Scientific American_!

The mode in which I effect this is described in the accompanying
provisional specifications, which may be briefly summed up thus:
Instantaneous photographs of bodies or groups of bodies in motion
are taken at equal short intervals--say quarter or half seconds,
the exposure of the plate occupying not more than an eighth of a
second. After fixing, the prints from these plates are taken one
below the other on a long strip of ribbon or paper. The strip is
wound from one cylinder to another so as to cause the several
photographs to pass before the eye successively at the same
intervals of time as those at which they were taken.

Each picture as is passes the eye is instantaneously lighted
up by an electric spark. Thus the picture is made to appear
stationary while the people or things in it appear to move as
in nature. I need not enter more into detail beyond saying that
if the intervals between the presentation of the successive
pictures are found to be too short the gaps can be filled up by
duplicates or triplicates of each succeeding print. This will not
perceptibly alter the general effect.

I think it will be admitted that by this means a drama acted by
daylight or magnesium light may be recorded and reacted on the
screen or sheet of a magic lantern, and with the assistance of
the phonograph the dialogues may be repeated in the very voices
of the actors.

When this is actually accomplished the photography of colors will
alone be wanting to render the representation absolutely complete
and for this we shall not, I trust, have long to wait.

It is not known whether or not Edison read Donisthorpe’s suggestion. At any rate, it was ten years, not till 1887, that Edison decided to see about trying to combine the phonograph, greatly improved by this time, and a motion picture apparatus.

After completing improvements on the phonograph in 1886 and awaiting the opening of new laboratory quarters, Edison found himself with some idle moments. Sometime, in the middle or late part of 1887 Edison started work on what was to become his Kinetograph, the first motion picture camera that could photograph a few seconds of action at a time, and the Kinetoscope, the popular peep-show film device which brought the magic shadow art before the modern public and opened the way for the establishment of the motion picture industry.

Edison was assisted in his motion picture experiments by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a man who had about the same relation to Edison as George Demeny had with Marey in France. In keeping with the Demeny tradition, Dickson eventually broke with his master and engaged in controversy over priority of ideas and actual contributions to various developments. But Edison and Marey both supplied the ideas and directed the work, while Dickson and Demeny were responsible for carrying out the experiments. Both contributed importantly.

Edison had employed Dickson as a young man, just after he came from England to the United States, and he was a trusted associate, having first been with Edison in the installation of the underground wires in New York City. In 1887 Dickson was called to Edison’s private laboratory and given two major projects to supervise: (1) a magnetic device for separating ores, and (2) a device to combine the sounds of the phonograph and pictures.

Late in 1887, in “Room Five” of the Edison Private Laboratory, Dickson started to work on Edison’s ideas for a motion picture device. The first efforts were centered on a cylinder recording system, analogous to the cylinder phonograph which Edison preferred to the disk type. He did not bother to patent the disk phonograph style and thereby lost a fortune as he did in other patent matters, including foreign rights to his motion picture camera and peep-show apparatus. The first Edison moving pictures were extremely tiny and had to be inspected through a microscope arrangement. Around 1870 Talbot, the photographic pioneer, in England had done some work on a similar system. The results of Edison’s experiments in this connection were not successful.

Next, during 1888 or early 1889, Edison turned to celluloid, made by the Hyatt Company in Newark, and adapted to photographic purposes by Carbutt in Philadelphia. This material was found to be too thick to be rolled conveniently on reels, and did not make a good photographic base. Edison found that notches or perforations were needed to keep the film passing through the camera and viewing device at a uniform rate. He first used notches on the bottom, and finally four perforations on each side for each picture or frame. Edison’s arrangement has continued as the work standard.

Edison looked around for a more suitable substance on which to mount the pictures--the age-old need. He found it in film just being manufactured for the first time by George Eastman at Rochester, N. Y. An order was placed and the solution appeared at hand.

For several years Eastman had been seeking a suitable substance for his Kodak cameras in order to make photography simple and foolproof and make widespread amateur use possible. For a time his “roller photography” system used paper rolls coated with a detachable photographic emulsion. This was an improvement over glass plates but the method was cumbersome as the Kodaks had to be returned to Rochester for reloading and processing. Early in 1889 Eastman found the answer in a flexible photographic base--a plastic--and film was born. In August of that year manufacturing began in his Court Street plant in Rochester. The film strips were prepared on glass sheets mounted on 100-foot long tables. Eastman applied for his film patent on December 10, 1889.

When Edison returned from the Paris Exposition of 1889, where Marey had shown him motion picture photographs mounted on a large disk and projected, and also illuminated by an electric flash as in the Tachyscope of Anschütz, Dickson was able to announce success in the motion picture project. That was in October, 1889.

It can never be decided exactly what was shown at the first demonstration, because the interests of Edison and Dickson split and the testimony was contradictory. Nothing was done about it for nearly two years, and the peep-show film machines did not go on public display until the Spring of 1894.

Dickson claimed that the pictures, synchronized with a phonograph, were projected screen size in the Fall of 1889. Edison said there was no projection at the time. Some time between 1889 and 1894, projection experiments were made but Edison did not think screen projection of motion pictures would be commercially successful, believing that a few machines would exhaust the world’s demand and once the novelty wore off the business would die. It is also possible that he was not satisfied with the experiments at projection because they must have been quite imperfect. The Edison magic-disk device had continuously running film and a shutter revolving at the rate of ten times a second. No light source then available would give projection with that set-up. Intermittent movement was required for efficient operation in the projector as in the camera.

