MAGIC SHADOWS
MAGIC SHADOWS
_The Story of the Origin
of Motion Pictures_
by
MARTIN QUIGLEY, JR.
[Illustration]
QUIGLEY PUBLISHING COMPANY
New York, N. Y. 1960
_Copyright, 1948–1960, by Martin Quigley, Jr._
_All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without written
permission except in the case of brief
quotations included in reviews._
Library of Congress Catalog
Card Number: 60-14797
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
FOREWORD 7
INTRODUCTION 9
I IT STARTED WITH “A” 13
II FRIAR BACON’S MAGIC 24
III DA VINCI’S CAMERA 29
IV PORTA, FIRST SCREEN SHOWMAN 36
V KEPLER AND THE STARS 43
VI KIRCHER’S 100th ART 48
VII POPULARIZING KIRCHER’S PROJECTOR 62
VIII MUSSCHENBROEK AND MOTION 70
IX PHANTASMAGORIA 75
X DR. PARIS’ TOY 80
XI PLATEAU CREATES MOTION PICTURES 85
XII THE BARON’S PROJECTOR 98
XIII THE LANGENHEIMS OF PHILADELPHIA 106
XIV MAREY AND MOVEMENT 115
XV EDISON’S PEEP-SHOW 130
XVI FIRST STEPS 139
XVII WORLD PREMIERES 149
APPENDIX I CHRONOLOGY 163
APPENDIX II BIBLIOGRAPHY 177
INDEX 185
ILLUSTRATIONS
facing
page
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER 9
ARCHIMEDES’ BURNING GLASSES 32
LEONARDO DA VINCI 33
_CAMERA OBSCURA_ 40
JOHANNES KEPLER 41
KIRCHER’S GIANT WHEEL 48
THE STORY DISK 48
THE MAGIC LANTERN 49
ZAHN’S LANTERNS 64
TIME and WIND PROJECTORS 65
JOSEPH PLATEAU 88
PLATEAU’S MOTION DEVICE 89
DANCING GIRL--PHENAKISTICOPE 89
FRANZ UCHATIUS 104
FIRST ACTION PROJECTORS 105
LANGENHEIM BROTHERS 112
ETIENNE JULES MAREY 113
MUYBRIDGE BATTERY CAMERA SYSTEM 120
MAREY’S OUTDOOR STUDIO 121
GUN CAMERA 121
EDISON AND EASTMAN 136
THE KINETOSCOPE PARLOR 137
REYNAUD’S _THEATRE OPTIQUE_ 148
ANSCHUTZ’S ELECTRICAL TACHYSCOPE 149
LOUIS LUMIERE 160
ROBERT W. PAUL 160
THE VITASCOPE 161
FOREWORD
Ask almost anyone about the origins of the motion picture, and you’ll
get a glib and automatic answer. It will include a fast, indefinite
reference to Edison and Eastman and will move on, with more-or-less
authentic nostalgia, to Mack Sennett, Fatty Arbuckle, D. W. Griffith
and maybe a few others. With luck, one or two titles--The Great Train
Robbery, for example--may creep in.
The fact is, most of us simply do not know much about it.
It is good, therefore, to take a long look at the people, the events,
and the discoveries--accidental and otherwise--which combined, during
the years of many centuries, to produce the motion picture as we know
it today.
This book gives us the long look, the authentic perspective. It may
tend to slow down our glibness, to clothe our fancy with fact, and
to deflate any notion that the movies belong exclusively to our own
well-publicized 20th Century.
It is sobering, but it is necessary. For, unless we brace ourselves
with some knowledge of what has gone before, we cannot be adequately
prepared for what lies ahead. The industry, as we have known it in the
past, is undergoing great changes. It is difficult to predict exactly
what form it will eventually take. One thing is certain, however--the
“Magic Shadows” in one form or another will continue to entertain and
instruct the millions in every land for generations to come.
EDWARD P. CURTIS
Rochester, N. Y.
July 2, 1960
[Illustration:
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1671
_ATHANASIUS KIRCHER, the first person to project pictures. His magic
lantern originated the screen art-science in Rome_ circa _1645_.]
INTRODUCTION
The art of magic shadows, which just before the dawn of the twentieth
century evolved into the modern motion picture, was born three
centuries ago, at Rome. There Athanasius Kircher, a German priest,
first showed his invention, the magic lantern, to friends, and enemies,
at the Collegio Romano, where he was a professor of mathematics.
The world premiere of the first real “magic shadow” performance passed
without public notice. In those days there were no press agents or
publicists. There were no newspapers. The people did not care what the
nobles and scholars were doing in their idle moments; the intellectuals
paid little attention to the people.
History has not recorded the day and month in which Kircher presented
his projector, the fundamental instrument of all screen shows, then
and now. The occasion can be set only approximately--some time in the
year 1644 or 1645. The hour of the performance presumably was in the
evening, for the light and shadow pictures had to be shown in darkness,
just as today films must be exhibited in darkened theatres.
We may be sure that the score or more of invited guests--Romans and
distinguished foreigners--eagerly accepted an opportunity to see what
Kircher was up to. Rome had been buzzing with rumors. The energetic
little Jesuit priest who earned for himself the title, “Doctor of a
Hundred Arts,” had even been suspected of necromancy and working in
league with the devil. After the showing of the magic lantern and its
projected pictures some were certain that he practiced the “black arts.”
The audience for the first screen performance was as distinguished as
any that has since graced a Hollywood production. Other professors of
the Roman College were there to note for themselves on which one of his
“hundred arts” Kircher had been busy. These men were among the most
learned in Europe and had made the Jesuit University, established in
1582, already an influence in all circles of thought. A selected group
of students, young Romans of noble birth, surely were also invited.
Until the hour of the demonstration, these stood outside in the large
Piazza di Collegio Romano before the main entrance. Three centuries
later, from June, 1944 to late 1945, American Army MPs raced through
this same Piazza on jeeps and motorcycles to their headquarters in
Rome, just across the square from the entrance to the Collegio Romano.
Just at the appointed hour for Kircher’s show, a few distinguished
monsignori, in flowing purple were driven to the entrance in their
carriages with mounted escort. Perhaps, too, a hush went through the
small group, assembled in an upper hall, when a Prince of the Church,
such as Cardinal Barberini who had summoned Kircher to Rome a decade
before, came to see for himself. After all the monsignori and other
visitors had been greeted with ceremony and salutation in keeping with
their rank, the candles and lamps were extinguished; Kircher slipped
behind a curtain or partition where his projector was concealed and the
first light and shadow screen show was on.
For a moment Kircher’s audience could see nothing. Then slowly their
eyes became accustomed to the darkness and a faint light appeared on a
white surface set up in front of the few rows of seats. As the flames
in Kircher’s lantern began to burn more brightly and he adjusted the
crude projection system, the picture of his first glass slide was
thrown upon the screen.
The young men with keen eyesight were the first to note that the light
and shadow on the screen, like some ghostly figment, began to take
form into a recognizable picture. Then the older ecclesiastics saw or
thought they saw. The incredulous murmured prayerful ejaculations. The
wonder increased as successive pictures were projected. Kircher was
enough of a showman to use pictures which would entertain and amaze.
He included animal drawings, artistic designs and, to taunt those who
thought he was dabbling in necromancy, pictures of the devil. Prudence
was not one of his “hundred arts.”
We may be amused now at the disbelief of Kircher’s first audience. But
by trying to place ourselves in that hall of the Roman College, three
centuries ago, it is easy to realize the difficulties. Nothing like
Kircher’s show had ever been presented before. He had chained light and
shadow, but the suspicion was held by some of the spectators that there
was dark magic about it all and that Kircher had dabbled in the “black
arts.”
The first audience congratulated Kircher at the end of the performance,
but some went away wondering, dubious. Years later, Kircher wrote in
his autobiography, “New accusations piled up and my critics said I
should devote my whole life to developing mathematics.”
* * * * *
Two and a half centuries later, the screen art of magic shadow
projection came to life in the motion picture. This was quite a
different premiere. But Kircher would have recognized the device as an
improvement on and development of his magic lantern. He, and hundreds
who came after him, had tried to capture the animation of life in light
and shadow pictures. Full success was not possible until a later date
because the necessary materials were not available until near the end
of the nineteenth century.
The scene of the most significant motion picture premiere was at Koster
& Bial’s Music Hall, 34th Street, New York, which stood on the site now
occupied by the R. H. Macy department store. The time was April 23,
1896. But in contrast to Kircher’s premiere, though “Thomas A. Edison’s
Latest Marvel--the Vitascope” had featured billing on the show, it
was not the only entertainment on the program. Albert Bial, manager,
preceded the showing of the motion pictures with a half-dozen acts of
vaudeville. There were the Russian clown, eccentric dancer, athletic
and gymnastic comedian, singers and actors and actresses. But the
movies stole that show and, in little more than a decade, became staple
entertainment in tens of thousands of theatres all over the world.
The special top hat and silk tie audience at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall
that Spring evening a half-century ago was treated to a selection of
short films which ran only a few moments each: “Sea Waves”, “Umbrella
Dance”, “The Barber Shop”, “Burlesque Boxing”, “Monroe Doctrine”, “A
Boxing Bout”, “Venice, Showing Gondolas”, “Kaiser Wilhelm, Reviewing
His Troops”, “Skirt Dance”, “Butterfly Dance”, “The Bar Room” and “Cuba
Libre”.
Thomas Armat, the inventor of the projector which had been built by
Edison, supervised projection of those first screen motion pictures
shown on Broadway. We can well imagine that Kircher was looking over
his shoulder, delighted that his work started 250 years before had been
brought to the triumph of the living moving picture.
The great Edison was in a box at the Music Hall that evening and he,
too, was glad that the New York audience of first nighters so well
received the large screen motion pictures. A few years before, his
Kinetograph camera and his Kinetoscope peep-hole viewer had presented
motion pictures. But as Kircher in the 17th century wanted his pictures
life-size on the screen, so did the public of the Nineties.
* * * * *
Kircher and Edison do not stand alone in the parade of pioneers in
the art and science of the screen. The list of builders of the cinema
is as cosmopolitan as its appeal: Greeks, Romans, Persians, British,
Italians, Germans, French, Belgians, Austrians and lastly, and in some
ways most importantly, Americans. Ancient philosophers, medieval monks,
scholarly giants of the Renaissance, scientists, necromancers, modern
inventors--all had a role in the 2500 year story of the creation,
out of light and shadow, of this most popular and most influential
expression--the motion picture.
Great and strange men, some whose fame derives from activities in other
fields, others hardly recorded in the passing of history, contributed
to what was eventually to become the motion picture. Many of the
pioneers of the magic shadow art-science realized the entertainment,
educational and scientific potentialities of their discoveries; others
did not, because they were preoccupied with other affairs and only
toyed with the light and shadow devices.
The following chapters tell how men learned about vision and light, and
how apparatus to record and project living realities was developed.
It is the story of the origin of the motion picture, from Adam to
Edison.
IT STARTED WITH “A”
_First magic shadow show--Ancient optical
studies--Chinese Shadow Plays, Japanese
and English mirrors--The art-science
begins with Aristotle and Archimedes,
Greeks, and Alhazen, an Arab._
From any viewpoint the story of the origin of the motion picture begins
with “A”. The fundamental and instinctive urge to create pictures in
living reality goes all the way back to Adam. Aristotle developed the
theoretical basis of the science of optics. Archimedes made the first
systematic use of lenses and mirrors. Alhazen, the Arab, pioneered in
the study of the human eye, a prerequisite for developing machines to
duplicate requisite functions of the human eye.
Lights and shadows were made when the night and the day were made:
And God said: Be light made. And light was made.
And God saw the light that it was good; and He
divided the light from the darkness.
And He called the light Day, and the darkness Night;
and there was evening and morning one day.
* * * * *
And God said: Let there be lights made in the
firmament of heaven....
And God made two great lights: a greater light to
rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night;
and the stars.
--_Book of Genesis_
The moon playing upon silent waters, the sun casting deepening shadows
in the woods, a twinkling campfire, starlight dancing on ruffled
waters--all provided the first pageantries of light and shadow. The
first eclipse of the sun seen by man was the most thrilling and
terrifying light and shadow show of that era, a premiere never rivalled
by Hollywood’s best.
From the beginning of the record of human aspiration men had the urge
to create representations of life. Efforts were made to duplicate in
permanent form the pictures reflected in still water, shadows, and
birds and animals and people. And so, in a very early day man took
up drawing, a variation of light and shadow portrayal. But the early
drawings, and attempts for centuries thereafter, did not wholly succeed
in their purpose. Life of the surrounding world could not be caught in
all its wondrous detail no matter how skilled was the artist. The first
picture critics pointed out that the drawings were unnatural because no
action was shown and life itself was full of motion.
