MUSIC, ACOUSTICS, OPTICS, FINE ARTS.
Neither the historic nor prehistoric records find man without musical
instruments of some sort. They are as old as religion, and have been
found wherever evidence of religious rites of any description have been
found, as they constituted part of the instrumentalities of such rites.
They are found as relics of worship and the dance, ages after the
worshippers and the dancers have become part of the earth’s strata. They
have been found wherever the earliest civilisations have been
discovered; and they appear to have been regarded as desirable and
necessary as the weapons and the labour implements of those
civilisations. They abounded in China, in India, and in Egypt before the
lyre of Apollo was invented, or the charming harp of Orpheus was
conceived.
There was little melody according to modern standards, but the musical
instruments, like all other inventions, the fruit of the brain of man,
were slowly evolved as he wanted them, and to meet the conditions
surrounding him.
There were the conch shell trumpet, the stone, bone, wood and metal
dance rattles, the beaks of birds, and the horns and teeth of beasts,
for the same rattling purpose. The simple reed pipes, the hollow wooden
drums, the skin drum-heads, the stretched strings of fibre and of
tendons, the flutes, the harps, the guitars, the psalteries, and
hundreds of other forms of musical instruments, varied as the skill and
fancy of man varied, and in accordance with their taste and wants, along
the entire gamut of noises and rude melodies. The ancient races had the
instruments, but their voices, except as they existed in the traditions
of their gods, were not harmonious.
As modern wants and tastes developed and music became a science the
demands of the nineteenth century were met by a Helmholtz, who
discovered and explained the laws of harmony, and by many ingenious
manufacturers, who so revolutionised the pianoforte action, and the
action of musical instruments constructed on these principles, that
their predecessors would hardly be recognised as prototypes.
The story of the piano, that queen of musical instruments, involves the
whole history of the art of music. Its evolution from the ancient harp,
gleaned by man from the wind, “that grand old harper, who smote his
thunder harp of pines,” is too long a story to here recite in detail. It
must suffice to say, it started with the harp, in its simplest form,
composed of a frame with animal tendons stretched tight thereon and
twanged by the fingers. Then followed strings of varied length, size,
and tension, to obtain different tones, soon accompanied by an
instrument called the plectrum--a bone or ivory stick with which to
vibrate the strings, to save the fingers. This was the harp of the
Egyptians, and of Jubal, “the father of all such as handle the harp and
the organ,” and half-brother of Tubal Cain, the great teacher “of every
artificer in brass and iron.” Then the harp was laid prostrate, its
strings stretched over a sounding board, and each held and adapted to be
tightened by pegs, and played upon by little hammers having soft pellets
or corks at their ends. This was the psaltery and the dulcimer of the
Assyrians and the Hebrews.
The Greeks derived their musical instruments from the Egyptians, and the
Romans borrowed theirs from the Greeks, but neither the Greeks nor the
Romans invented any.
Then, after fourteen or fifteen centuries, we find the harp, both in a
horizontal and an upright position, with its strings played upon by
keys. This was the _clavicitherium_. In the sixteenth century came the
virginal, and the spinet, those soft, tinkling instruments favoured by
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and which, recently brought from
obscurity, have been made to revive the ancient Elizabethan melodies, to
the delight of modern hearers. These were followed in the seventeenth
century by the clavichord, the favourite instrument of Bach. Then
appeared the harpsichord, a still nearer approach to the piano, having a
hand or knee-worked pedal, and on which Mozart and Handel and Haydn
brought out their grand productions. The ancient Italian cembello was
another spinet.
Thus, through the centuries these instruments had slowly grown. By 1711
in Italy, under the inventive genius of Bartolommeo Cristofori of
Florence, they had culminated in the modern piano. The piano as devised
by him differed from the instruments preceding it chiefly in this, that
in the latter the strings were vibrated by striking and pulling on them
by pieces of quills attached to levers and operated by keys, whereas, in
the piano there were applied hammers in place of quills.