_Harper’s Weekly_ of June 13, 1891, carried a two-page story on the new Edison invention. The device was not claimed to be perfected but one having very wonderful possibilities. The writer said, “To say that the Kinetograph can be nothing more than a marvelous toy would be nasty.”

Edison said, “All that I have done is to perfect what has been attempted before, but did not succeed. It’s just that one step that I have taken.” On August 24, 1891, Edison applied for an American patent but decided not to invest the required sum, approximately $150, to make foreign applications. Too often in the past he found that a patent application by him was simply a form of general advertising to his imitators and competitors to start using his newest invention.

In 1891 the Kinetograph of Edison was not perfected or highly regarded. In the Engineering News of May 30, 1891, a brief note read:

The Kinetograph is the latest reported invention of Mr. Thomas
Edison. In an interview published in the _New York Sun_, Mr.
Edison described this still unperfected machine as an instrument
with which he photographs a man or a company of men in action
at the rate of 46 per second. The negatives are one-half inch
square, taken on a continuous film of gelatine of any length
desired. By an ingenious arrangement the images from the gelatine
ribbon are later thrown upon a screen and this ribbon is made to
move at a rate corresponding to the original rate of action, and
at the same time a phonograph is made to repeat the words of the
speaker represented. To thus photograph a 30-minute act of an
opera, for example, a ribbon 6,400 feet long would be required,
each photograph one-half inch square and requiring an inch of
linear space.

The commercial sphere of the Kinetograph has not yet been defined.

That last observation was very true for the time being.

In late May of 1891 an indifferent account of the device was cabled to the _London Times_ by its New York correspondent. The matter was commented upon in the _Engineering_ magazine of London for June 5, 1891. That publication observed that since the time of the invention of the telephone there had been efforts to do for sight what the telephone did for sound. Of Edison’s invention of the motion picture camera and viewer it was said, “It is a matter of much less importance and much less originality than thought.” It was asserted that it would not be possible to photograph interiors at the rate of 46 pictures per second. But Edison was doing just that in his first motion picture studio.

In the early part of 1893 it was decided to market commercially the peep-show motion picture devices. After a year’s postponement, the Chicago World’s Fair was scheduled to open in the Spring of 1893 and this was thought an ideal place for the debut of the apparatus. In January of 1893 the famous “Black Maria” Edison Studio was constructed chiefly of tar paper at a cost of about $600, and the first commercial films made. Dickson was producer, director, cameraman and laboratory expert. Fred Ott, a laboratory mechanic, and his sneeze were among the first actors and film “acts.” Other subjects included dancers and similar entertainment subjects of a vaudeville character, together with scenic views.

The debut of the projection apparatus had been heralded long before it actually arrived. The _World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated_, published for the Chicago Fair of 1893, said:

Edison will show his kineto-graph. This machine is a combination,
first of the camera and phonograph and then the phonograph
and Stereopticon (magic lantern projector). By means of this
machine, when a man makes a speech the phonograph takes his
words. Connected electrically and in synchronism with the
phonograph is a camera which takes pictures of the speaker at
the rate of forty-seven per second on a long transparent slip.
This is developed and fixed and then placed in a stereopticon
which is also in electrical synchronism with the phonograph.
The stereopticon shows these photographs on the screen at a
rate of forty-seven per second, while the phonograph reproduces
the words, and thus a life-like representation of the speaker
is given, with his words, actions and gestures precisely as he
delivered the speech in the first instance.

Eastman Kodak

_EASTMAN and EDISON. George Eastman and Thomas A. Edison, the two greatest American contributors to the practical development of motion pictures, at a meeting in 1928._]

Edison Archives, 1894

_KINETOSCOPE PARLOR, presenting Edison’s peep-hole viewer, opened at 1155 Broadway on April 14, 1894. Subsequent showings in London and Paris inspired European inventors._]

Edison’s projection apparatus was not perfected by the time of the Fair or indeed for several years afterwards. Even the peep-show Kinetoscope machines had not been manufactured in sufficient number for exhibition there. The mechanic on the job was reported to have spent too much time at the local bar instead of working in the West Orange laboratory. During the Fair Edison’s agents waited for the first shipment of the Kinetoscopes but none arrived in time.

The patent applications made in 1891 by Edison for “an apparatus for exhibiting photographs of moving objects” and his Kinetograph camera were granted in the Spring of 1893.

The premiere of Edison’s Kinetoscope did not take place until April 14, 1894. That first night was one of the most significant for magic shadows because out of the Kinetoscope and the Kinetograph camera evolved the modern motion picture devices.

Edison supplied the peep-show Kinetoscope to his agents, Raff & Gammon at $200 each, and they were retailed to showmen at prices from $300 to $350. Andrew M. Holland, a Canadian, acquired ten Kinetoscopes and opened up the first Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City. The location previously was occupied by a shoe store and a half century later it was again a shoe store. (Illustration on opposite page.)

The Kinetoscopes on Broadway were successful. $120 was taken in the first night. The original show of films was a kind of “double feature” in that the spectator was charged 25¢ to see the second line of five Kinetoscopes. The films included the famous “Fred Ott’s Sneeze.”