For cinema purposes, one of the earliest examples of “motion” still
pictures is a representation of a boar trotting along, for some 10,000,
20,000 or 30,000 years, on a wall of the Font-de-Faune cave at Altamira
near Santillana del Mar in Northern Spain. The artist tried to show the
boar’s headlong pace by equipping the animal with two complete sets of
legs. It was recognized a long while before Walt Disney that more than
one still picture was necessary to portray natural motion.
For centuries artists continued to strive for the “illusion” of motion
without “moving pictures.” Depending on the skill of the artist, the
result approached the goal in varying degrees. Action was always, and
still is, a problem to the artist working with a “still” medium. A
pinnacle of success in this quest was reached in the Winged Victory of
Samothrace in which the artist did all in his power to show motion in
the medium of cold, lifeless marble.
However, the potential progress was limited as long as it was necessary
to rely upon the skilled hand of the artist to convey motion. More had
to be learned about light and shadow and also a great deal about the
everlasting wonder of the human eye before living reality could be
captured for future representation.
The poets may speculate about man’s first thoughts on light, the sun,
moon and stars, and fire. But man used his eyes for ages before he
became interested and considered why and how he could see, and what
light and shadow might be and how they could be usefully harnessed.
Even in our day of apparent enlightenment, the underlying explanation
of vision and light still eludes our scientists, so we should be
patient about the time it took our ancestors to devise ways of
harnessing light and shadow to prepare the brightly lighted way for the
Bing Crosbys and Betty Grables of our day.
The study of light and vision, and the need for better methods and
instruments for observing life resulted in time in the invention
of the first optical device--the magnifying glass. All telescopes,
microscopes, spectacles, cameras, projectors and other optical
instruments have been evolved from the simple lens or magnifying glass.
That lens was a special boon to the men and women who through birth,
age or misfortune had poor eyesight.
Some authorities hold that as long ago as 6000 B.C. magnifying glasses
were used by the Chaldeans in the ancient biblical lands. It is known
that the Chaldeans, who developed an elaborate civilization, gave first
attention to the study of light and all its problems. A few thousand
years before the new era the Babylonians, famed too as gardeners,
became great astronomers. The heavens, then and now, present the
greatest natural light and shadow show, with a continuous run every
night since the beginning of time. So it is not surprising that the
first study of light and shadow should concern itself with the stars
and planets. The Babylonians, with but the naked eye, picked out
constellations and identified them. It was a desire to learn more about
the stars that resulted in the development of a telescope, which was a
marked advance in the science of light and shadow.
In the ruins of Nineveh, destroyed in 606 B.C., was found a convex
lens of quartz and an inscription too fine to be read by the naked
eye--proof that those people knew the uses of lenses and treasured fine
artistic drawings and writings which could be inscribed only through
the use of a magnifying glass.
* * * * *
At an early date the conflict arose between those who wished to use the
magic shadows to entertain and instruct and those who wished to use
them for purposes of deception.
The Egyptian priests have first claim on the title of light and shadow
showmen. Some of the fragments of hieroglyphics indicate that they
used optical devices to deceive. It is likely that a simple mirror was
used to throw images into space. But that would have amazed the people
and would have been taken as a sure sign of miraculous power.
The oldest media of light and shadow entertainment and deception was
developed by another great and scholarly group, the early Chinese
scientists. These were the Chinese Shadow Plays, the origin of which
is lost in antiquity, dating back perhaps to 5000 B.C. Silhouette
figures shown on a background of smoke and animated as in a puppet
show entertained a public thousands of years ago in the Far East. The
Chinese Shadow Plays appear to have a close relation to the old-time
fireside tricks of twisting the fingers so as to form what appeared to
be the shadow of a donkey’s head or a representation of a rabbit or of
some other animal. Despite the troubled history of China, these Shadow
Plays were never lost and they are still presented in remote parts of
China and in Java.
Dates of the Chinese contributions to the story of the origin of the
cinema and related sciences are uncertain. The Chinese empire was
founded around 2800 B.C. and within 500 years of that time the heavens
had been charted by the Chinese. A hundred years after an hereditary
monarchy was established in China, about 2200 B.C., the ruling powers
executed two astronomers for failing to observe properly an eclipse of
the sun.
After the Chinese Shadow Plays, mention should be made of another
Oriental light and shadow invention. This one was developed by the
Japanese. The devices are known as Japanese Mirrors. These are famed in
legend and history as being endowed with great magical powers. They,
as in the inventions of the Egyptians, used an optical illusion to
entertain and also to trick.
The method of the Japanese Mirrors was simple: They were of polished
bronze with a design embossed on the surface. When held to the sun, the
reflected light would fall on a wall or other smooth surface, and the
spectators would see the design, appearing as if through the power of
the devil or some propitious deity. If the operator did not allow his
mirror to be closely examined by the audience he could certainly be
credited with magical powers--the power to bring animals and men, and
any kind of design to life. Not a devil or a god; but in reality only
an early showman! And done with mirrors!
The so-called English Mirrors, of a much later date, worked on a
similar principle, but were even more ingenious. They had greater
“magical” power. The English Mirrors resembled the Japanese Mirrors,
yet on close examination no embossing would be discovered on the
surface. Even today one might have a difficult time discovering the
secret.
The picture to be projected was very carefully and lightly etched with
acid upon the brass surface of the English Mirrors. The mirror was
then polished until the etched pattern could not be detected by eye or
touch. But the imperceptible roughness outlining the pattern remained
on the mirror and was sufficient to record and reflect the outline of
the design in what seemed a magical fashion.
After a vague start in Babylonia, Egypt and the Far East, the study
of light and shadow, like many another art and science, began in a
thorough way in Greece.
Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, born about 384 B.C., made the
first important contribution to the history of the light and shadow
art-science which can be assigned to an identifiable individual.
Aristotle’s family had been long identified with medicine. His
father was court physician to the King of Macedonia and several
of his ancestors had similar posts. Therefore, in a sense, it was
natural for him to seek learning. For some years he was a student of
the philosopher Plato at Athens. He was a more practical man than
his teacher, favoring experimental observation as supplemental to
philosophy.
Universal truth and knowledge were the goals Aristotle set for himself.
Also he believed it well to keep in the good graces of the rulers.
When Alexander the Great was 13 years old, Aristotle was appointed his
teacher and from that time on had a deep influence on the pupil who,
they tell us, came to tears because he had no more worlds to conquer.
Aristotle later headed the Peripatetic or “walk about” school at
Athens, so named because knowledge was imparted from teacher to student
as they strolled about the groves. Aristotle wrote authoritatively on
almost every subject. The sun, light, and vision, of course, received
the attention of this philosopher whose word on philosophic and
scientific matters was accepted by many without question as law for
centuries. Even today many principles first enunciated by Aristotle are
still generally respected in philosophy.
In Aristotle’s book titled _Problems_ there was described the
phenomenon of sunlight passing through a square hole and still casting
an image of a round--not square--sun on the wall or floor.
This was an astounding discovery! It may strike the reader as strange,
but he may easily convince himself by making a little experiment: cut a
square hole in a piece of dark paper and let the image of the sun fall
on a mirror or other smooth surface and you will see that the sun is
still round despite the square hole. As a word of caution, one must be
careful to avoid eye strain when viewing the sun and its reflections.
Several of the principal characters in motion picture pre-history
ruined their eyes by studying the sun for too long a period at one time.
Aristotle’s square hole and round sun experiment was a beginning and
scientists were starting to learn something important about light and
optical phenomena.
Aristotle also made a valuable contribution to the study of vision.
In his book, _On Dreams_, he noted the existence of after-images, a
persistence of vision phenomenon. That faculty contributes vitally
to the motion picture effect. A common example is that a whirling
firebrand appears to make a complete continuous circle of fire. A
strong light or image of any kind will be visible to the eye for a
moment after the physical stimulus has been removed.
Aristotle also was interested in color and in a study in this
connection he noted that certain given plants were bleached by the
sun. This was the initial scientific observation in the chain which
ultimately, though indirectly, led to photography.
Archimedes (287–212 B.C.), a half-century after Aristotle, developed
at Syracuse, then a Greek colony on the island of Sicily, the first
recorded light apparatus, “The Burning Mirrors or Lenses.” Famed as the
first great geometrician, Archimedes is best known for his principle
upon which all ship construction is based--the buoyant force exerted
by a liquid is equal to the weight of the displaced liquid. In other
words, a shaped object of metal, such as a ship, will float if it
displaces a sufficient quantity of water. King Hiero of Syracuse, a
relative of Archimedes, gave him the problem of determining whether or
not a new crown he had received was made of pure gold, as ordered, or
whether the gold had been mixed with silver. This would have been no
task at all if the King had not been fond of the crown and wished the
information secured without damaging it in any way. As was the custom
in those days, Archimedes considered the problem one afternoon at the
local bath which served the double function of promoting cleanliness
and of fostering every kind of discussion. It was the gentlemen’s club
of the day and place.
Archimedes liked to bathe with a tub full of water and this particular
afternoon he noted that a considerable amount of water was spilled over
the sides of the tub as he stepped in. He immediately and correctly
concluded that there was a relation between the mass of his body and
the weight of the water displaced. Then according to tradition he
rushed home, through the streets of Syracuse, naked, in order to test
the King’s crown, shouting “Eureka--I have found it.”
This talented Greek was keenly aware of his scientific prowess and
was not a man to keep his ideas secret. He promised to lift the world
with a lever (the principle of which he had developed scientifically)
provided someone would furnish him a fulcrum. There were no takers.
When Archimedes was 73 years old and respected throughout the civilized
world for his work in mathematics and science, the Roman invader
Marcellus lay siege to Syracuse. At the beginning of the two long
years of struggle, Archimedes put aside his theoretical work and with
the vigor of a youth helped to defend the city, inventing numerous
engines of war for the purpose. In this he was the real pioneer of the
scientists of our own day who perfected in wartime the atomic bomb,
radar and other devices.
Archimedes’ most important development in his martial pursuits was the
Great Burning Glasses or Lenses upon which much of his fame has since
rested. According to tradition, the Great Burning Glasses of Archimedes
were used to burn the fleets of Marcellus, acting on the same principle
used by the modern Boy Scout or woodsman in starting a fire with a
pocket magnifying glass.
The efficacy of Archimedes’ lenses for burning purposes has been argued
for centuries. This much is certain: they did not succeed in their
purpose for Marcellus sacked the city in 212 B.C., after the walls had
been stormed. Archimedes was killed but after his death he was honored
even by the invader Marcellus, who ordered a monument erected over his
grave.
One explanation is that the Burning Glasses of Archimedes were used in
what would now be called psychological warfare. Archimedes knew how
to construct glasses, systems that would set small fires at a close
range; the enemy knew this. So what better ruse would there be than
to construct a gigantic Burning Glass atop the highest building of
Syracuse, clearly in view of the enemy fleet and let the intelligence
report leak out that on such and such a day Archimedes was going to
burn up the whole fleet and raise the siege? One can imagine what
the effect was on the sailors and officers of the fleet, including
Marcellus himself. Archimedes’ strategy might have prolonged the
defense through a great part of the two years in which the city
resisted. The main problem, of course, and suspicion in the minds
of the enemy was--could Archimedes actually burn the fleet with his
mysterious mirrors and lenses? (Illustration facing page 32.)
The possibility of actual use of the Burning Glasses to start fires
on the ships of an invader was not entirely dismissed by Athanasius
Kircher who made a special trip to Syracuse in 1636 to study the
problem on the spot. He wrote in the same book in which the magic
lantern is described that he had constructed a burning glass or lens
which started a fire at a distance of 12 feet and that a friend of his,
Manfred Septal, on February 15, 1645, shortly before Kircher’s book was
completed, had started a fire at 15 paces.
Kircher did not believe burning glasses could be used to start a fire
at a great distance as claimed by some scientists and experimenters. He
said that Cardano’s story of burning at 1,000 paces was ridiculous, as
were exaggerated claims of Porta. But Kircher did point out that there
may be something of truth in the original story of Archimedes because,
in his opinion, ships of the attacking force would be anchored just off
the walls of the city, perhaps only 25 to 50 feet away. This was done
so the full force of the fleet’s armament of the day could be thrown
against the defenders on the walls and yet the men of the ships would
be out of range of hand-to-hand encounters with the Syracusans.
Kircher reasoned that a great Burning Glass could start a fire in a
ship right under the walls of the city if the glass were mounted on top
of a nearby building. It is likely that at the most Archimedes would
have been able to start only a small fire on the sail of one of the
enemy’s ships.
Archimedes’ Burning Glasses are the only real ancient optical
instruments about which we have a contemporary or nearly contemporary
record. These early water-filled glasses were the first projection
lenses. Archimedes’ Burning Glasses played an important part in the
developments which led to the modern motion picture because, without
lenses for the projection, films would be nothing but peep-shows,
visible to one person at a time. Without lenses our cameras would
be very crude instruments. In a true sense the focused mirror or
lens burning glass is the foundation of every kind of camera and all
projection work.