In the 1876 exhibition at Philadelphia, a piano was displayed which had
been made by Johannes Christian Schreiber of Germany in 1741.
Then in the latter part of the eighteenth century Broadwood and Clementi
of London and Erard of Strasburg and Petzold of Paris commenced the
manufacture of their fine instruments. Erard particularly made many
improvements in that and in the nineteenth century in the piano, its
hammers and keys, and Southwell of Dublin in the dampers.
By them and the Collards of London, Bechstein of Berlin, and Chickering,
Steinway, Weber, Schomacher, Decker and Knabe of America, was the piano
“ripened after the lapse of more than 2,000 years into the perfectness
of the magnificent instruments of modern times, with their better
materials, more exact appliances, finer adjustments, greater strength of
parts, increase of compass and power, elastic responsiveness of touch,
enlarged sonority, satisfying delicacy, and singing character in tone.”
A piano comprises five principal parts: first, the framing; second, the
sounding board; third, the stringing; fourth, the key mechanism, or
action, and fifth, the ornamental case. To supply these several parts
separate classes of skilled artisans have arisen, the forests have been
ransacked for their choicest woods, the mines have been made to yield
their choicest stores, and the forge to weld its finest work. Science
has given to music the ardent devotion of a lover, and resolved a
confused mass of more or less pleasant noises into liquid harmonies. In
1862 appeared Helmholtz’s great work on the “Law and Tones and the
Theory of Music.” He it was who invented the method of analysing sound.
By the use of hollow bodies called _resonators_ he found that every
sound as it generally occurs in nature and as it is produced by most of
our musical instruments, or the human voice, is not a single simple
sound, but a compound of several tones of different intensity and pitch;
all of which different tones combined are heard as one; and that the
difference of quality or _timbre_ of the sounds of different musical
instruments resides in the different composition of these sounds; that
different compound sounds contain the same fundamental tone but
differently mixed with other tones. He explained how these fundamental
and compound tones might be fully developed to produce either harmonious
or dissonant sensations. His researches were carried farther and added
to by Prof. Mayer of New Jersey. These theories were practically applied
in the pianos produced by the celebrated firm of Steinway and Sons of
New York; and their inventions and improvements in the iron framing, in
laying of strings in relation to the centre of the sounding-board, in
“resonators” in upright frames, and in other features, from 1866 to
1876, produced a revolution in the art of piano making.
If the piano is properly the queen of musical instruments, the organ may
be rightly regarded, as it has been named, “King in the realm of music.”
It is an instrument, the notes of which are produced by the rush of air
through pipes of different lengths, the air being supplied by bellows or
other means, and controlled by valves which are operated by keys, and by
which the supply of air is admitted or cut off.
The earliest description appears to be that in the “Spiritalia” of Hero
of Alexandria (150-200 B. C.) and Ctesibius of Alexandria was the
inventor. A series of pipes of varying lengths were filled by an
air-pump which was operated by a wind-mill. Organs were again originated
in the early Christian centuries; and a Greek epigram of the fourth
century refers to one as provided with “reeds of a new species agitated
by blasts of wind that rush from a leathern cavern beneath their roots,
while a robust mortal, running with swift fingers over the concordant
keys, makes them smoothly dance and emit harmonious sounds.”
The same in principle to-day, but more complicated in structure, “yet of
easy control under the hands of experts, fertile in varied symphonious
effects, giving with equal and satisfying success the gentlest and most
sympathetic tones as well as complete and sublimely full utterances of
musical inspiration.”
The improvements of the century have consisted in adding a great variety
of stops; in connections and couplers of the great keyboard and pipes;
in the pedal part; in the construction of the pipes and wind chests; and
principally in the adaptation of steam, water, air, and electricity, in
place of the muscles of men, as powers in furnishing the supply of air.
Some of the great organs of the century, having three or four thousand
pipes, with all the modern improvements, and combining great power with
the utmost brilliancy and delicacy of utterance, and with a blended
effect which is grand, solemn and most impressive, render indeed this
noble instrument the “king” in the realm of music.