In the _Century Magazine_ for June, 1894, there was an article by Dickson and Antonia Dickson on “Edison’s Invention of the Kinetophonograph.” Edison wrote a forward which said in part that he had the idea that it was possible to devise a sight and sound combination apparatus in 1887. “This idea, the germ of which came from the little toy called the Zoetrope (i.e., the Plateau-Stampfer magic disk) and the work by Muybridge, Marie (i.e., Marey) and others has now been accomplished, so that every change of facial expression can be recorded and reproduced life-size. The Kinetoscope is only a small model illustrating the present stage of progress but with each succeeding month new possibilities are brought into view.” Edison then prophesied that with his work and that of others “grand opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New York without any material change from the original, and with artists and musicians long since dead.”

On June 16, 1894, the _Electrical World_ reported on “The Kinetophonograph” and on the nickel-in-the-slot peep-show models on display at the Broadway store. The review was not enthusiastic even then. It concluded: “As to the future of this most ingenious and interesting bit of mechanism, time only will demonstrate whether it is to be a new scientific toy or an invention of real practical value.”

Time did demonstrate all that and more.

The reaction to Edison’s Kinetograph in Paris, showplace of the world, was much more enthusiastic than in New York. In _La Nature_ the wonderful mechanical perfection of the film peep-show apparatus was praised with special note given to the fact that it was driven by electricity. The Werner firm had opened a demonstration of the Kinetoscope at 20 Boulevard Poissonnière, Paris, and the machines were in use all day and every evening.

The Kinetoscope also went on display in Oxford Street, London, in October, 1894, brought there from New York by two Greeks, George Georgiades and George Trajedis. From the showings of the Edison peep-show in New York, Paris, and London, there arose an increased interest in the motion picture. Out of these demonstrations grew projection machines which at last brought the shadow art-science before the world in full development.

_XVI_

FIRST STEPS

_In the United States, England, France
and Germany efforts are made to project
motion pictures on the screen--Half
successes, whole failures, bitter
disappointments and yet--perennial hope
to harness magic shadows._

During the period between the time Edison achieved his first success with motion pictures, in 1889, until his peep-show viewing machines were put on public display in New York, Paris and London in 1894, hesitant, unsteady steps, like those of a baby learning to walk, were being taken in advancing the magic shadow art-science.

Progress was made in England under Wordsworth Donisthorpe, an interesting character named Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, three associates, Greene, Rudge and Evans, and others. In France, there were Marey and Demeny, with Marey developing what was probably the first real motion picture projector capable of projecting more than one short scene--the limitation of all disk models though it was only intended for laboratory use; and Reynaud with the first popular motion picture theatre which, however, did not use photographic pictures. In Germany, Anschütz, inventor of the Tachyscope, was working on a projector, as were others on both sides of the Atlantic.

Donisthorpe, with the help of W. C. Croft, whom he later described as “a good draughtsman” but not a person skilled in optics, constructed about 1889 a Kinesigraph which Donisthorpe had originally suggested in 1877, at the time he wrote concerning Edison’s phonograph and a plan to combine it with a motion picture machine. Describing the circumstances in a letter to the British _Journal of Photography_ of March 12, 1897, Donisthorpe said: “I agreed to give him (Croft) an interest in my invention for drawing and supervising construction of the instrument, as I was at that time busy with other work.” He noted that Croft had never claimed to be its inventor. As the reader will recall, Donisthorpe had named his idea, the Kinesigraph, twelve years before this arrangement with Croft.

Donisthorpe and Croft obtained a British patent in 1889 but that expired when not renewed after four years. Donisthorpe complained that an adverse report of some alleged experts killed his plan when he attempted to obtain financing from Sir George Newnes, who might have been the film’s first patron. Newnes had made his fortune as a newspaper and magazine owner. He invested a large sum in the Norwegian South Pole expedition of 1898 but was dissuaded from backing motion pictures. Donisthorpe’s idea was called “wild, visionary and ridiculous and that the only result of attempting to photograph motion would be an indescribable blur.”

“I shall ask in the future,” Donisthorpe continued, “to give me all I shall ever get in return for my time and thought, namely, the credit of having been the first to invent, and the first to patent the Kinesigraph, the photography of motion.” He also noted that as a barrister he would not care to defend the monopoly of any patentee after 1889. But he was never called upon for that, for in England, as elsewhere, the motion picture patent situation eventually became a hopeless muddle.

In the March 26, 1897 issue of the same publication, the British _Journal of Photography_, Donisthorpe also commented on his Kinesigraph: “The instrument was patented, made and worked before any other saw the light. I do not pretend the results were in all respects satisfactory. What first machine ever is?” Donisthorpe expressed surprise that some had not attempted to copy his machine which operated with a single moving lens and took pictures two and one-half inches in diameter on sensitized paper. This was later made transparent by the application of petroleum jelly or castor oil, a process which Eastman had used, for still pictures, with paper roll film in the United States from 1884 until his film base was developed late in 1889. Donisthorpe held that the continuous action with the moving lens providing the necessary intermittency was a decided advantage over other types: “In one particular, my own invention is so vastly superior even now to all that have come after it, that I am surprised practical men have not adopted it, now that it is open to the English public to do so.” As interesting as Donisthorpe’s idea was even in 1877 and also in 1889, it is very unlikely that his machine was satisfactory. Even now the intermittent motion picture camera and projector hold practical supremacy except in the case of very high speed photography for scientific purposes.