Aristotle and Archimedes and other Greek scientists, including Euclid,
who is credited with being the first to demonstrate that light travels
in straight lines, opened the book of knowledge of the light and shadow
art.
Ptolemy who flourished at Alexandria around 130 A.D. was the greatest
scientist of his era and his influence was powerful for fifteen
centuries. It was he who developed the Ptolemaic theory which viewed
the earth as the center of the universe, with the sun and other
bodies revolving around it. That theory very naturally tended to
increase man’s idea of his own importance. Ptolemy was a geographer
and mathematician as well as an astronomer. His great work was called
_Almagest_ by the Arabs. Ptolemy discussed the persistence of vision,
the laws of reflection and made studies of refraction.
The poor tools then available and inaccurate understanding of some
basic principles prevented in ancient days the discovery of devices
capable of capturing the illusion of motion. History played its part,
too.
After the stimulus given to all knowledge by the Greeks, little
interest in the arts and sciences was taken anywhere for a long time.
Then in the 9th century the scholarship of Greece was advanced by the
Arabs, from whom Europe began to receive it in the 12th century. During
the early Middle Ages, the real “Dark Ages” when barbarian hordes
overran much of Europe, the seat of learning was in the Near East, in
Arabia and Persia.
Today it may be difficult for some to attribute great intellectual
advance to a people often associated in the common mind with desert
life and the crudities of camel transport. But around the year 850 A.D.
the most elaborate courts of the world, and keenest scholarship, were
in the Near East. The latest of the ancient pioneers in magic shadows,
the fourth “A”, was Alhazen, the Arab.
Alhazen (Abu Ali Alhasan Ibn Alhasan, Ibnu-l-Haitam or Ibn Al-Haitan)
was the greatest Arab scientist in the field of optics and vision. Born
in 965 at Basra, Arabian center of commerce and learning, near the
Persian Gulf, Alhazen from an early age devoted himself to science of a
practical rather than theoretical nature. He was what would be called a
civil engineer in our day.
At the invitation of the King of Egypt, Alhazen undertook the gigantic
task of regulating the Nile. He was indeed a man of courage. Even back
in those days the floods of that great river were a serious menace to
lives and property, and control was attempted. But it was not until
modern times that any successful regulation of the flood waters of the
Nile was effected, and this was under the skill of British engineering;
so Alhazen should not be blamed for his failure.
Alhazen went to Egypt and made preliminary calculations. He saw that
the task was impossible with available tools, men and knowledge, but
to admit failure in those days usually meant losing a life--one’s own.
Absolute rulers did not like to have agreements broken. Alhazen feigned
madness and escaped. By pretending to lose his head he saved his life.
Despite his failure with the Nile, Alhazen is regarded as the first
great discoverer in optics after the time of Ptolemy. The Arabs were
enthusiastic followers of Aristotle and also knew of the work of
Archimedes, Ptolemy and other Greek scholars.
Alhazen’s great work, _Opticae Thesaurus Alhazeni Arabis_, was first
printed in 1572 but manuscript copies of the _De Aspectibus_ or
_Perspectiva_ and the _De Crepusculis & Nubium Ascensionibus_ had found
their way about the late 12th century into all the great libraries of
the Middle Ages and his influence on all subsequent work in optics was
great and widespread. The book is very curious, covering a multitude of
subjects. Alhazen studied images, the various kinds of shadows and even
attempted to calculate the size of the earth. He is credited with being
the first to explain successfully the apparent increase of heavenly
bodies near the horizon--the familiar phenomenon of the great sun at
sunset and the huge harvest moon as it comes up in the East. Light also
was extensively considered by Alhazen and he treated its use, setting
down many rules on reflection and refraction. He recognized the element
of time necessary to complete the act of vision; in other words, the
persistence of vision or the time lag. He gave a description of the
lens’ magnifying power as he was familiar with various lenses and
mirrors.
But, perhaps of most importance, Alhazen was the first to note in some
detail the workings of the human eye. Alhazen discussed how we see but
one picture even though we have two eyes, both functioning at the same
time. He is also one of the authorities who made it possible for later
scholars to know that the Greeks and Phoenicians knew and understood
the simpler optical phenomena.
It would be expecting too much to hope that Alhazen’s work would be
unmixed with error. At his time and for centuries later, on account
of the lack of suitable instruments and knowledge of what was being
sought, the imagination was relied on more than it should have been in
an exact science.
In early days much of the advance in learning had to be reasoned out
and then verified, if possible, by experiments. Now we reverse the
process. Our scientists experiment first by observing phenomena under
all sorts of conditions and then later try to reason to a satisfactory
explanation which, even with all our learning, cannot always be found.
In fact, the underlying explanation of many of the commonest things in
life escape us. For example, we do not know a great deal more than the
ancients about the ultimate constituents of matter, the nature of light
or how our senses really work.
Alhazen did valuable work himself but was far more important as the
inspiration for study in optics for the greatest scientist of the
Middle Ages, the first experimental scientist and one of the greatest
Englishmen of all time, Roger Bacon.
_II_
FRIAR BACON’S MAGIC
_Roger Bacon, English monk of the 13th
Century, studies the ancients--and the
Greeks--and inaugurates the scientific
study of magic shadows and devices for
creating them._
Roger Bacon made a great contribution to human knowledge, especially
in scientific matters. Yet this great philosopher and scientist was
generally regarded as “Friar Bacon,” a mad monk who played with magic
and dealt with the powers of darkness. This myth persisted even though
Bacon’s contemporaries had bestowed upon him the title of “Doctor
Mirabilis.” Studies made in the 19th century and the first part of this
century have tended to confirm him in his proper high place in history.
Roger Bacon was born at Ilchester in Somersetshire, England, about
1214, the year before the Magna Charta was signed. In those days
serious education began early. When Bacon was 12 or 13 he was sent
to Oxford. Later on he continued his studies at Paris. In his youth
Bacon’s family gave him the considerable sums he needed for his
education.
After completing his studies, Bacon was a professor at Oxford and
then entered the Franciscan Order. As a monk he found the pursuit of
learning somewhat more difficult even though the libraries of the
religious orders were the best of the period and most of the learned
men were ecclesiastics. After having taken a vow of poverty Bacon
had difficulty in obtaining from some of his superiors money to buy
pens and pay copyists. Certain authorities did not look with complete
satisfaction on his experimental science investigations and they liked
even less his barbed comments on other philosophers of the day.
Bacon as a member of the Franciscan Order found himself confronted
with the rule requiring his superiors’ permission to publish any work.
However, Pope Clement IV, a Frenchman, had the requirement lifted so
far as Bacon was concerned by personally communicating with him and
asking him to publish his studies. When that Pope was Cardinal Guy le
Gros de Foulques (or Foulquois), the Papal Delegate in England, he had
been impressed with Bacon’s scholarship.
Following the Pope’s command, Bacon set out to do the job. After some
difficulty in obtaining money for pens and copyists, the three great
works, _Opus Majus_, _Minus_ and _Tertium_ (1267–68) were completed in
the almost unbelievable time of 18 months. These, together with his
short book, “Concerning the marvelous power of art and nature and the
ineffectiveness of magic”--also known as “Letter concerning the secret
works of art and nature”--are his best known writings.
As soon as his first book was completed Bacon sent it off to the Pope
in care of his friend, John of Paris. Unfortunately, Pope Clement IV
died within a year of receiving Bacon’s book and no official papal
action was taken in connection with his scientific opinions. Bacon
continued to teach, study and experiment at Oxford where he held for a
time the office of Chancellor. Some say he was eventually imprisoned;
the record is not clear.
The most interesting part of Bacon’s work, so far as motion picture
prehistory is concerned, is contained in his letter “On the Power of
Art and Nature and Magic.” It is in this work that Bacon speaks of the
many wonderful devices he knows about and which would be in service in
the future. Here we read of self-propelled vehicles, under-water craft,
flying machines, gun-powder (the idea of which probably came from the
East), lenses, microscopes, telescopes. Bacon claimed that he had seen
all these wonderful things with the exception of the flying machine.
But even this did not leave him at a loss, for he tells us that he has
seen drawings by a man who has it all worked out on paper!
In that book of Bacon there is also the theory of going westward to
India--the idea that later resulted in the discovery of America. The
idea, therefore, was not original with Christopher Columbus. Bacon
deserves great credit, for his views at least had a direct influence.
His statements were used without credit by Pierre d’Ailly in his _Imago
Mundi_, published in 1480. We know Columbus consulted this work, for he
quoted a passage in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella when seeking
financial support for the voyage. And it was the very passage of Bacon,
stolen by d’Ailly, which Columbus used to drive home his arguments with
the King and Queen of Spain.
Bacon devoted ten whole years to the study of optics and some of his
best work was done in that field. The principal influence on Bacon
in this subject was the work of Alhazen, the Arab. The concentration
of rays and the principal focus, knowledge necessary for fine camera
work, as well as good picture projection, were familiar to Bacon. This
was an advance over Euclid, Ptolemy and Alhazen. Bacon recognized that
light had a measurable speed. Up to that time most men thought that the
speed of light was infinite. (Measurements were not made until the 19th
century.) Bacon also studied the optical illusions pertaining to motion
and rest, fundamental for the motion picture. He belonged to the school
of vision study that believed we see by something shot out from the
objects viewed. This is directly opposed to the idea of Lucretius and
others who held that something was shot out of the eye to make sight
possible. There is no evidence that Bacon actually invented a telescope
but he certainly was aware of the principle. He planned a combination
of lenses which would bring far things near.
Roger Bacon has often been called the inventor of the _camera obscura_,
or “dark room,” which is the heart of the system for taking and
exhibiting pictures. (Illustration facing page 40.)
However, the original of the modern box pin-hole camera in its simplest
form is only a dark room with a very small hole in one wall, and was
never actually invented. The phenomenon of an image of what was on
the outside appearing upside down in a dark room was surely a natural
discovery first observed in the remote past. The “dark room” can
easily be considered as a giant box camera with the spectator inside
the box. An inverted image of the scene outside appears on the wall or
floor with the light coming through a small circular opening, as in a
“pin-hole” camera.
Record of the first use of the “dark room” for entertainment or
science has been lost in the dim past. As late as 1727 the French
_Dictionnaire Universel_ suggested, in desperation, that Solomon
himself must have invented the room camera. Until the 13th century, the
images in the room camera were faint and upside down because no lens
system was used. In ancient days and through the Middle Ages the camera
was a wonderful and terrifying thing. The theatre always was some small
darkened room. With a brilliant sun and the necessary small hole and a
white wall or floor, the outside scene would be projected. Spectators
and students certainly were thrilled and awed.
The Romans learned about the camera from the Greeks, who probably had
obtained the knowledge from the East where, with brilliant sun in which
the best results could be obtained, it is likely the effects were first
noticed. Such learned Arabs as Alhazen are believed to have had a
knowledge of the use of the room camera, but Alhazen did not leave any
good description of it in his writings.
To Bacon must go the credit for the first description of the camera
used for scientific purposes. Two Latin manuscripts, attributed to him
or one of his pupils, in which the use of the room camera to observe
an eclipse is described, have been found in the French National
Library. It was pointed out that this method makes it possible for the
astronomer to observe the eclipse without endangering his eyesight by
staring at the sun.
It is certain Bacon used a mirror-lens device for entertainment and
instruction. In his _Perspectiva_ there appears the following passage:
Mirrors can be so arranged that, as often as we wish, any object,
either in the house or the street, can be made to appear. Anyone
looking at the images formed by the mirrors will see something
real but when he goes to the place where the object seems to be
he will find nothing. For the mirrors are so cleverly arranged
in relation to the object that the images appear to be in space,
formed there by the union of the visible rays. And the spectators
will run to the place of the apparitions where they think the
objects actually are, but will find nothing but an illusion of
the object.
Bacon’s description is not clear: the effects and not the apparatus
are described. The words could apply to a variation of the camera
principle but it seems more likely that only a mirror system, related
to the modern periscope, was used. The device did not achieve
projection in the strict sense. Bacon’s description clearly states that
through the use of mirrors objects were made to appear where they were
not. In effect, this reminds us of the illusion of the modern motion
picture. There are stories that native people when first seeing motion
pictures, attempt to run up to the screen and greet the pictures. It is
only through experience that they learn the characters are not actually
alive on the screen.
Bacon knew that light and shadow instruments were not always used for
worthy purposes of entertainment or instruction but were also used to
deceive. He vigorously attacked the practices of necromancy--showing
the correctness of his position even though in gossip his name has been
linked with the “Black Art”, as was Kircher’s four centuries later.
“For there are persons,” Bacon wrote, “who by a swift movement of their
limbs or a changing of their voice or by fine instruments or darkness
or the cooperation of others produce apparitions, and thus place before
mortals marvels which have not the truth of actual existence.” Bacon
added that the world was full of such fakers. It is not surprising that
those skilled in the black arts tried to use the strange medium of
light and shadow to impose upon the ignorant and unwary.