In the report of 1895 of the United States Commissioner of patents it is
stated that “the _autoharp_ has been developed within the past few
years, having bars arranged transversely across the strings and provided
with dampers which, when depressed, silence all the strings except those
producing the desired chords.
“An ingenious musical instrument of the class having keyboards like the
piano or organ has been recently invented. All keyboard instruments in
ordinary use produce tones that are only approximately correct in pitch,
because these must be limited in number to twelve, to the octave, while
the tones of the violin are absolute or untempered. The improved
instrument produces untempered tones without requiring extraordinary
variations from the usual arrangement of the keys.”
Self-playing musical instruments have been known for more than forty
years, but it is within the past twenty-five years that devices have
been invented for controlling tones by pneumatic or electrical
appliances to produce expressions. Examples of the later of these three
kinds of musical instruments may be found in the United States patents
of Zimmermann in 1882, Tanaka, 1890, and Gally, 1879.
The science of _acoustics_ and its practical applications have greatly
advanced, chiefly due to the researches of Helmholtz, referred to above.
When the nature and laws of the waves of sound became fully known a
great field of inventions was opened. Then came the telephone,
phonograph, graphophone and gramophone.
The telephone depends upon a combination of electricity and the waves of
the human voice. The phonograph and its modifications depend alone on
sound waves--the recording of the waves from one vibrating membrane and
their exact reproduction on another vibrating membrane.
The acoustic properties of churches and other buildings were improved by
the adaptation of banks of fine wires to prevent the re-echoing of
sounds. _Auricular tubes_ adapted to be applied to the ears and
concealed by the hair, and other forms of aural instruments, were
devised.
The _Megaphone_ of Edison appeared, consisting of two large funnels
having elastic conducting tubes from their apices to the aural orifice.
Conversation in moderate tones has been heard and understood by their
use at a distance of one and a half miles. The megaphone has been found
very useful in speaking to large outdoor crowds.
But let us go back a little: In 1845, Chas. Bourseuil of France
published the idea that the vibrations of speech uttered against a
diaphragm might break or make an electric contact, and the electric
pulsations thereby produced might set another diaphragm vibrating which
should produce the transmitted sound waves. In 1857, another Frenchman,
Leon Scott, patented in France his _Phonautograph_--an instrument
consisting of a large barrel-like mouth-piece into which words were
spoken, a membrane therein against which the voice vibrations were
received, a stylus attached to this vibrating membrane, and a rotating
cylinder covered with blackened paper, against which the stylus bore and
on which it recorded the sound waves in exact form received on the
vibrating diaphragm. Then came the researches and publications of
Helmholtz and König on acoustic science, 1862-1866. Then young Philip
Reis of Frankfort, Germany, attempted to put all these theories into an
apparatus to reproduce speech, but did not quite succeed. Then in
1874-1875, Bell took up the matter, and at the Philadelphia exhibition,
1876, astonished the world by the revelations of the telephone. In
April, 1877, Charles Cros, a Frenchman, in a communication to the
Academy of Sciences in Paris, after describing an apparatus like the
Scott phonautograph, set forth how traced undulating lines of voice
vibrations might be reproduced in intaglio or in relief, and reproduced
upon a vibrating membrane by a pointed stylus attached thereto and
following the line of the original pulsations. The communication seems
to have been pigeon-holed, and not read in open session until December,
1877, and until after Thomas A. Edison had actually completed and used
his phonograph in the United States. Cros rested on the suggestion.
Edison, without knowing of Cros’ suggestion, was first to make and
actually use the same invention. Edison’s cylinder, on which the sounds
were recorded and from which they were reproduced, was covered by tin
foil. A great advance was made by Dr. Chichester A. Bell and Mr. C. S.