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (1842–1890), who worked in England, the United States and France, was the son of a French officer who was a friend of Daguerre, the pioneer in photography. Le Prince became a photographer, under the influence of Daguerre and in 1870 went to work in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, where he had his own shop. From shortly after 1880 to 1889 he was in the United States, returning then to Leeds.

Le Prince proposed a multiple-lens camera-projector system. On January 10, 1888 he applied for an American patent, which was issued on November 16 of the same year, on a “Method of an apparatus for producing animated pictures of natural scenery and life.” In Le Prince’s method, two strips of sensitized paper or other material would be fed alternately through a camera and projector equipped with two sets of rotating lenses. It has been said that Le Prince also had an idea of a system using only one lens.

Years later, at the trial of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company against Thomas A. Edison, a model of the Le Prince camera-projector was introduced together with results purportedly made by Joe Mason of Biograph, but it was unsatisfactory--the double lens system did not produce evenly spaced pictures and each had to be printed separately. Furthermore, the background had to be treated specially or the figures would appear to jump right and left, because each lens took pictures from a slightly different angle.

Le Prince disappeared in 1890 when he was visiting in France prior to returning to the United States, some investigators have asserted, to show a perfected model of his projector-camera. The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved.

John Arthur Roebuck Rudge, an optician and instrument maker of Bath, England, had developed about 1866 the Bio-Phantoscope, an application of the Plateau magic-disk. He maintained a continuing interest in photography.

About 1882 William Friese Greene (1855–1921), a young man who was a friend of the English photographer Talbot, came into contact with Rudge. In 1885 Greene opened a camera shop in London. A few years later he demonstrated before the Photographic Society a little projection instrument made by Rudge which showed four pictures in rapid succession as, for example, the change of an expression from grave to gay, or a face in the act of blushing. That device was considerably more primitive than the projector first invented by Uchatius, long before Greene was born.

In May of 1890 Rudge showed at a meeting of the Bath Photographic Society a new optical lantern fitted with a mechanism which aimed to represent, by means of a series of photographic slides, men and animals moving as in life. That device, an improvement of the earlier Rudge projector, had one condenser to gather the light and four small projection lenses. Greene suggested the addition of the coloring effects by coating parts of the slides with pigments.

However, the machine was described as unfinished, though in the _Photographic News_ of May 30th it was stated, “The effects were, from an entertainment point of view, vastly superior to those produced by Mr. Muybridge and others by the application of the Thaumatrope principle, the unpleasant jerkiness of which is well known.” But it was stated that Rudge’s machine had several serious defects. The pictures were small and limited to only a few in number. Greene also had a model and gave a demonstration in London which seemed to impress only a Mr. Chang of the Chinese Embassy, one of the invited guests.

The Greene-Rudge or Rudge-Greene machine was partially the work of Mortimer Evans, a civil engineer, with whom Greene made contact in 1889. That year they applied jointly for a patent on a film device. The same year Evans sold out his interest for a reported £1,200 and Greene was in financial troubles.

The Greene-Rudge-Evans device was a box film camera which, it was claimed, could be converted into a projector. By this time celluloid film was available in England as well as in the United States and France. According to the February 28, 1890, _Photographic News_, the camera could take ten photographs a second. The Greene camera, measuring eight by nine by nine-and-a-quarter inches, could take 300 pictures, and a smaller model turned out by Evans, 100 pictures. The reviewer of 1890 wrote, “the object of it is to obtain consecutive pictures of things in motion which can afterwards be rapidly consecutively projected on a screen so as to reproduce, say, a street scene, with the horses, human beings, and other things moving as in nature.” Greene this same year claimed that his machine camera would have important military uses. In this he was farsighted, as the modern motion picture camera is an important instrument of military reconnaissance, record and instruction as World War II has so amply demonstrated.

In the British _Journal of Photography_ for December 5, 1895, A. T. Story defended Greene’s priority of invention and claimed that Greene’s projection apparatus of 1889–90 was a success. That conclusion is not inescapable. There appears no concrete evidence that Greene-Rudge-Evans achieved screen projection, for it is obvious that had they done so it would have been widely acclaimed at the time. But they did make a camera and attempted a projector. The camera apparently was practical. Marey and others in France, Anschütz in Germany, Edison, and Wallace Goold Levison in Brooklyn and W. N. Jennings of the U. S. Weather Bureau in Chicago, among others, were making successful motion picture films at that time. Projection remained the great problem.

In 1893 Greene obtained a patent on a device related to the Chronophotographe developed by John Varley, a member of the English landscape painting family. His projection idea included a loop formed by means of intermittent pressure on the film passing before the lens. Greene’s November 29, 1893, patent application, accepted exactly one year later, was “to produce by means of reflected light artificial scenery to take the place of the ordinary scenery or background.” It included “improvements in apparatus for exhibiting panoramic, dissolving or changing views and in the manufacture of slides for the use thereof.” From this it is clear that even as late as 1893 Greene’s idea was limited in scope and effectiveness. At this time Greene made some pictures in Hyde Park with a large portable camera.

It was described as a camera and projector in one, but that combination, without many modifications, has never been entirely practical.