The death of Roger Bacon in 1294 was the passing of one of the greatest
men in the history of light and shadow. With him the art-science had
reached a point at which magic shadow entertainment devices could be
built. Friar Bacon did much more to prepare the way for devices which
were not to be perfected for centuries than merely make a contribution
to the knowledge of light, lenses and mirrors. He blazed the way for
all later experimental scientists. Up to his time emphasis had been
placed on theoretical, speculative thinking. Bacon showed that science
must be based on practical experimentation as the foundation for its
principles.
_III_
DA VINCI’S CAMERA
_Italy of the Renaissance dominates
magic shadow development_--_Leonardo da
Vinci describes in detail the_ camera
obscura--_Inventions are by Alberti,
Maurolico, Cesariano and Cardano._
To the giant of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, must go the credit
for being the first to determine and record the principles of the
_camera obscura_, or “dark room”, basic instrument of all photography.
Da Vinci lived in a wondrous age. Michelangelo was painting and
sculpturing his unparalleled creations. Raphael was at work. The
Italians of the Renaissance led the world in a new culture. The torch
of learning and art once held high in Greece, then at ancient Rome,
later by the Arabs, was carried high in Italy of the late Middle Ages.
Together with the general Renaissance in Italy there was a rebirth of
interest in optics and especially light and shadow demonstrations and
devices. The new activity had come after a second “dark age” of nearly
two centuries, from the time of Roger Bacon to da Vinci. After this
“dark age” the room box-camera was “rediscovered” in Italy. Of course,
as noted above, since the camera had never been invented in the usual
sense of the term, it was not actually “rediscovered” either. It is
likely that da Vinci and others received their stimulus in this general
subject from Bacon and perhaps Alhazen or Witelo.
The renewed interest in scenic beauty in the Renaissance suggested
work with a portable camera, as it was found to be an excellent aid in
painting and drawing the beauties of nature.
Leone Battista Alberti (1404–1472), a Florentine ecclesiastic and
artist, was the first Italian to make a notable contribution to the
magic shadow story. Alberti, like the greater da Vinci, had many
talents. A native of Florence, he grew up in an atmosphere of artistic
culture. He was a priest, poet, musician, painter and sculptor, but
most noted as an architect. He wrote _De Re Aedificatoria_, “Concerning
architecture or building”, published after his death in 1485 and many
other works, including _Della Famiglia_, “The Family”.
Alberti completed work on the Pitti Palace in Florence but his best
design is said to be the St. Francis Church at Rimini. He also designed
the new facade of St. Maria Novella Church at Florence and is believed
to be the architect of the unfinished courtyard at the Palazzo Venezia
which nearly 500 years later was the office of the late and unlamented
Benito Mussolini. His painting, “La Visitazione”, is in the Uffizi
gallery. As an ecclesiastic, Alberti was Canon of the Metropolitan
Church of Florence in 1447 and later was Abbot of the San Sovino
monastery, Pisa.
But it was as an artist that Alberti made his contribution to the art
and science of light and shadows. He invented the _camera lucida_,
a machine which aided artists and painters by reflecting images and
scenes to be painted or drawn. The device, a modification of the “dark
room”, could also be used to make it easy to copy a design. In a
sense, the _camera lucida_ was the forerunner of the modern blue-print
duplicator. After Alberti had made his original drawings, an assistant,
with the aid of the device, could rapidly copy them and give duplicates
to the builders for use on the construction job.
Vasari’s _Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects_ is the chief
source of information about Alberti. That writer said Alberti was
more anxious for invention than for fame and had more interest in
experimenting than in publishing his results. This is an attempt to
explain why Alberti’s own words of description of his _camera lucida_
are not preserved.
Alberti was said to have written on the art of representation,
explaining his “depictive showings” which “spectators found
unbelievable”. According to Vasari’s description it would appear that
Alberti used a form of the _camera obscura_ or room box-camera but
introduced special scenes such as paintings of mountains and the seas
and the stars. In this way Alberti sought to introduce a touch of
showmanship into the performances of the room camera which up to this
time was used chiefly for observation of eclipses and other scientific
purposes.
Though Alberti died when Leonardo da Vinci was a young man, it is
certain that Leonardo knew of him, as they were natives of the same
city. Perhaps da Vinci had even attended some of Alberti’s magic
shadows exhibitions.
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci was born near Florence in 1452 and died
near Amboise, France, in 1519. In 1939, 420 years after his death, a
great exhibition of the master’s works was held at Milan and parts of
it were shown in the next year at the Museum of Science and Industry
in Rockefeller Center, New York. The Milan exhibit included works in
the following fields: studies and drawings in mathematics, astronomy,
geology, geodesy, cosmography, map-making, hydraulics, botany, anatomy,
optics (including proof of Alhazen’s problem of measuring the angle of
reflection of light), acoustics, mechanics, and flying; not to mention
sculpture, painting, drawing, sketches, architecture, town planning and
military arts and sciences.
Da Vinci is best known today for his paintings, such as the renowned
“Last Supper”, beloved everywhere, and the “Mona Lisa”. He was one of
the truly universal geniuses. There was little indeed that he could not
do.
Leonardo’s study of optics and perspective was reported in his
_Treatise on Painting_, written about 1515 and first published at Paris
in 1651, but well known prior to that time through manuscript copies.
Da Vinci has been a great trial to the students and historians, for
he wrote in his own special form of shorthand which was found to be
extremely hard to decipher.
Da Vinci experimented with the _camera obscura_ and wrote an accurate
scientific description of it, preparing the way for the men who were
to make the machine a practical medium. Vasari in his famous _Life of
Leonardo_ points out that he gave his attention to mirrors and learned
how they operated and how images were formed. But more important
than this, he studied the human eye and was the first to explain it
accurately, using the camera as his model, and in this way he really
learned the fundamentals of its functional principles. To this day the
camera is explained in simplest terms as a mechanical eye and the human
eye is explained as a marvelous, natural camera. Da Vinci also noted
the effects of visible impressions on the eye.
Roger Bacon was undoubtedly Leonardo’s master in optics and this is
a definite link in the chain of the growing knowledge of light and
shadow and of devices which would create illusions for instruction and
entertainment. It has been pointed out that Leonardo and Roger Bacon
had much in common--both being so far ahead of their own times that
they were not understood until centuries later. And both men believed
passionately in scientific research and investigation. As an example,
Leonardo would spend hours, days or even weeks studying a muscle of an
animal appearing in the background of a painting so that it could be
drawn perfectly. As a concrete link with Bacon, Leonardo described a
mirror camera device which made it possible for people on the inside to
see the passerby in the street outside. Bacon, you may recall, achieved
and described a similar effect.
Within two years after da Vinci’s death two other Italians, Maurolico
and Cesariano, advanced the magic shadow art-science by writing
scientific and experimental discussions of the subject. Somewhat later
another Italian, Cardano, made another contribution.
Francesco Maurolico (Maurolycus), 1494–1575, a mathematician of
Messina, and the great astronomer of his day, wrote _De Subtilitate_,
about 1520, in which Pliny, Albertus Magnus, and Leonardo da Vinci
are mentioned. The material included a mathematical, rather than
experimental, discussion of light, mirrors and light theatres. This
last subject shows that the use of light and shadow for theatrical
purposes was being rapidly advanced. In 1521, Maurolico was said
to have finished _Theoremata de lumine et umbra ad perspectivam et
radiorum incidentiam facientia_, which was published in 1611 at Naples
and in 1613 at Leyden. This book explained how a compound microscope
could be fashioned. Men were now learning how to use lenses and how to
make better ones so necessary for satisfactory projection of images.
[Illustration:
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646
_BURNING GLASSES of Archimedes were ancient optical devices. They were
used in the defense of Syracuse in 212 B. C. Some type of glass or lens
is required in every camera or projector._]
Proposition 20 of the book was entitled “An object’s shadow can be
converted and projected.” The author pointed out that if an object
between a light and an opening is moved one way its shadow appears to
move the other. He then went on to explain the reasons for Aristotle’s
square hole and round sun. He also showed accurately the relation of
images and objects which was fundamental for understanding how to focus
lenses and mirrors.
[Illustration:
Self portrait. Royal Palace, Turin
_LEONARDO DA VINCI, famed Renaissance painter and sculptor, explained
how to use the camera and described its relationship to the human eye._]
Later astronomers credit Maurolico with having described the
application of the _camera obscura_ method to an observation of
eclipses (but this was done for the first recorded time by Bacon or his
contemporaries). Maurolico knew the works of Bacon and John Peckham,
another English Franciscan monk of the 13th century, and studied both
carefully. In 1535 he wrote _Cosmographia_ and in later life studied
the rays of light that make the phenomenon of the images appearing in
a _camera obscura_, or any camera, possible without mentioning the
apparatus or device or describing it. Being a mathematician primarily
he was interested in that side of the problem and was not a practical
demonstrator or showman.
Cesare Cesariano, an architect, painter and writer on art, made a
reference to a light and shadow device which curiously has never been
adequately explained. Cesariano was born in Milan in 1483 and died
there on March 30, 1543. In 1528 he became architect to Carlo V and in
1533 architect to the city of Milan. In 1521 he designed the beautiful
cathedral of Como.
While at Como, Cesariano prepared a translation and commentary on the
_Architectura_ of Vitruvius, architect to Emperor Augustus, whose
classic on the subject was rediscovered in the 15th century. Vitruvius’
book included a chapter on “Acoustic Properties of a Theatre”--a good
subject for study even today. Cesariano’s edition was published at
Como in 1521 with a note saying that after the sudden departure of the
translator and commentator from Como the work was finished by Bruono
Mariro and Benedetto Giovio. It was considered a marvelous work, to be
in the vernacular and not in Latin. At this period people wanted to
have books in their own language and not in Latin.
While commenting on the word, _spectaculum_, translated as a “sighting
tube”, Cesariano described how a Benedictine monk and architect, Don
Papnutio or Panuce, made a little sighting tube and fitted it into a
small hole made for the purpose in a door. It was so arranged that no
light could enter the room except through the small tube. The result
was that outside objects were seen, with their own colors, in what
really was a natural camera system. Of course, the images were upside
down, as in any camera, without a special lens arrangement, but this
fact was not noted by Cesariano.
The whole matter is perplexing. What is described is a “dark room”
camera which, as has been observed, was never actually invented or
discovered and was known for centuries. This Benedictine monk and
architect may have made some refinements by carefully fitting the small
opening to admit the light but that is all. At about this time, or a
little earlier, the principles of the camera were set down by Leonardo
da Vinci. The writer and other researchers have not been able to
discover any trace of Benedettano Don Papnutio or Panuce. He certainly
did not write any books or his name would be known to history and it
would be possible to find more information about him and his work.
There is no record of him in the Benedictine bibliography. Guillaume
Libri, Italian writer, who worked in Paris in the 19th century and,
incidentally, was charged with stealing da Vinci’s manuscripts, said,
“I have not so far been able to ascertain who Don Panuce was, or when
he lived.” Libri asserted that at any rate Leonardo’s observation of
the _camera obscura_ must have been made before Cesariano saw or heard
about this monk. However, Cesariano seems to have the record for the
first published account of how to make a workable _camera obscura_.
Girolamo or Hieronimo Cardano (1501–1576) was an Italian physician
and mathematician who has been described by Cajori, the mathematical
historian, as “a singular mixture of genius, folly, self-conceit and
mysticism.” He lectured in medicine at the Universities of Milan, Paris
and Bologna. In 1571, after having been, according to some, jailed for
debt the year before, he was pensioned by the Pope and went to Rome to
continue special work in medicine.
Cardano’s contribution to motion picture pre-history was made in his
_De Subtilitate_, published at Nuremberg in 1550. He showed how a
concave mirror could be used to produce quite a wonderful show:--“If
you wish to see what is happening on the street, put a small round
glass at the window when the sun is bright and after the window has
been shut one can see dim images on the opposite wall.” He went on to
explain how the images could be doubled, then quadrupled and how other
strange appearances of things and one’s self could be devised with a
concave mirror. He remarked that the images appeared upside down. This,
of course, is another description of the _camera obscura_, with a few
additional points for recreational and instructional purposes. It
will be noted that Cardano’s description is very like those of Bacon,
Leonardo and Cesariano.
Now da Vinci’s camera, the original “dark room” camera and progenitor
of the modern pin-hole box camera, was ready for showmen to turn it to
successful uses. Just after the middle of the 16th century, a young
Neapolitan was prepared to spread the knowledge of the sporting use of
the device throughout the world.
_IV_
PORTA, FIRST SCREEN SHOWMAN
_Porta, a Neapolitan, blends
fancy and showmanship for magic
shadow entertainments in the 16th
century--Barbaro and Benedetti put a
lens in the “pin-hole” camera or_ camera
obscura.