Tainter, who in 1886 patented in the United States means of cutting or
engraving the sound waves in a solid body. The solid body they employed
was a thin pasteboard cylinder covered with wax. This apparatus they
called the _graphophone_. Two years thereafter, Mr. Emile Berliner of
Washington had invented the _gramophone_, which consists in etching on a
metallic plate the record of voice waves. He has termed his invention,
“the art of etching the human voice.” He prepares a polished metal
plate, generally zinc, with an extremely thin coating of film or fatty
milk, which dries upon and adheres to the plate. The stylus penetrates
this film, meeting from it the slightest possible resistance, and traces
thereon the message. The record plate is then subjected to a
particularly constituted acid bath, which, entering the groove or
grooves formed by the stylus, cuts or etches the same into the plate.
The groove thus formed may be deepened by another acid solution. When
thus produced, as many copies of the record as desired may be made by
the electrotyper or print plater.
The public is now familiar with the different forms of this wonderful
instrument, and like the telephone, they no longer seem marvellous. Yet
it is only within the age of a youth or a maiden when the allegations or
predictions that the human voice would soon be carried over the land,
and reproduced across a continent, or be preserved or engraven on
tablets and reproduced at pleasure anywhere, in this or any subsequent
generation, were themselves regarded as strange messages of dreamers and
madmen.
_Optical Instruments._--There were practical inventions in optical
instruments long before this century. Achromatic and other lenses were
known, and the microscope, the telescope and spectacles.
The inventive genius of this century in the field of optics has not
eclipsed the telescope and microscope of former ages. They were the
fruits of the efforts of many ages and of many minds, although Hans
Lippersheim of Holland in 1608 appears to have made the first successful
instrument “for seeing things at a distance.” Galileo soon thereafter
greatly improved and increased its capacity, and was the first to direct
it towards the heavens. And as to the microscope, Dr. Lieberkulm, of
Berlin, in 1740, made the first successful solar microscope. As well
known, it consisted essentially of two lenses and a mirror, by which the
sun’s rays are reflected on the first lens, concentrated on the object
and further magnified by the second lens.
The depths of the stars and the minutest mote that floats in the sun
beam reflect the glory of those inventions.
The invention of John Dolland of London, about 1758, of the achromatic
lens should be borne in mind in connection with telescopes, microscopes,
etc. He it was who invented the combination of two lenses, one concave
and the other convex, one of flint glass and the other of crown glass,
which, refracting in contrary ways, neutralised the dispersion of colour
rays and produced a clear, colourless light.
Many improvements and discoveries in optics and optical instruments have
been made during the century, due to the researches of such scientists
as Arago, Brewster, Young, Fresnel, Airy, Hamilton, Lloyd, Cauchy and
others, and of the labours of the army of skilled experts and
mechanicians who have followed their lead.
Sir David Brewster, born in Scotland in 1781, made (1810-1840) many
improvements in the construction of the microscope and telescope,
invented the kaleidoscope, introduced in the stereoscope the principles
and leading features which those beautiful instruments still embody, and
rendered it popular among scientists and artists.
It is said that Prof. Eliot of Edinburgh in 1834 was the first to
conceive of the idea of a stereoscope, by which two different pictures
of the same object, taken by photography, to correspond to the two
different positions of an object as viewed by the two eyes, are combined
into one view by two reflecting mirrors set at an angle of about 45°,
and conveying to the eyes a single reflection of the object as a solid
body. But Sir Charles Wheaton in 1838 constructed the first instrument,
and in 1849 Brewster introduced the present form of lenticular lenses.
Brewster also demonstrated the utility of dioptric lenses, and zones in
lighthouse illumination; and in which field Faraday and Tyndall also
subsequently worked with the addition of electrical appliances. The
labours of these three men have illuminated the wildest waters of the
sea and preserved a thousand fleets of commerce and of war from awful
shipwreck.