Greene had an unhappy, ill-starred life and though not a great inventor deserved better. About 1899 he made attempts at color motion pictures, using a rotating lens with a filter, but here again he was unsuccessful. About 1911 he was brought to the United States to testify in the motion picture patent suit but he did not impress the American attorneys representing Edison’s opponents, and he never was called to the witness stand. About 1915 it was reported that he was destitute and Will Day, English motion picture expert, and others, organized a relief fund in his behalf and later he had a minor position with a color photo-engraving firm. At a dinner in his honor in 1921, just after he had once again told the story of his pioneer work on motion pictures, he dropped dead. Apparently his projection efforts were doomed to failure, because they never were based on sound principles. The double lens system has never been made to work satisfactorily.

Marey, who was now using strips of coated celluloid for his instantaneous photographs, sought to devise a suitable projector. This he accomplished in 1893 with what was perhaps the first efficient motion picture projector which could handle more than one brief scene, using long strips of coated celluloid film instead of pictures set on a disk. In order to obtain sufficient illumination, it used sunlight instead of an electric arc or other source of light. This limited Marey’s projector to laboratory use, though as late as 1915 some experts claimed that sunlight was better than the electric arc for magic lantern projection.

An available illustration of Marey’s projector shows the path of the rays which are reflected from the sun by a heliostat. That device was invented by the Dutch scientist, Willem Jacob, and is simply a mechanically driven reflector which keeps the light of the sun focused on a single spot by compensating for the movement of the earth. In Marey’s projector the sun’s rays are interrupted by a hand driven shutter wheel and reflected by two mirrors through the film, the light then passing through the projection lens and throwing the pictures onto the screen.

“The motion of the film,” Marey wrote, “as it halts at each flash, is brought about by an apparatus not shown in the figure. It is similar to that of the simple chronophotographic apparatus (camera), with the difference that the positive film, having its ends fastened together to make an endless belt, passes over a series of rollers which stretch it taut.” This roller system was probably similar to that used by Edison in his peep-show Kinetoscope.

The projector, Marey himself admitted, was not perfect. “The principal imperfection of the chronophotographic projector was a jerkiness due to imperfect equality of the intervals.” This resulted from the fact that Marey did not perforate the film because he thought the space along the edge should not be wasted. He knew that Edison had been successful through the use of four perforations on each side of every frame, or picture. He was free to copy this, had he wished, because Edison did not patent the method abroad.

Meanwhile, Marey continued his work and finally, in 1898, announced a successful projector system which overcame his chief difficulty which was the even spacing of the pictures without using the Edison perforations.

His system featured specially constructed rollers which gripped the edges of the film. The next year Marey worked out a combination of the motion picture camera and the microscope, opening the way for much progress in scientific research. He continued to study motion and in 1899 improved his early photographic gun camera so that it would handle about 65 feet of film at one loading. Marey, who was interested only in science and not in commercial exploitation, needed funds which he eventually received from the American Smithsonian Institute, whose secretary, Samuel P. Langley, the aeronautical pioneer, had been following the French physiologist’s motion picture studies, including his pioneer work in photographing air currents.

Marey’s motto, so far as motion pictures were concerned, was: “It is not the most interesting motion pictures that are the most useful.” In this he stood against commercialization, and always for instructional uses.

In 1893 Demeny broke with Marey and patented on October 10, 1893, under his own name, a modification of the Marey camera, which he called the Bioscope. This he was able to do, even though the method had been known at Marey’s laboratory, simply because Marey had never actually adopted it. French patents were regularly issued upon application.

Demeny was the motion picture amateur or home-movie-maker’s first friend. The instantaneous photographic devices of Marey and others were relatively clumsy and expensive. Demeny brought out a portable camera suitable for amateur use. In operation this model was held over one arm, making it necessary for the cameraman to photograph a scene which he did not see at all, or only imperfectly out of the corner of his eye. Demeny’s film was given an intermittent action through two eccentrically mounted pins used as the roll holders. Demeny realized that the pictures must be taken at equal intervals of time and also evenly spaced on the film for successful results. His eccentric camera never actually achieved this result.

In 1891 Demeny became interested in studying speech. In this work he was associated with H. Marischelle, then a young professor at the French national institute for deaf mutes. Marischelle and Demeny had the idea that through photographs of speech the deaf could learn to talk. Demeny developed the Photophone and the Photoscope, which were modified versions of the Marey camera system and a lantern projector equipped with an oxyhydrogen light. Demeny made close-up instantaneous photographs of persons speaking. The phrase, “_Vive la France_” was a popular subject.

Demeny said that the apparatus, “conserves the expression of the face as the voice is preserved in the phonograph.” He added that it was, “possible even to join the phonograph to his phonoscope to complete the illusion.” That was the idea expressed by Donisthorpe in 1877 and on which Edison had been working since 1887--the combined projector and phonograph or the talking motion picture which indeed was not to be perfected for many decades.

In the Spring of 1892 Demeny tried to exploit commercially the system of Talking Photographs or, more accurately, moving pictures of the action of the mouth in speaking. Demeny always blamed the organization, the _Société Générale du Phonoscope_ with which he was associated, for not developing his work. It is probable however, that the Demeny machines were not entirely satisfactory. A few years later, after successful projection of motion pictures had been achieved on a commercial basis, Demeny became associated with Léon Gaumont, and a number of early French machines carried Demeny’s name though he alone was not entirely responsible for the design. Demeny and Gaumont developed a projector which included a gear wheel which fitted into perforations on the film and an eccentric pin similar to Marey’s camera system.