The first contact of the new dramatic art, then being developed in
Europe and especially in England, with the magic shadow medium was made
by a remarkable Neapolitan, Giovanni Battista della Porta.
Porta, a boy wonder, who would have felt at home in the modern
Hollywood, put the room camera to theatrical uses. In a way Porta was
both the last of the necromancers, who used lens and mirror devices to
deceive, and the first legitimate screen writer and producer of light
and shadow plays with true entertainment values.
Porta was born in Naples about the year 1538. He and his brother,
Vincenzo, were educated by their uncle Adriano Spatafore, a learned
man. The uncle had considerable wealth, which enabled young Porta
to travel extensively and have the best available instructors. From
boyhood Porta’s chief interests were the stage and magic.
At an early age he started writing for the theatre and his comedies
are rated with the best produced in Italy in the 16th century. But
even before he began his professional writing for the stage, he had
developed an interest in magic and anything approaching the magical.
This avocation was developed during the rest of his life.
Porta was very fond of secrets and secret societies, founding the
Academy of Secrets at Naples. He was also a member of the Roman Academy
of the Lynxes, scientific society founded in 1603--named for its
trademark. Even magic inks for secret writing were an attraction to him.
For years it was generally believed that Porta invented the _camera
obscura_ but, as we have seen, it was known long before he was born. At
the time of the discovery of photography Porta’s title to the invention
of the camera was discussed and it was definitely established that
while he made some refinements and, of course, devised some special
uses, he had nothing to do with its invention.
When about 15, Porta began the investigations which led to the writing
of _Magia Naturalis, sive de Miraculis Rerum Naturalium_, “Natural
Magic, or the wonders of natural things.” The material was published
five years later, at Naples, in four “books”, or large chapters.
Through the years he increased his notes on the subject and in 1589 the
work was printed in twenty chapters.
Porta’s _Natural Magic_ was a popular book, a best-seller of the
day. It was first translated into English and published in London
in 1658. It was also translated into many other languages. _Natural
Magic_ contains a wide variety of subjects, including developments in
the light and shadow art-science. Porta published the first detailed
explanation of the construction and use of the _camera obscura_ in the
fourth “book”.
“A system by which you can see, in their own colors, in the darkness
objects outdoors lighted by the sun,” was Porta’s title for the
section. He continued:
If anyone wishes to see this effect, all the windows should be
closed, and it would be helpful if the cracks were sealed so that
no light may enter to ruin the show. Then in one window make a
small opening in the form of a cone with the sun at the base and
facing the room. Whiten the walls of the room or cover them with
white linen or paper. In this way you will see all things outside
lighted by the sun, as those walking in the streets, as if their
feet were upwards, the right and left of the objects will be
reversed and all things will seem interchanged. And the further
the screen is from the opening, proportionately the larger the
objects will appear; the closer the paper screen or tablet, is
drawn to the hole, the smaller the objects will appear.
Porta also had an explanation of the persistence of vision, so far as
it was then understood. As an example, he mentioned that after walking
in the bright sun it is difficult to discern objects in the darkness,
until our eyes become accustomed to the change--and then we can see
clearly in the dim light. To see the natural colors, Porta proposed the
use of a concave mirror as the screen for the camera images. He then
discussed phenomena resulting from the principal focus of the mirror.
He tried to use the parallel to show how we see things rightside up
instead of upside down. But his knowledge was not sufficient for that
purpose, for he held that the seat of vision was at the center of the
eye, as the focus of a concave mirror or lens system. In this he was
not correct, according to modern experiments, but at least it was a
plausible theory.
As a third point in his description of uses of the natural camera
Porta said, “Anyone not knowing how to draw can outline the form of
any object through the means of a stylus.” Here was Alberti’s _camera
lucida_, or the camera adopted for the use of painters and designers.
Porta instructed his readers to learn the colors of the object and then
when it was thrown on the screen it would be easy to trace and paint
in natural colors. He pointed out another interesting and important
fact--a candle or lamp could be used as the light source instead of the
sun.
Porta concluded his account of 1558 with an assertion that the system
could be used to deceive and to do tricks through the aid of other
devices. His last words on the subject were confusing: “Those who have
attempted these experiments have produced nothing but trifles, and I
do not think it has been invented by anyone else up to now.” Earlier
in his account he mentioned that he was now revealing what he thought
should be kept a secret.
Roger Bacon, Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci and others were figuratively
watching Porta when he wrote those lines and made those experiments.
Even the same words about seeing people on the streets outside go back
to Bacon, at least; and the use of the camera for drawing to Alberti
and Leonardo. It is not clear whether or not Porta actually wished his
readers to believe that he had invented the _camera obscura_ which he
described or that he had merely found some interesting applications.
Perhaps he wanted the whole matter considered a secret.
But though Porta borrowed from the ancients without giving them credit,
he deserves praise for publishing descriptions, following tests which
he himself must have made. As in all sciences, the prehistory of the
motion picture had experimenters and popularizes--and not infrequently
the two functions were separated by a considerable period.
The developments claimed by Porta in the second edition of _Natural
Magic_ published in 1589 had been described previously by others. Once
again he was a copier and popularizer rather than an inventor and
discoverer. And that seems proper for a man who was by profession a
playwright with a hobby interest in secret things, especially those
relating to natural phenomena.
During the three decades prior to 1589, important developments were
made in the science of optics. Both Barbaro and Benedetti described
_camera obscura_ systems fitted with lenses to improve the images, and
E. Danti, an editor and translator, explained in 1573 how an upright,
instead of an upside down, image could be shown through the use of a
lens-mirror system.
Monsignor Daniello Barbaro published at Venice, in 1568, _La Pratica
della Perspettiva_, “The Practice of Perspective”, a book on optics.
He describes the instrument designed by Alberti, the _camera lucida_,
and gives an illustration of it. As in the case of Benedetti, Barbaro’s
chief title to memory is that he introduced the projection lens to
the natural camera, thereby enlarging its scope. Without any lenses
even a modern camera would give only inferior results and motion
pictures would not be practical. It is also said Barbaro introduced the
diaphragm, which is very important as a means of controlling the light
in the camera.
Giovanni Battista Benedetti, a patrician of Venice, 1530–90, published
at Turin a book called _Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum et
Physicarum Liber_, “A Book of Various Mathematical and Physical
Speculations”, in which was included the first complete and clear
description of the _camera obscura_ equipped with a lens. The date of
the volume was 1585, four years before Porta published his revised
edition.
Benedetti used a double convex lens. His first knowledge of optics
came from a study of Archimedes, whom he admired greatly. But his
learning was not confined to optics. He influenced the great Descartes
in geostatics, studying the laws of inertia and making the contribution
of the path taken by a body going off from a revolving circle, i.e.,
tangent. In 1553 he reported that bodies in a vacuum fall with the same
velocity.
Benedetti’s description of the _camera obscura_ included details on
how to make the images appear upright. The material is contained in a
printed letter to Pierro de Arzonis. First Benedetti discusses light
and the fact that a greater light overshadows a smaller, “just as by
day the stars cannot be seen.” He then pointed out that if the light
were controlled in a camera the outside images could be seen, but if
the rays of the sun were allowed to enter (as by making the opening
hole too large) then the images would “more or less vanish according to
the strength or weakness of the solar rays.”
Benedetti continued:
I do not wish to keep any remarkable effect of this system a
secret from you ... the round opening the size of one small
mirror may be filled in with one of those spectacles which are
made for old people (but not the kind for those of short sight),
but one whose both surfaces are convex, not concave. Then set
up a white sheet of paper (as the screen), so far back from the
opening that the objects on the outside may appear on it. And if
indeed these outside objects are illuminated by the sun they will
be seen so clearly and distinctly that nothing will seem to be
more beautiful or more delightful. The only objection is that the
objects will appear inverted. But if we wish to see those objects
upright, this can be done best by interposing another plane
mirror.
In the revised and expanded edition of his _Natural Magic_, Porta gave
a more complete description of the uses of the camera. Part of the text
was identical with the earlier accounts; part was new.
[Illustration:
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646
_CAMERA OBSCURA, the natural room camera, was accidentally discovered
in antiquity, probably in the Far East. Here is shown an improved
version by Giovanni Battista della Porta, 16th Century Neopolitan
writer, scientist and showman. A translucent sheet was the screen. The
images were upside down and indistinct as no lenses were used. Artists
and entertainers found the apparatus of value._]
Porta had learned how to make his opening in the single window better
by this time--“make the opening a palm’s size in width and breadth
and glue over this a sheet of lead or bronze which has in the middle
an opening about the size of a finger.” He next pointed out that the
outside objects can be seen clearer and sharper if a crystalline
lens is put in the opening of the camera as suggested by Barbaro and
Benedetti. Porta also mentioned that the insertion of another mirror in
the system would make the images appear upright instead of upside down.
[Illustration:
Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, 1878
_JOHANNES KEPLER developed the scientific principles of the camera and
its use in astronomy._]
But Porta showed himself a real showman by his final word--describing
how hunting, battles and other illusions may be made to appear in a
room. Here artificial objects and painted scenes were substituted
for the natural outdoors as the pictures for the room camera in a
method originally suggested by Alberti. Porta said, “Nothing can be
more pleasing for important people, dilettants and connoisseurs to
behold.”--An early premiere audience of invited guests!
Porta recommended the use of miniature models of animals and natural
scenes, the first stage sets for “motion pictures,” with puppet-like
characters. He wrote, “Those present in the show-room will behold the
trees, animals, hunters and other objects without knowing whether they
are true or only illusions.” Porta revealed that he had put on shows
of this kind many times for his friends and the illusions of reality
were so good that the delighted audience could scarcely be told how the
effects were achieved. He also told how the audience could be terrified.
Porta concluded this account with a description of how to use the
camera in order to observe an eclipse, something which Bacon or one
of his contemporaries had already worked out. Before good instruments
were developed, the room camera was an excellent device to save the
astronomer’s eyesight and still give him a good view of an eclipse. The
giant 200-inch telescope at Palomar in California is closely related to
the original use of the camera for astronomical work.
There does not seem to be any evidence that Porta developed a portable
camera, the direct ancestor of the modern photographic camera. He also
did not appear to have much success with his lenses, as he found the
concave mirrors as good as or better than a _camera obscura_ with a
lens.
The general subject of the chapter which included the camera was
“Herein Are Propounded Burning Glasses” “and the Wonderful Sights to be
Seen by Them.” (Recall Archimedes and his Burning Glasses.) Let Porta
tell it: “What could be seen more wonderful, than that by reciprocal
strokes of reflexion, images should appear outwardly hanging in the
air and yet neither the visible object nor the glass seen? that they
may seem not to be repercussions of the glasses, but spirits of vain
phantasms.”
In a book on refraction, published in 1593, the eye and the _camera
obscura_ were compared by Porta. He also covered refraction, vision,
the rainbow, prismatic colors (all subjects treated by the early
experimenters in optics).
Porta had a great, though mixed, influence. Even in his own mind he did
not seem able to decide whether the magic shadows should be used to
deceive the public as effects of secret powers or whether they should
be used for genuine entertainment and instruction.
After Porta, the “dark chamber” was developed for the use of painters
and artists in England and on the continent.
_V_
KEPLER AND THE STARS
_Kepler, German astronomer, develops the
scientific principles of the_ camera
obscura _and applies magic shadows to
the stars of the heavens--Scheiner and
D’Aguilon improve image devices_.
Johannes Kepler, the great astronomer, advanced the art-science of
magic shadows by developing the theory of the projection of images as
well as the scientific use of multiple lenses and the _camera obscura_
or “dark chamber”. Da Vinci told how the camera could be used; Porta
tried it out for entertainment on a considerable scale but there still
was need for penetrating attention from a scientist. That Kepler
supplied.
Kepler was a precocious child though he suffered from poor health.
He had no special interest or inclination towards astronomy until in
1594, at the age of 23, he found himself required to teach a class in
that subject. Soon he became an expert and before his death announced
the Kepler laws explaining the planetary system. In 1600 Kepler became
assistant to Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), the greatest practical astronomer
to that date but one who rejected the Copernican theory that the earth
and planets revolve around the sun, a theory which was firmly proved
by Kepler. Brahe lost the tip of his nose in a duel, so he wore a gold
one, carrying with him cement with which to stick on the tip whenever
it fell off.
A few years after becoming astronomer to the Emperor, Kepler published,
in 1604, _Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena_--“Supplement to Witelo”; Witelo,
a Pole called Thuringopolonus, wrote a treatise on optics about 1270.
He was a contemporary of Roger Bacon. Kepler used da Vinci’s parallel
of the eye and the room camera and set the latter’s principles on a
firm scientific basis.