As illustrating the difficulties sometimes encountered in introducing an
invention into use, the American Journal of Chemistry some years ago
related that the Abbé Moigno, in introducing the stereoscope to the
savants of France, first took it to Arago, but Arago had a defect of
vision which made him see double, and he could only see in it a medley
of four pictures; then the Abbé went to Savart, but unfortunately Savart
had but one eye and was quite incapable of appreciating the thing. Then
Becquerel was next visited, but he was nearly blind and could see
nothing in the new optical toy. Not discouraged, the Abbé then called
upon Puillet of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. Puillet was much
interested, but he was troubled with a squint which presented to his
anxious gaze but a blurred mixture of images. Lastly Brot was tried.
Brot believed in the corpuscular theory of light, and was opposed to the
undulatory theory, and the good Abbé not being able to assure him that
the instrument did not contradict his theory, Brot refused to have
anything to do with it. In spite, however, of the physical disabilities
of scientists, the stereoscope finally made its way in France.
Besides increasing the power of the eye to discover the secrets and
beauties of nature, modern invention has turned upon the eye itself and
displayed the wonders existing there, behind its dark glass doors. It
was Helmholtz who in 1851 described his _Ophthalmoscope_. He arranged a
candle so that its rays of light, falling on an inclined reflector, were
thrown through the pupil of the patient’s eye, whose retina reflected
the image received on the retina back to the mirror where it could be
viewed by the observer. This image was the background of the eye, and
its delicate blood vessels and tissues could thus be observed. This
instrument was improved and it gave rise to the contrivance of many
delicate surgical instruments for operating on the eye.
The _Spectroscope_ is an instrument by which the colours of the solar
rays are separated and viewed, as well as those of other incandescent
bodies. By it, not only the elements of the heavenly bodies have been
determined, but remarkable results have been had in analysing well-known
metals and discovering new ones. Its powers and its principles have been
so developed during the century by the discoveries, inventions and
investigations of Herschel, Wollaston, Fraunhofer, Bronsen and Kirchoff,
Steinheil, Tyndall, Huggins, Draper and others, that spectrum analysis
has grown from the separation of light into its colours by the prism of
Newton, to what Dr. Huggins has aptly termed “a new sense.”
We have further referred to this wonderful discovery in the Chapter on
Chemistry.
The inventions and improvements in optical instruments gave rise to
great advances in the making of lenses, based on scientific principles,
and not resting alone on hard work and experience. Alvan Clark a son of
America, and Prof. Ernst Abbe of Germany, have within the last third of
the century produced a revolution in the manufacture of lenses, and
thereby extended the realms of knowledge to new worlds of matter in the
heavens and on earth.
_Solarmeter._--In 1895 a United States patent was granted to Mr. Bechler
for an instrument called a solarmeter. It is designed for taking
observations of heavenly bodies and recording mechanically the parts of
the astronomical triangle used in navigation and like work. Its chief
purpose is to determine the position of the compass error of a ship at
sea independently of the visibility of the sea horizon. If the horizon
is clouded, and the sun or a known star is visible, a ship’s position
can still be determined by the solarmeter.
_Instruments for Measuring the Position and Distances of Unseen
Objects._--Some of the latest of such instruments will enable one to see
and shoot at an object around a corner, or at least out of sight. Thus a
United States patent was granted to Fiske in 1889, wherein it is set
forth that by stationing observers at points distant from a gun, which
points are at the extremities of a known base line, and which command a
view of the area within the range of the gun, the observers discover the
position and range of the object by triangulation and set certain
pointers. By means of electrical connection between those pointers and
pointers at the gun station based on the system of the Wheatstone
bridge, the latter pointers, or the guns themselves serving as pointers,
may be placed in position to indicate the line of fire. By a nice
arrangement of mirror and lenses attached to a firearm the same object
may be accomplished. Similar apparatuses in which the reflectory
surfaces of mirrors mounted on an elevated frame-work, and known as
_Polemoscopes_ and _Altiscopes_ and _Range-Finders_, have also been
invented, and used with artillery. But such devices may be profitably
used for more peaceful and amusing purposes.