Anschütz, one of the first successful photographers of motion, after Muybridge, and the one who introduced the electric Geissler tube as a method of illumination and projection of a series of still photos to create the illusion of motion, was continuing his work in Germany in this period. On November 15, 1894, he obtained a French patent on a “process of projection of images in stroboscopic movement.” This projector had an intermittent light arrangement and may have been better than Marey’s sun model of 1893, because Anschütz was a professional photographer and maker of optical instruments while Marey was a professional physiologist.

In November of 1895 Anschütz showed an improved model of his projector at the Postal Building in the Artilleriestrasse, Düsseldorf, Germany. A contemporary account in the journal, _Photographisches Archiv_, published by Dr. Paul E. Liesegang, reported that the demonstration was “before an invited crowd and was rightly received with great enthusiasm by all the persons present.” Anschütz had improved his projection apparatus to a point at which images could be thrown life-size on a screen. Before that time pictures projected by his _Elektrisch Schnellseher_ were only the size of the original pictures and thus could be seen by only a few spectators at one time. Anschütz had both motion pictures and many stills on his program, including scenes taken when the cornerstone of the Reichstag Building was laid. Once again the military connection of magic shadows was shown as Anschütz projected scenes of army life. After the demonstration Colonel A. D. Tanera stressed the importance of motion picture photography for the study of military history and also for making observations in the field.

Reynaud, the first magic shadow showman of modern times and the immediate forerunner of the motion picture exhibitor of our day, was now operating his _Théâtre Optique_ in Paris. He achieved the first solid commercial success of the art. From 1892 to 1900, when the competition of real motion pictures forced him to close, 500,000 persons attended the Reynaud screen entertainments which were presented every day from three to six in the afternoon and eight to eleven at night. (Illustration facing page 148.)

The projection apparatus used at the _Théâtre Optique_ was a modification of Reynaud’s original Praxinoscope of 1877 and his simple projector model of 1882. The scenes were painted on transparent celluloid and one magic lantern provided the background and another optical system which handled the moving film cast the motion effects onto the screen. Rear projection was used with the apparatus concealed on the theatre stage behind the screen. In 1889 Reynaud had obtained a patent on a perforated band of film and he was the first to introduce on a commercially practical basis reels or spools to handle the film. Reynaud was not content to show merely scenes of action but wished to tell a story. Before long it was found that the story film or familiar feature picture was the most popular all over the world.

“Poor Little Peter” (_Pauvre Pierrot_) was one of the most popular of Reynaud’s film shows. Harlequin and Colombine were other popular characters. Reynaud provided some of the earliest uses of trick projection, for his apparatus was fully reversible and at times he would create novel and hilarious effects by making the characters jump backwards.

Reynaud stood between the Shadow Plays and pantomimes of the ancients and the modern motion picture. Though he took no part in the development of motion picture photography and its application to the screen, he influenced the art-science by pioneering in the dramatic use of the medium, as well as introducing technical devices which were readily adaptable to motion picture use.

Reynaud was, as Porta two-and-a-half centuries before, a showman. But while he was entertaining the public with screen pictures, the efforts of Marey, Greene, Rudge, Evans, Donisthorpe and many others, including Edison, were preparing the way for the screen art and science of magic shadows. At last the valid motion picture was ready for its public screen debut.

Scientific American, 1892

_THEATRE OPTIQUE of Emile Reynaud used hand-painted film to tell entertaining stories. The screen plays received wide approval from audiences in Paris._]

Scientific American, 1889

_ELECTRICAL TACHYSCOPE of Ottomar Anschütz was an attraction at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893. It used an intermittent light source._]

_XVII_

WORLD PREMIERES

_Success at last--Magic shadows reach the
screen in living motion--Edison-Armat and
the Vitascope--Les Frères Lumière and the
Cinématographe--Paul of London and the
Animatograph or Theatrograph._

The motion picture made its commercial debut in 1895 and 1896, more or less simultaneously, in Paris, London, New York and elsewhere. That debut is duplicated occasionally at the present time when important Hollywood films have a number of simultaneous “world premieres.”

With the introduction of a satisfactory projector of life-size moving pictures which were not limited to a few seconds’ duration but could run for a number of minutes, the story of the origin of magic shadow entertainment comes to an end. From that day the phenomenal progress in entertainment and instruction of the motion picture is particularly history of that art-science. Magic shadow history is being written currently every evening on tens of thousands of screens before millions of spectators.

The motion picture projectors which finally were entirely successful and from which the history of the motion picture, properly speaking, arises were all principally based on Edison’s Kinetograph film peep-show which in 1894 was shown in New York, Paris and London.

In the Fall of 1894 Louis Lumière saw the Edison Kinetograph demonstrated at the Werner firm exhibit in Paris at 20 Boulevard Poissonière. From this he conceived the idea of combining such an apparatus with the Reynaud-type, which was already providing screen entertainment in Paris. Doubtless, Lumière was also familiar with Marey’s work.

Louis Lumière and his brother, Auguste, operated a photographic establishment at Lyons which their father had established. Lyons figured once before in the magic shadow show; it was here that Walgenstein, the Dane, first introduced Kircher’s magic lantern in France.