Kepler wrote, “This art, according to my knowledge, was first handed
down by Giovanni Battista Porta and was one of the chief parts of his
_Natural Magic_.” (But, as the reader recalls, Porta was not the first
to know about the _camera obscura_ and was not its inventor but only
a popularizer.) “But content with a practical experience,” Kepler
continued, “Porta did not add a scientific demonstration. Yet only by
the use of this device can astronomers study the image of the solar
eclipse.”
Kepler then described the _camera obscura_ or “dark chamber,” adding an
interesting observation. He proposed that the spectator should keep out
of the daylight for fifteen minutes or a half hour before he planned to
use the camera so that he could get his eyes accustomed to the darkness
in order to observe the images more clearly. Kepler then instructed
that the objects to be represented should be placed in bright light,
either of the sun or lamps. He also noted that the objects were
reversed, and remarked that the images appeared in the colors of the
objects. Kepler also explained that a diaphragm was needed to control
the amount of light admitted to the camera, and that best results were
obtained when the sun was near the horizon.
A detailed and rather technical explanation of how the camera system
works was given by Kepler. Towards the end of the description he wrote
an important instruction: “All the walls of the camera except the one
used as the screen for the images should be black.” This was necessary
to prevent reflection and dulling of the brilliance of the images on
the white wall or screen. Everyone knows how the insides of a modern
camera are black for the very same purpose. Kepler also noted that
the “camera” must be tightly sealed. He was the first to refer to the
device under the simple name of “camera” which in time was adopted
universally.
Kepler also was the first to give a sound theory of vision. (Recall
the shot-from-eye or shot-from-object schools of the ancients.) Kepler
stated, “Seeing amounts to feeling the stimulus of the retina which is
painted with colored rays of the visible world. The picture must then
be transmitted to the brain by a mental current and delivered at the
seat of the visual faculty.” That is a rather good definition even by
modern standards. Kepler, however, was not 100 per cent correct. He
held that light had an infinite velocity. To Kepler goes the credit for
being the first correctly to explain after-images, a knowledge of which
is so vital to understanding how the illusion of motion is created.
Kepler started to use a telescope about 1609 and through its use he
was able to develop improved ideas for the room camera by the time he
published his _Dioptrice_, “Concerning Lenses,” a foundation of modern
optics, in 1611. In that work the basis was first established for what
was later to be long-range or “telescope” photography which makes
possible many important effects in the modern motion picture.
The telescope, the most highly developed lens system and the reverse of
a projection arrangement, was invented in Holland in the early part of
the 17th century. Galileo, who with Kepler did much to popularize the
telescope, admitted that he had seen one made by a Dutchman before he
fashioned his own.
The name “telescope” was coined by Damiscian of the Italian scientific
“Academy of the Lynxes,” to which Porta also had belonged. The
invention of the telescope is commonly credited to “the spectacle maker
of Middleburgh,” usually identified as Hans Lippershey. The compound
microscope, effects of which had been indicated by Roger Bacon,
evidently also was invented a few years prior to the telescope--by
Zachary Janssen, in Holland. But it was first described in Italy. Early
telescopes generally followed the model developed by Galileo, while
by the middle of the 17th century the superiority of Kepler’s method
was recognized and larger and more powerful telescopes were possible.
In recent times the telescope has reverted to a mirror--or Burning
Glass--reflecting system instead of the standard style refracting
telescope.
To a contemporary of Kepler goes the acclaim for being the first to use
the _camera obscura_ apart from a room; in other words, in a portable
form. Thus was the first portable camera developed more than two
hundred years before photography was invented. The man was Scheiner,
another astronomer.
Christopher Scheiner, a German Jesuit, born about 1575 in Swabia,
did much work in astronomy and perfected various ingenious optical
instruments. Some say he was the first to use the camera projection
device for throwing the sun’s image on a screen in order to study its
details. This replaced a system which used colored glasses. Kepler,
prior to this, suggested the method but it is generally acknowledged
that Scheiner made the first application. In 1610 Scheiner invented
his Pantograph or optical copying instrument. In March, 1611, he
observed sun spots. His superiors were afraid that he and they would be
exposed to ridicule if he were to publish such a discovery under his
own name--it was so opposed to the contemporary scientific as well as
traditional scientific belief. And so his findings were published in
1612 by a friend, under an assumed name.
Scheiner was a believer in the need for accuracy in experiments to
form a firm basis for future development of theory. He studied the
eye and believed that the retina was the seat of vision. By the year
1616 he had so attracted attention of scientists that the Archduke
Maximilian invited him to Innsbruck. Scheiner taught mathematics and
Hebrew and continued his work in optics. He was the author of _Rosa
Ursina_,--1626–30, the standard work on the sun for generations. In
1623 he was a professor of mathematics at the Roman College, where
Kircher fell under his personal influence. The last years of Scheiner’s
life were spent at Neisse in Silesia, where he died in 1650.
Scheiner was influenced by François d’Aguilon, the first of several
Jesuits who made an important contribution to what was to be the modern
motion picture. D’Aguilon advanced the knowledge of optics throughout
Europe.
D’Aguilon was born in Brussels in 1566 and after entering the Jesuits
in 1586 and being educated he became a professor of philosophy at the
famous college in Douai, France. Later he was head of the College of
Antwerp. D’Aguilon did not confine his interests to philosophy and
speculative knowledge alone but was very much interested in certain
sciences, notably optics. Moreover, he was a practicing architect and
probably designed the Jesuit church at Antwerp.
His work on optics, published at Antwerp in 1613, was famous. In it is
found for the first time the expression “stereographic projection,”
which has survived to the present. This was known from the time of
Hipparchus but had not received a permanent name until it was given
by d’Aguilon, to whom must go part of the credit for the name of all
devices with “stereo” somewhere in the title. D’Aguilon explored at
length the subject of after-images. He correctly pointed out that the
image physically disappears when the cause is removed (as a camera no
longer “sees” after the shutter is closed) but there remains something
impressed on the organ of sight, a certain effect on the sense of
vision.
D’Aguilon was revising his book on optics when he died, in 1617. One
edition was published in Antwerp in 1685 with the title _Opticorum
Libri Sex_. Perhaps he was on the eve of the great discovery which was
to be made in a few years by one of his successors. However, to him
goes the credit for the name which was attached for centuries to all
kinds of shadow-plays, and is still known today--Stereoscopic.
By the first quarter of the 17th century the camera was widely used for
the observation of the greatest light and shadow show--the universe
with sun, moon and stars. Experiments also had been made, by Porta
and others, in the entertainment possibilities of the “dark chamber.”
The stage was ready for the man who would bring about projection, as
we know it, with the magic lantern. A long step would then be taken
towards realizing man’s instinctive ambition to capture and recreate
life for entertainment and instructive purposes.
_VI_
KIRCHER’S 100th ART
_Kircher’s magic lantern projects
pictures and the art of screen
presentation is born--First screen
picture show in Rome, 1646--Kircher’s
book_, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, _tells
the world how_.
In the second quarter of the 17th Century the stage was set for
the birth of the magic lantern, progenitor of all cinematographic
projectors. The chief actor was a German, a fellow countryman of Kepler
and of many other serious scientists in the light and shadow field, but
it was in Italy, native land of many arts and showmen, of Leonardo da
Vinci and of Porta, that he worked. The man was Athanasius Kircher.
The age in which Kircher worked was a difficult period. The Thirty
Years War ravaged Europe from 1618 to 1648 and the people suffered more
than at any period down to our own. Europe politically was in chaos as
after World Wars I and II. Only in literature and science were there
signs of hope and promise. The eyes of many thoughtful Europeans turned
away from the Old World to the new lands across the sea.
[Illustration:
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646–1671
_PICTURE WHEELS invented by Kircher. Above, rotating giant wheel caused
one picture to succeed another. Below, story telling disk._]
Kircher was born five years before the first permanent English
settlement in the New World. But let him tell us in the words of
his Latin autobiography, parts of which, it is believed, are here
translated into English for the first time: “At the third hour after
midnight on the second of May in the year 1602, I was brought into the
common air of disaster at Geysa, a town which is a three hours’ journey
from Fulda.” (Not far from the modern Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany.)
“When I was six days old I was dedicated to Athanasius by my parents,
John Kircher and Anna Gansekin, Catholics and servants of God and
workers of good deeds, because I was born on that Saint’s Feast Day.”
[Illustration:
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1671
_MAGIC LANTERN, Kircher’s projector, the original stereopticon. The
screen images were crude silhouettes but the projector included the
essential elements._]
Kircher thus described his father, mother and the family: “John Kircher
was a very great scholar and a doctor of philosophy. When the report
of his learning and wisdom came to the Prince,” (probably Rudolph),
“he was summoned and made a member of the council at Fulda. Later he
was put in charge of the fortress of Haselstein because he had been
diligent in destroying the printing machines of the heretics. He
married a maiden of Fulda, Anna, daughter of an honest citizen named
Gansekin. Nine children, six boys and three girls, were born to them.
All the boys entered one of the several religious orders. Of all these
I was the youngest and smallest.”
Kircher’s father was a man of influence and learning, though evidently
not of noble birth. He had studied philosophy and theology but was not
a religious, though he did teach for a time in a Benedictine monastery.
Very likely he was a stern parent. The mother, it would appear, was the
daughter of a merchant or store-keeper and certainly was not learned
like her husband. But no doubt she was more liberal and understanding.
Kircher’s course of studies is interesting: “After the age of
childhood, around the tenth year, I was placed in the elementary
studies, at first at Music; then I was introduced to the elements
of the Latin language.” At that time Latin was still the universal
language of scholarship. It is likely that Kircher spoke Latin much
more than any other language. All his writing was in Latin, though in
time he became a talented linguist.
Kircher’s father sent him to the Jesuit college at Fulda, because he
wanted his youngest son to learn Greek in addition to Latin and in time
to become a universal scholar. Kircher’s teacher at Fulda was John
Altink, S.J. The course followed the famous Jesuit _Ratio Studiorum_,
which is still the basis of studies in the many hundreds of schools
conducted by that order throughout the world. Then, as now, emphasis
was on the classics. Somewhat later his father took him to a Rabbi
“who taught me Hebrew,” as Kircher wrote, “with the result that I was
skilled in that language for the rest of my life.”
At the same age as a high school graduate in the United States,
Kircher could read, write and speak Latin, Greek and Hebrew, in
addition to German, and probably he also had a good foundation in
French and Italian.
At the old town of Paderborn on October 2, 1618, Kircher entered
the Society of Jesus, militant religious order founded by the
Spaniard-soldier-churchman, Ignatius of Loyola, in 1540, and already
a powerful influence in education in Europe and in missionary work
even as far as India and Japan. Kircher did not enter the Jesuits as
early as he had wished because he had fallen while ice-skating and had
suffered an injury.
From 1618 to 1620, Kircher occupied himself with religious duties,
spending the time largely in prayer. After 1620 he continued with the
usual studies for the priesthood--philosophy and theology. He studied
philosophy at Cologne and briefly taught at the Jesuit Colleges at
Coblenz and Heiligenstadt. Along with these pursuits, Kircher took a
special interest in languages and in mathematics, the foundation for
all scientific work. He completed his studies in theology at Mainz and
was ordained a priest in 1628.
Kircher was given ample opportunity to take courses, despite the
troubled times resulting from the wars. In the year 1629, he was at
Speyer where he expressed to his religious superior a preference
for missionary work in China. Next he took an interest in Egyptian
writing, hieroglyphics, which were not to be translated until many
years later. Chaldean, Arabic and Samaritan were added to Kircher’s
language studies. Then for a short period he was professor of ethics
and mathematics at the University of Würzburg.
In 1618, when Kircher had entered the Jesuits, the Thirty Years’ War
had broken out. Then, as in our own time, Germany was no place for
serious studies. Kircher, after he became a priest, spent considerable
time in France where the organization of a powerful central government
was being undertaken by Richelieu. The Cardinal was a patron of the
arts, founding the French Academy. It is likely that word of Kircher’s
learning reached Richelieu, for Kircher visited several of the colleges
and universities in the south of France, stopping at Lyons and later at
Avignon. Kircher continued all the while his remarkable studies, and
began to write, publishing his first book in 1630.
Soon the fame of Kircher attracted the attention of the highest
ecclesiastical and educational authorities. Pope Urban VIII, who had
struggled in vain to prevent the Thirty Years’ War, and Francesco
Cardinal Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban), summoned Kircher to Rome
late in 1633. Just before the word to come to Rome reached him, he was
invited to Vienna by the Emperor Ferdinand. Kircher started for Austria
by boat from a French port but was shipwrecked and the order to report
to Rome reached him after his rescue.