Born with the ear attuned to music and the eye to observe beauty, the
hand of Art was to trace and make permanent the fleeting forms which
melody and the eye impressed upon the soul of man.
In fact modern science has demonstrated that tones and colours are
inseparable. Bell and Tainter with their _photophone_ have converted the
undulatory waves of light into the sweetest music. Reversing the
process, beautiful flashes of light have been produced from musical
vibrations by the _phonophote_ of M. Coulon and the _phonoscope_ of
Henry Edmunds.
Entrancing as the story is, we can only here allude to a few of those
discoveries and inventions that have become the handmaidens of the art
which guided the chisel of Phidias and inspired the brush of Raphael.
_Photography._--The art of producing permanent images of the “human face
divine,” natural scenes, and other objects, by the agency of light, is
due more to the discoveries of the chemist than to the inventions of the
mechanic; and to the chemists of this century. At the same time a
mechanical invention of old times became a necessary appliance in the
reduction of the theories of the chemists to practice:--The _Camera
Obscura_, that dark box in which a mirror is placed, provided also with
a piece of ground glass or white cardboard paper, and having a
projecting part at one end in which a lens is placed, whereby when the
lens part is directed to an object an image of the same is thrown by the
rays of light focused by the lens upon the mirror, and reflected by the
mirror to the glass or paper board, was invented by Roger Bacon about
1297, or by Alberta in 1437, described by Leonardo da Vinci in 1500 as
an imitation of the structure of the eye, again by Baptista Porta in
1589, and remodelled by Sir Isaac Newton in 1700. Until the 19th century
it was used only in the taking of sketches and scenes on or from the
card or glass on which the reflection was thrown.
Celebrated chemists such as Sheele of the 18th century, and Ritter,
Wollaston, Sir Humphry Davy, Young, Gay-Lussac, Thenard, and others in
the early part of the 19th century, began to turn their attention to the
chemical and molecular changes which the sunlight and its separate rays
effected in certain substances, and especially upon certain compounds of
silver. In sensitising the receiving paper, glass, or metal with such a
compound it must necessarily be protected from exposure to sunlight, and
this fact, together with the desire to sensitise the image produced by
the camera, not only suggested but seemed to render that instrument
indispensable to photography. Nevertheless the experiments of chemists
fell short of the high mark, and it was reserved for an artist to unite
the efforts of the sun and the chemists in a successful instrument.
It was Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, born at Corneilles, France, in
1789, and who died in 1851, who was the first to reduce to practice the
invention called after his name. He was a brilliant scene painter, and
especially successful in painting panoramas. In 1822, assisted by
Bouton, he had invented the _diorama_, by which coloured lights
representing the various changes of the day and season were thrown upon
the canvasses in his beautiful panoramas of Rome, London, Naples and
other great cities. Several years previous to 1839 he and Joseph N.
Niepce, learning of the efforts of chemists in that line, began
independently, and then together, to develop the art of obtaining
permanent copies of objects produced by the chemical action of the sun.
Niepce died while they were thus engaged. Daguerre prosecuted his
researches alone, and toward the close of 1838 his success was such that
he made known his invention to Arago, and Arago announced it in an
eloquent and enthusiastic address to the French Academy of Sciences in
January 1839. It at once excited great attention, which was heightened
by the pictures produced by the new process. The French Government, in
consideration of the details of the invention and its improvements being
made public and on request of Daguerre, granted him an annuity and one
also to Niepce’s son.
At first only pictures of natural objects were taken; but in learning of
Daguerre’s process Dr. John William Draper of New York, a native of
England and adopted son of America, the brilliant author of _The
Intellectual Development of Europe_, and other great works, in the same
year, 1839, took portraits of persons by photography, and he was the
first to do this. Draper was also the first in America to reveal the
wonders of the spectroscope; and he was first to show that each colour
of the spectrum had its own peculiar chemical effect. This was in 1847.