Lumière, who was a successful photographer, decided that the number of images used by Edison per second, forty-eight, was more than necessary so he used sixteen. Lumière, however, borrowed from Edison the idea of perforating the edge of the film, having one on each side of every frame instead of Edison’s four. Lumière adopted a claw type intermittent drive for the apparatus which was designed by an engineer, Charles Moissant. Léon Gaumont, who later became associated with Demeny, was Moissant’s secretary. The machine was constructed by the Jules Carpentier manufacturing firm.

First experiments were made with coated paper but this was found unsuitable. Celluloid was ordered from the American Celluloid Company and this the Lumières coated themselves because, unlike Edison, they were skilled in photography before they took up the motion picture problem. The Lumières were able to use celluloid but it was not as good as the Eastman motion picture film which Edison had found so satisfactory.

On February 13, 1895, the Lumières obtained a French patent on their camera-projector device, the Cinématographe. The name Cinématographe probably was derived from a French patent issued February 12, 1892, to Léon Bouly who had an idea for a camera which evidently was not reduced to practice.

_Le Repas de Bébé_, “The Baby’s Meal,” was the first Lumière film. Other scenes were made in the Lumière photographic plant, together with views of the city, including the Bourse. A demonstration of the apparatus was given there on March 22, 1895, but the Lumières were already established in business and in no haste to develop the new invention. The Cinématographe was shown at Marseilles in April, the month an English patent was obtained, and next shown at the Congress of the National Union of French Photographic Societies, held in June of the same year. There the Lumières created a sensation by filming the delegates arriving for the opening meeting on June 10, developing the film and showing it before the conference was adjourned on June 12. This was the first newsreel use of the motion picture.

On December 28th, the Lumières opened a commercial establishment for the Cinématographe in the Salle au Grand-Café at 14, Boulevard des Capucines. An admission charge of one franc was made, but only a few dozen curious people stopped in the first day. Soon however the fame of the Cinématographe spread throughout Paris. Within a few weeks the Lumière films were playing to “standing room only,” averaging more than two thousand admissions per day.

The Lumière Cinématographe was widely hailed. In his usual generous manner, Marey praised the accomplishment even though he must have been disappointed that others had achieved what he had long been seeking. The Cinématographe was shipped to England and the United States at an early date. In New York it was exhibited first in June, 1896, at Keith’s 14th Street Theatre, on Union Square. In both countries it was a stimulus to imitators. It continued to be one of the best projectors available for some time. The Lumière claw drive, however, was not as satisfactory as the Maltese-cross type used on some projectors from about 1870 and adopted by Edison for the camera, and it gradually yielded to the newer models.

The Lumières continued to maintain a lively interest in motion picture developments even after their success with the camera and projector. In 1897 they devised a safety condenser as a protection against the fire hazard; in 1898 a peep-show viewing model, and in 1903 they began a study of the possibilities of direct photographing of colors. This research led to a good color process which was later introduced commercially.

In England, Robert William Paul (1869–1943), scientific instrument-maker, who was the son of a London ship owner, was asked by George Georgiades and George Trajedis, two Greeks, to duplicate the Edison Kinetoscope. Georgiades and Trajedis had bought Kinetoscopes in New York from Holland Bros., eastern agents of the first Kinetoscope Company and brought them to London where they were exhibited in October, 1894, at a store in Old Broad Street. Paul inspected the Kinetoscope and knew he could copy it. But he did not believe he was free to do so, feeling sure that Edison had already patented the machine in England. Investigation showed that no such action had been taken. Thereupon at his work shop in Hatton Garden, London, Paul made Kinetoscopes for the two Greek exhibitors and also for himself. With his own machines he opened a display at Earl’s Court, London. Soon Paul began work on a camera and projector based on the Kinetoscope peep-show device.

Paul had become interested in creating a machine which would take the spectators into the past or future after reading a fantastic tale of H. G. Wells called _The Time Machine_, published in 1894. Paul and Wells talked the matter over, the one a designer and inventor, the other a successful writer gifted with an extravagant imagination. A British patent was applied for but no model or apparatus was ever devised because the money for such an undertaking was not found. The Paul-Wells Time Machine was to be an elaborate affair. Spectators were to be seated on platforms which would move about; adding to the illusion, magic lanterns and motion picture projectors were to flash pictures on all sides. It was another application of the old Phantasmagoria idea to achieve effects by moving the projectors--and in this case, the audience also. Similar effects are achieved with much less trouble, both for the showman and the spectator, in the modern story motion picture.

In the Spring of 1895, Paul made an agreement with Birt Acres by which Acres would make films with a camera constructed by Paul. Previously Paul had been using Edison films but the supply was cut off. His camera was much smaller and more portable than the Edison model. Acres claimed that he had started work on a motion picture camera as far back as 1889 but the effort had not been very successful. By the end of 1893 Acres said he had developed a camera which used one lens or a battery of twelve (Uchatius fashion) and had devoted himself to improving the apparatus instead of “seeking a bubble reputation as a music hall showman,” as he himself put it. In 1897 when he had correspondence with Wordsworth Donisthorpe over the latter’s early work in motion pictures, Acres was not happy about his motion picture associations, for he said: “Every Tom, Dick and Harry is now claiming to be the inventor and first exhibitor of these animated photographs and I can fully sympathize with Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, inasmuch as some one else has obtained credit for his invention. My own experience with various adventurers is not unique.”

Paul’s first camera design had an intermittent movement featuring a clamping and unclamping action which was rather hard on the celluloid film made by the Hyatt brothers in Newark, N. J., imported to England and coated for photographic use by the Blair Company. Shortly thereafter, Paul changed to an intermittent movement having a seven-point Maltese Cross. This was an important development.