The invitation to come to Rome could not be refused. But there is every
reason to believe that Kircher was delighted to have the opportunity
of working in Rome under such high auspices. The civil situation was
somewhat more stable in Rome than in Germany. Furthermore Rome was
the intellectual center as well as focal point of much political
maneuvering. Ambassadors and special agents representing Richelieu
of France, the King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany and many of the
other European powers, great and small, were constantly coming and
going, seeking to increase the power of the state they represented
and their own prestige as well. The heads of all the religious orders
lived in Rome and hence it was the headquarters for knowledge of new
developments in science and of news from the lands being explored in
America and in the Far East.
Kircher stood apart from these struggles for political, religious
and educational power. As a Jesuit he had put aside prospects of
ecclesiastical advancement. He was content with his studies, his
teaching and his inventions. But others were not content to leave him
in peace.
At the request of Cardinal Barberini, Kircher was made professor of
mathematics at the Roman College which was then popular with the young
Roman nobility and the learned from all over the world. While teaching,
Kircher continued his work in the Oriental languages and mathematics
and also branched out into the natural sciences.
Kircher was a little man of boundless energy and once interested in a
problem was never content till he knew all the facts, from personal
investigation if possible, and had written an exhaustive tome on
the subject. He made many field trips to test theories and ideas by
practical experience. An active exponent of experimental science,
Kircher made important contributions to human knowledge, though some of
his books contained not a little error, and even some nonsense.
Kircher’s work with magic lanterns and his observations on the magic
shadow art-science were released to the educated world in his _Ars
Magna Lucis et Umbrae_--“The Great Art of Light and Shadow”--published
at Rome in 1646. Kircher defined his “Great Art” as “the faculty by
which we make and exhibit with light and shadow the wonders of things
in nature.” That applies to living pictures today as it did in the 17th
Century. Even the sound of the modern motion pictures is recorded and
reproduced through light and shadow action.
No clue is given by Kircher to the exact date he invented the magic
projection lantern. But it was probably not long before he finished
the book in 1644 or 1645. Kircher dedicated his thick quarto volume,
which was handsomely published by Herman Scheus at the press of
Ludovici Grignani in Rome, to Archduke Ferdinand III, the Holy Roman
Emperor, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia and King of the Romans.
Hence, knowledge of the screen first appeared in print under very
distinguished patronage.
The title page explained that the great art of light and shadow had
been “digested” into ten books “in which the wonderful powers of light
and shadow in the world and even in the natural universe are shown and
new forms for exhibiting the various earthly uses are explained.”
The Emperor wrote a foreword and this was followed by an introduction
of Kircher “to the reader.” Kircher spoke of the earlier use of light
and shadow by the necromancers to deceive, but pointed out that his
developments were for “public use, or a means of private recreation.”
Introductory material also included several odes about the subject and
the author, as well as the necessary ecclesiastical approvals.
The first nine books, or long sections, of _Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae_
include such diverse topics as the following: Light, reflection,
images, the speaking tube, the structure of the eye, sketching devices,
the art of painting, geometrical patterns, clocks, the nature of
reflected light, refraction and means of measuring the earth.
The section which is of special interest in the story of magic shadows
is the tenth--it gives the title to the whole work. The sub-title of
the chapter is, “Wonders of light and shadow, in which is considered
the more hidden effects of light and shadow and various applications.”
In the preface to the section Kircher wrote “in this, as in our
other research, we have believed that the results of our important
experiments should be made public.” “That risk is taken,” he continued,
“for the purpose of preventing the curious readers from being defrauded
of time and money by those who sell imitation devices, for many have
provided wondrous, rare, marvelous and unknown things and others have
sold so much bunk.”
The first section of the all-important tenth chapter discussed magic
clocks and sun-dials; the second, the _camera obscura_ or “dark
chamber,” lenses, telescopes, other optical devices. In the third
section there appears the magic lantern. The section is called, “Magia
Catoptrica, or concerning the wondrous exhibition of things by the
use of a mirror.” _Catoptron_ in Greek means “mirror.” Kircher wrote,
“Magia catoptrica is nothing else but the method of exhibiting through
the means of mirrors hidden things which seem to be outside the scope
of the human mind.” Ancient authorities who had made contributions to
this art-science were mentioned by Kircher.
First Kircher explained how steel mirrors were made and
polished--mirrors or reflectors are still of importance in gathering
light in the motion picture projector. He commented on the various
types of convex, concave, spherical and other types of mirrors.
In Kircher’s day even the learned were quite uneducated according to
modern standards, especially on all matters of physical science. Images
that appeared from nowhere were most mysterious and few knew how they
were produced. The telescope and microscope were still very new and
many doubted what their eyes saw through these inventions.
Kircher, as a showman, described a Catoptric Theatre--a large cabinet
in which many mirrors were concealed. One of the “Theatres” was placed
in the Villa Borghese Palace in Rome and doubtless delighted the
nobles of that day as much as the people in the United States were
pleased with the first Edison peep-show machines in 1894. For Kircher’s
Catoptric Theatre was an early peep-show device. It also has a relation
to the Kaleidoscope of the early 19th century.
The first form of the magic lantern described by Kircher was merely a
lantern suitable for showing letters at a remote distance. It is very
simple and appears entirely elementary. But the first step was taken.
The third problem of the third section of the tenth book of the _Ars
Magna Lucis et Umbrae_ was how to construct such an artificial lantern
with which written characters may be shown at a remote distance.
The parts are easily distinguished--a concave mirror at the rear;
a candle for a light source; a handle and a place for inserting
silhouette letter slides. Kircher noted that in the device the flame
will burn with an unaccustomed brilliance. “Through the aid of this
device very small letters may be exhibited without any trouble.” He
noted that some will think there is an enormous fire, so bright will
the lantern shine. He added that the strength of the light will be
increased if the interior of the cylinder is covered with an alloy of
silver and lead to increase its reflecting qualities.
The second Kircher device of direct relation to the motion picture is
his machine for creating metamorphoses or rapid changes. All kinds of
transformations could be shown. Here was first introduced the revolving
wheel on which pictures were painted. It bears an analogous relation
to the motion picture devices of the early 19th century--also using a
revolving vertical wheel. The modern projector likewise has its film
pictures on a small wheel or reel.
Kircher explained that in this catoptric machine a man looking at
the mirror (equivalent to the screen in a theatre) sees images of a
fire, a cow and other animals all blending one into another. It is
unlikely that the giant wheel could be revolved swiftly enough to give
anything like the proper illusion of motion but certainly there was
a transformation which must have appeared wondrous and entertaining.
(Illustration facing page 48.)
Kircher also described how images of objects could be projected by
means of the light of a candle. Through this system various images
were exhibited in a darkened chamber. But Kircher evidently was not
satisfied with this method, for no illustration of it appeared in
the first edition of his book. The reason is obvious. A candle could
provide only enough illumination for the faintest shadows. Kircher
wrote that those objects which need only a fraction of the sun’s light
can be shown by a candle in a small room. Two methods for this were
indicated: (1) with a concave mirror reflecting the images and (2)
projecting the image through a lens. It was noted that the better
single method was through the lens. A combination of the two provided
the most light. Kircher remarked that he had read in a history of the
Arabs that a certain king of Bagdad used a mirror to work wonders in
order to deceive the people. He also pointed out that some men had
used mirrors to project into dark places what the ignorant thought were
devils.
The chief problem in Kircher’s day and for centuries afterwards was
to provide sufficient light. The final solution did not come until
electric light was introduced. Probably Kircher’s most efficient
projection was one in which the sun was used as the source of light.
Even in the early part of the 20th century arrangements were used
which hooked up the sun with the magic lantern because it was thought
that the results were even better and cheaper than those obtained with
electric light.
Kircher’s sun magic projector used a real optical system which is
fundamental even to this day. There was first the source of light, then
a reflector and the object, and the projected image. The effects, of
course, would be most startling in a darkened room. Kircher also showed
how shadows of any type of figure could be thrown onto a wall or screen
through the same method.
In those days when there was much secret correspondence and keen
interest in various forms of cipher, many of Kircher’s readers were
glad to note how the magic lantern could be used for such a purpose. At
that time people would not, it was believed, detect that the letters in
such a system were simply backwards and upside down. The message could
be read easily by projecting images of the letters. The same result
could be had by turning the paper upside down and holding it before a
mirror.
After listing these many diverse uses of the magic lantern system
Kircher thought it well to conclude his book lest he be charged with
“meandering” endlessly on a subject which some would consider trivial.
Kircher said, “We leave all these to the talented reader for further
refinement. A word to the wise is sufficient. Innumerable things could
be said concerning the application of this device but we leave to
others new material of invention and lest this work grow too long we
cut off the thread of discussion about these devices.”
Kircher ended his entire book by saying that it was published “not for
income or glory but for the common good.”
In his Latin autobiography Kircher made only one passing reference to
his _Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae_, “The Great Art of Light and Shadow.”
Let Kircher speak:
At this time (around 1645) three more books were published,
the first on the magnetic art, _On Magnetism_; another _On the
Great Art of Light and Shadow_ and a third written in the name of
_Musurgia_, “Music.” These are not insignificant works, praise
be God. They occasioned applause but this applause soon brought
me another form of tribulation; new accusations piled up and for
this reason my critics said I should devote my whole life to
developing mathematics. So with desperate hope on account of this
impenetrable difficulty I gave up my work on hieroglyphics and my
heart and mind were discouraged.
At one point in the discussion of the magic lantern in _Ars Magna Lucis
et Umbrae_ Kircher interrupted the thread of the story long enough
to point out that charges of the use of the black arts had been made
against him and others who knew the use of mirrors and lenses by some
who had no knowledge of philosophy and science. He told how Roger
Bacon was charged with necromancy because he could show a recognizable
shadow of himself in a dark room where his friends were assembled.
Kircher noted that certainly a talented philosopher and scientist could
accomplish all these effects through skill in the use of mirrors and
lenses and without any trace of the suspect black art.
The charge of necromantic art was the source of much of Kircher’s
unhappiness. Some considered him in league with the devil because he
could make images and shadows and objects appear where none had been
before. It was the age-old story that some in the audience or among the
readers did not understand how an effect was produced so its validity
and legitimacy were denied.
Praise and blame always have been the lot of discoverers and inventors.
Kircher had, however, better fortune than many others. He was able to
write in his autobiography, “Divine Providence, which never fails us,
took care of my trouble in this wonderful way--my appointed work was
restored to me and by the occasion of this good fortune I escaped the
traps of my adversaries.”
Adversaries on even scientific matters in those days battled to the
death. What happened was this: A commission established by Innocent X,
who had been elected Pope in 1644, ordered that Kircher be allowed to
continue his beloved antiquarian studies. It seemed that the Obelisk
of Caracalla had been partially destroyed and Kircher was given the
task of directing the restoration. Kircher’s original patron, Cardinal
Barberini, continued to have influence, being Pope Innocent’s legate or
ambassador to the Emperor.
And so the man who had done so much to advance the art-science of
living pictures for the knowledge and enjoyment of vast millions in the
centuries to come spent the happiest days of his life looking towards
the dead and buried past.
A quarter of a century later, Kircher was able to revise and enlarge
his book on _The Great Art of Light and Shadow_ and have it printed
in a great folio edition in 1671 by John Jansson of Waesberge at
Amsterdam. Conditions had changed greatly--Kircher was no longer a
newcomer at Rome, suspected of being in league with the devil on
account of his powers with mirrors and lenses and his amazing projected
images. His fame as a universal scholar, “The Doctor of a Hundred
Arts,” had spread throughout the European world. Men now had begun to
realize there was much of great value in his _Magia Catoptrica_ or
Magic Projection with mirrors.
Jacob Alban Ghibbesim, M.D., professor at the Roman College, in the
caption for Kircher’s portrait, used these words: “This man and his
name are known to the ends of the earth.”
In 1670 Kircher had a new patron, John Frederic, to whom he dedicated
his work. The Emperor Ferdinand, who sponsored the first edition, had
died in 1657. Europe was gradually recovering from the effects of the
Thirty Years’ War. Louis XIV was establishing an all-powerful personal
rule in France. Holland and Switzerland were jealously guarding their
newly won independence. Sweden was an important European power. Great
Britain had a short-lived republic under Cromwell. In the New World the
English had consolidated their position by driving the Dutch out of New
Amsterdam, occupying New York in 1664. Much of the New World had yet to
be explored.
“Vagabonds and imposters” had carried the magic lantern everywhere
during the quarter century following its announcement, usually claiming
it as their own invention. Kircher thought the time had come for him to
set down in more detail various additional applications of his magic
lantern, invented 30 years before. The only additions Kircher made to
the entire tome were in the section on the magic lanterns. Two new
plates were made, showing room and box-type projectors and also added
was another special plate on a particular application demonstrating
that Kircher used the lantern idea to tell a story. (Illustration
facing page 49.)