The sun was now fairly harnessed in the service of man in the new great
art of Photography. Natural philosophers, chemists, inventors,
mechanics, all now pressed forward, and still press forward to improve
the art, to establish new growths from the old art, and extend its
domains. Those domains have the generic term of _Photo-Processes_.
Daguerreotypy, while the father of them all, is now hardly practised as
Daguerre practised it, and has become a small subordinate sub-division
of the great class. Yet more faithful likenesses are not yet produced
than by this now old process. Among the children of the Photo-Process
family are the _Calotype_, _Ambrotype_, _Ferreotype_, _Collodion_ and
_Silver Printing_, _Carbon Printing_, _Heliotype_, _Heliogravure_,
_Photoengraving_ (relief intaglio-Woodburytype), _Photolithography_;
_Alberttype_; _Photozincograph_, _Photogelatine-printing_;
_Photomicrography_ (to depict microscopic objects), _Kinetographs_, and
_Photosculpture_. A world of mechanical contrivances have been
invented:--_Octnometers_, _Baths_, _Burnishing tools_, _Cameras and
Camera stands_, _Magazine and Roll holders_; _Dark rooms_ and _Focussing
devices_, _Heaters_ and _Driers_; _Exposure Meters_, etc. etc.
The _Kinetograph_, for taking a series of pictures of rapidly moving
objects, and by which the living object, person or persons, are made to
appear moving before us as they moved when the picture was taken, is a
marvellous invention; and yet simple when the process is understood.
Photography and printing have combined to revolutionise the art of
illustration. Exact copies of an original, whether of a painting or a
photograph, are now produced on paper with all the original shades and
colours. The long-sought-for problem of photographing in colours has in
a measure been solved. The “three _colour processes_” is the name given
to the new offspring of the inventors which reproduces by the camera the
natural colours of objects.
The scientists Maxwell Young and Helmholtz established the theory that
the three colours, red, green, and blue, were the primary colours, and
from a mixture of these, secondary colours are produced. Henry Collen in
1865 laid down the lines on which the practical reduction should take
place; and within the last decade F. E. Ives of Philadelphia has
invented the _Photochromoscope_ for producing pictures in their natural
colours. The process consists in blending in one picture the separate
photographic views taken on separate negative plates, each sensitised to
receive one of the primary colours, which are then exposed and blended
simultaneously in a triple camera.
Plates and films and many other articles and processes have helped to
establish the Art of Photography on its new basis.
Among the minor inventions relating to Art, mention may be made of that
very useful article the lead _pencil_, which all have employed so much
time in sharpening to the detriment of time and clean hands. Within a
decade, pencils in which the lead or crayon is covered instead of with
wood, with slitted, perforated or creased paper, spirally rolled
thereon, and on which by unrolling a portion at a time a new point is
exposed; or that other style in which a number of short, sharpened
marking leads, or crayons, are arranged in series and adapted to be
projected one after the other as fast as worn away.
_In Painting_ modern inventions and discoveries have simply added to the
instrumentalities of genius but have created no royal road to the art
made glorious by Titian and Raphael. It has given to the artists,
through its chemists, a world of new colours, and through its mechanics
new and convenient appliances.
_Air Brushes_ have proved a great help by which the paint or other
colouring matter is sprayed in heavy, light, or almost invisible showers
to produce backgrounds by the force of air blown upon the pigments held
in drops at the end of a fine spraying tube. Made of larger proportions,
this brush has been used for fresco painting, and for painting large
objects, such as buildings, which it admits of doing with great
rapidity.
A description of modern methods of applying colours to porcelain and
pottery is given in the chapter treating of those subjects.
_Telegraphic pictures_:--Perhaps it is appropriate in closing this
chapter that reference be made to that process by which the likeness of
the distant reader may be taken telegraphically. A picture in relief is
first made by the swelled gelatine or other process; a tracing point is
then moved in the lines across the undulating surface of the pictures,
and the movements of this tracer are imparted by suitable electrical
apparatus to a cutter or engraving tool at the opposite end of the line
and there reproduced upon a suitable substance.