Paul’s projector, called the Animatograph, had its first showing at the Finsbury Technical College on February 20, 1896. Eight days later it was demonstrated at the Royal Institute. Its success came to the attention of a theatreman, Sir Augustus Harris, operator of the Olympia Theatre. A deal was made by Harris with Paul and the projector rechristened the “Theatrograph.” After a short but successful run at the Olympia in London, the device was booked for two weeks at the Alhambra, Leicester Square. This motion picture show stayed there four years.

Subjects projected at twenty pictures per second by the Paul device in the early programs were: “A Rough Sea at Dover,” a hand colored film; “Bootblack at Work in a London Street,” sporting events and many other scenes.

Acres and Paul filmed the Derby of 1896, making some of the first successful topical pictures. Scenes showing the Prince of Wales’ horse, Persimmon, winning the Derby were exhibited at the Alhambra the evening after the race, creating a sensation and numerous curtain calls for Paul. The public was amazed.

Paul continued to be interested in motion pictures, especially their scientific aspects, as a kind of hobby, for about 15 years. However, in 1912 he destroyed practically all his films and gave no further attention to the cinema. In addition to his early work in projection and camera design Paul himself had filmed many pictures including a series of animated drawings, _à la_ Walt Disney, to show electrical phenomena resulting from the approach of two magnets. These scientific films were made in association with Professor Silvanus Thompson. Paul also produced a number of comedies and used trick camera work to show motor cars flying to the moon and other bizarre effects. During World War I Paul invented secret war apparatus including an anti-aircraft height finder and anti-submarine device.

Charles Pathé, a great name in the early French film world and carried on by several companies in the United States and elsewhere, bought one of the first Paul motion picture projectors. Previously he had roadshowed the Edison phonograph.

Acres had a projector of his own called the Kinetic Lantern, which he said was finished in January, 1896, but the title was changed to Kineopticon and later to Cinematoscope for a special program for the Prince of Wales. Probably this projector also was made by Paul or he assisted in its design. Acres, however, was primarily interested in his profession of photography, and motion pictures appeared to him to be only one aspect of the subject. In 1897 he said: “There is something in photography and, in particular, in animated photography. Indeed, I think there can be no doubt that animated photography is destined to revolutionize our art-science, both as regards matters historical and scientific, in addition to giving us life-long portraits.”

By the time Acres thus spoke the revolution was well under way.

As in France, a number of men immediately started making cameras and projectors in England. The patent rights were confused, chiefly because Edison neglected to secure foreign coverage, leaving the field wide open.

In the United States two factors dominated the experimentation: (1) the Anschütz Electrical Tachyscope, shown at the Chicago Fair in 1893 and (2) the Edison peep-show film device on display in many places, starting in New York in the Spring of 1894.

The projection of life-size motion pictures on a screen before an audience might have been achieved considerably earlier had Edison not felt that there would be no commercial market for such a device. The little peep-show models could be manufactured at rather low cost and sold at a profit, so no impetus was given to the development of a screen projector which might, he thought, quickly dissipate the public’s interest and destroy the market. But, it may be recalled, the screen projector, combined with the talking phonograph, had been Edison’s original goal when he started the experiments in 1887.

One of the men who was impressed by Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope at the Chicago Fair was a young Virginian, Thomas Armat. He was a man of means and though associated in a real estate office in Washington, D. C., still had time to follow his scientific interests which induced him to attend the Bliss School of Electricity in Washington. At this time, Armat had already invented a conduit for an electric railway and had refused an offer to interest himself in the distribution of the Edison peep-show film Kinetoscope. He wanted screen projection.

At the Bliss School Armat was introduced to C. Francis Jenkins, a young Government clerk, who also was interested in scientific matters. He had studied the Edison Kinetoscope and, for the Pure Food Show in Convention Hall, in November of 1894, had shown a model which instead of Edison’s revolving shutter had revolving electric lights, based on the Uchatius idea. In March of 1894 Jenkins received a patent on a motion picture camera which used a revolving lens system called the Phantoscope. There is no evidence that Jenkins ever made that camera operate efficiently. It was described in the _Photographic Times_ of July, 1894, as being only five by five by eight inches in size and weighing ten pounds. Pictures of an athlete in action, said to have been taken with Jenkins’ device were reproduced.

Jenkins was having difficulty achieving projection. Armat and he decided to form a partnership. Armat was to build a projector after Jenkins’ design and, in return, he would receive rights to the rotating lens camera patent. The results were a failure. Armat decided to continue with his own ideas and there was no objection, as he was supplying the money and the place for the work in the basement of his real estate office at 1313 “F” Street, in Washington.

Armat decided that the Jenkins idea of continuous movement with revolving lights was unworkable and chose an intermittent action. A variation of the Maltese-cross gear system was tried. The eventual legal dispute between Armat and Jenkins has obscured data on the system first used. It is certain the results were not wholly successful.

Three of these machines were built in the Summer of 1895 and the first showing was held at the Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta, Georgia, in mid-September. There the chief picture competition was the inspiration--the Anschütz Electrical Tachyscope. There was also an extensive display of the Edison peep-show machines. Armat must have been glad to see the Edison activity because it was from that source that he was getting his film for the projector.