Let Kircher now explain about Walgenstein, a Dane, one of his first and
most successful imitators in the practice of the magic lantern:
Concerning the construction of Magic Lantern or Thaumaturga
(Wonder Projector)--
Although we have already mentioned this lantern in several places
and shown a method of transmitting images by the sun into dark
places, we will illustrate one further use--that is, a method of
projecting painted images of objects in their own colors. Because
previously we merely outlined this subject and left it entirely
apart from other more important inventions, it happened that many
who were drawn by the novelty of the magic lantern applied their
minds to its refinement.
First among these was a Dane, Thomas Walgenstein, not a little
known as a mathematician, who, recalling my invention, produced
a better form of the lantern which I had described. These he
sold, with great profit to himself, to many of the prominent
people of Italy. He sold so many that by now the magic lantern
is nearly commonplace in Rome. However, there is none among
all these lanterns which differs from the lantern described by
us. Walgenstein said that with this lantern model he showed a
large number of sufficiently bright and shining pictures in a
dark chamber and they aroused the greatest admiration in the
audiences. We in our dark chamber at the college are accustomed
to show many new pictures to the greatest wonder of those looking
on. The show is most worthwhile seeing, the subjects being either
satire or tragic plays, all the pictures in the appearances of
the living.
From Kircher’s statement Walgenstein should be hailed as the first
commercializer of the projector and the first traveling picture
showman or “road-show man.” Unfortunately, little is known of this
man. While he may have been “not a little known” in Kircher’s time, he
left no mark on history, evidently never writing a book or holding an
educational or other position which would have been recorded. It seems
certain that he was the Dane of whom the French inventor and scientist,
Milliet de Chales, spoke about as introducing the magic lantern in
Lyons, France, some years after it was invented by Kircher.
Kircher’s statement about the shows which he put on at the Roman
College is most interesting. The reference to tragic and comic plays
indicates beyond doubt that Kircher used a succession of lantern slides
to tell a story as the modern motion picture is made up of a succession
of pictures.
Kircher included a description of the slide projector so that all who
wished could imitate his work. “All these things have been shown so
that the reader can make his own,” he said. “The work of art formerly
described does not differ from the new lantern.” He pointed out that
moving slides had been added so that the objects might appear with the
aspect of living shadows. He again explained how a concave mirror and
diaphragm should be used. Kircher informed his readers that he usually
used four or five slides, each having eight pictures painted on glass.
The illustrations, he noted, explain the system better than words. We
echo that and refer the reader to the illustrations of the box and room
moving-slide projectors of Kircher.
Kircher in his 1671 edition described a form of revolving disc to
tell a story. (He selected the most widely known story of all for the
model--The Life of Christ.) The light available would not give a great
effect but the pattern was set. Nearly two hundred years later the
first projection of motion pictures was to be achieved with a somewhat
similar disc and series of painted figures. Kircher’s revolving disc
told the story with a series of still pictures rapidly succeeding each
other. (Illustration facing page 48.)
By explaining all details of the method and construction of the magic
lantern to everyone interested, Kircher had hoped to expose some of
the imposters who were using his invention to arouse fear and make the
people believe that the operator had magic powers.
Kircher, with his “hundred arts,” became _vir toto orbe
celebratissimus_--a man well known throughout the world--according to
Jerome Langenmantel who edited his autobiography in 1684. However,
since his own era Kircher has been relatively unknown.
There was hardly a branch of learning that did not attract Kircher’s
attention. He assembled one of the best ethnological collections of
his time. He attempted to develop a basic language and was one of the
first to make a start towards deciphering hieroglyphics. In the field
of magnetism he was a pioneer and in 1632 was one of the first to
map compass variation and ocean currents. In medicine Kircher was a
proponent of the new and generally disbelieved germ theory of disease,
and an experimenter in the use of hypnotism for healing purposes. He
contributed much to the early knowledge of volcanoes. As an inventor,
Kircher perfected one of the first counting machines, speaking tubes,
Aeolian harps and developed the microscope to an enlarging power of
1,000 diameters.
However, despite all his knowledge, his title of “Doctor of a Hundred
Arts” and the trouble and fame incidental to the invention of the magic
lantern--his least art, or “the hundredth”--Kircher was not prideful
of his reputation. He concluded his little autobiography by describing
himself as “a poor, humble and unworthy servant of God.” His heart
was buried in a shrine to Mary, the Mother of God, which Kircher had
constructed on the Sabine Hill in Rome.
* * * * *
The art-science of projection and the magic lantern were further
explained through the publication of three other books which included
a description of Kircher’s work and illustrations of his projector
systems; namely, George de Valesius’ volume on the Museum of the
Roman College in 1678, which pointed out that Kircher had developed
magic lanterns using one or more lenses, and that several different
models were on display and in use since the time of their invention;
Johann Stephan Kesler’s book on Kircher’s experiments published in
1680 and another edition in 1686; and finally there was published in
Rome in 1707, a work on the Kircher Museum--the Museum of the Roman
College which had by then been given officially the name of its
collector. Today only a few small objects remain of Kircher’s original
collections. Unfortunately, Kircher’s devices were destroyed shortly
after his death.
The museum of Kircher at the Roman College, the first picture
theatre in the world, was an amazing place. Every conceivable kind
of antiquarian and scientific object was assembled--from Egyptian
inscriptions to stuffed animals, fish, rare stones, curiosities from
the New Worlds and everything pertaining to the pursuits of the “Doctor
of a Hundred Arts.” Any spectator, from one of the eminent Cardinals
to a young Roman nobleman and student at the College who was invited
to a performance, would certainly have been well prepared for an
extraordinary show after looking at the diverse collections at the
museum.
In the 17th century there was no doubt as to the identity of the
inventor of the magic lantern. Before Kircher’s death in 1680 his magic
lantern was widely used in Europe for scientific and entertainment
purposes as well as for the art of deception. The question was raised
by later writers seeking to claim a national of their own country as
the inventor. Kesler wrote in 1680, “In the catoptric art images are
exhibited in dark places through the magic lantern which our author
(Kircher) invented and which, to his undying memory, he communicated to
the world.”
In those days some men liked to keep secret their inventions lest some
one else claim the rewards. Two and a half centuries later, Thomas A.
Edison sometimes found it better not to take out foreign patents on his
inventions because that frequently served only as notice to those who
sought to duplicate his work. For this reason Edison did not spend the
$150 necessary to obtain foreign patents on his moving picture cameras
and viewers.
_VII_
POPULARIZING KIRCHER’S PROJECTOR
_Kircher’s magic lantern is popularized
by others--Schott--Milliet de
Chales--Zahn--Molyneux--The name and fame
of the inventor are lost to the public
while magic shadow projection spreads
throughout Europe._
As with many another inventor, Kircher received little praise and
much blame for his invention of the magic lantern. Charges of being
in league with the devil to achieve the wondrous images on the screen
almost broke his spirit. Though his device was widely pirated in Europe
without acknowledgement of the inventor, before Kircher’s death he was
able to take some satisfaction from the fact that his projector was no
longer viewed as “black magic” but as a great boon for mankind. Had he
lived longer he would have again been saddened as others claimed the
magic lantern as their own. At this later day the name of Kircher was
known only to a few scholars although the magic lantern audiences could
be numbered in the many thousands.
In the first half century after the invention of the magic lantern
projector, four men, in addition to Kircher himself, made its
scientific principles and construction widely known. They were a
curious group: Gaspar Schott, a protégé of Kircher; Claude Milliet de
Chales, a French priest and military expert; Johann Zahn German writer;
and William Molyneux, an Irish patriot, teacher and scientist.
Gaspar Schott was the best known of Kircher’s pupils who helped to
awaken scientific interest in Europe. He was born at Königshofen,
Bohemia, in 1608. He entered the Jesuit Order at the age of 19. Like
Kircher, his senior by six years, Schott was compelled to flee the
disorders in Germany and continue his studies abroad. For his courses
in philosophy and theology Schott went to Sicily. Later he studied
under Kircher at the Roman College. From his contact with Kircher,
Schott had developed a great interest in scientific matters and
mathematics. He conducted research and wrote at Augsburg until his
death in 1666. Schott’s books were once very popular. Their subjects
ranged from extracts of the diaries kept by Kircher on his various
scientific travels to mathematical text books and even a study on the
source of the river Nile. So far as the story of magic shadows goes,
Schott’s most valuable book was the _Magia Universalis Naturæ et
Artis_. “Wonders of Universal Nature and Art,” published at Würzburg in
1658, with a second edition in 1674.
Schott described every type of magic lantern, basing his remarks, of
course, on the work of Kircher. The projection apparatus described
by him was better than that of the master, Kircher. Schott described
lanterns with and without lenses, and covered points of practical use
as well as the theory.
The age-old Burning Glasses of Archimedes were studied by Schott,
who knew about the various kinds of images, mirrors, and the focal
length and its importance in producing sharp pictures on the screen. A
refinement in the telescope was also explained.
Schott was probably the first man to write about, and study with the
magic lantern, optical illusions caused by a rapidly revolving wheel,
including the appearance of distorted figures. It was this same study,
carried on almost two hundred years later in England, France and
Belgium, that was to result in the first real motion pictures. In ideas
Schott outran the limitations of the physical apparatus available at
the time, as did Kircher himself.
Kircher had been asked by Schott to write the foreword to his book. But
Kircher was too busy with other works. (It is barely possible that he
was jealous of the growing fame of his former pupil; or, more likely,
that he was unwilling to appear in print at that time on the subject
which had so much contributed to his troubles.) Nicholas Mohr, who did
write the introduction, pointed out that Schott had been carrying on
the work of Kircher.
Schott discussed the various details of the magic lantern projector
in scientific terms. He was a pure scientist without the dash of
showmanship which at once distinguished Kircher and probably helped
to cause him difficulty with his “enemies.” Schott described how “to
construct the Kircher Catoptric Machine.” This was the first coupling
of Kircher’s own name with the magic lantern. But people preferred
Kircher’s appellation of “magic lantern.” And so his own name did not
grow into the language to stand for the device he invented.
About fifteen years after Schott’s book appeared and nearly thirty
years after the first description of the magic lantern by Kircher in
his _Great Art of light and Shadow_, the first prominent Frenchman in
the history of the magic shadows made a contribution by improving some
details of the projector.
In keeping with what has not been an infrequent practice amongst French
historians in claiming inventions for Frenchmen, it has been held
that Claude François Milliet de Chales, and not Athanasius Kircher,
invented the magic lantern. Milliet de Chales was a talented man but,
as he himself clearly wrote, he did not invent the magic lantern. What
happened was that de Chales saw one exhibited in Lyons, where he was
stationed, and then devised some improvements.
De Chales was much too young to have invented the magic lantern, as he
was born at Chambéry in 1621. He entered the Jesuits in 1636 and after
his studies spent some time in missionary work in Turkey. While de
Chales was on the missions, Kircher had already demonstrated the magic
lantern at Rome.
Father de Chales had an interesting career. Upon his return from
missionary work he became a professor of humanities and rhetoric. Later
his attention was turned to things scientific. Louis XIV made him
professor of hydrography at Marseilles and there de Chales was able to
devote much time to navigation and to other arts which would have a
military application. De Chales later taught mathematics and theology,
eventually becoming rector of Chambéry. He died in Turin in 1678.
[Illustration:
Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus, 1685
_JOHANN ZAHN, Gaspar Schott, Claude Milliet de Chales and William
Molyneux perfected Kircher’s magic lantern projector and spread
knowledge of it throughout Europe. Illustrated are table models by
Zahn. The mounting of the slides shows the quest for movement. No basic
improvements in the projector were made for another century and a
half._]
De Chales’ monumental work is _Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus_, “The
Mathematical World,” written in 1674. An edition, edited from the
author’s reviewed manuscript, by Amati Varcin, S. J., was published at
Lyons in 1690, 12 years after de Chales’ death. One section was devoted
to optics. De Chales studied the eye and knew that the image is upside
down on the retina. He investigated other vision problems, including
angular vision and vision at long range, considered binocular vision
and the images formed by each eye. He devised satisfactory lenses and
spectacles for both far and near-sighted persons. (The original name
for near-sightedness--“Myopia”--came down from Aristotle.) De Chales
experimented with light and dark colored objects and gave consideration
to why we see better with two eyes than one. He noted that the eye
actually sees color and light and not objects and movement--a fact upon
which the whole motion picture process is based. He pointed out that
the ship appears to stand still and the shore moves to an observer
aboard. He also studied the nature of color and the laws of light. De
Chales even attempted three dimension projection! Even now many efforts
are being made to achieve “three dimension” motion pictures without the
use of special glasses or other viewing devices for the spectators.
[Illustration:
Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus, 1685
_Time and wind indicators by projection were among the curious
adaptations of the magic lantern device developed by Zahn. Above,
the hour was indicated by the point of the sword. Below, the wind
instrument was ingeniously connected to a vane on the roof. It was
automatic in action; the “clock” was not._]
De Chales considered plane and curved mirrors, improving the design of
the old _camera lucida_ of Alberti by introducing a mirror. He devised
a simple searchlight to improve the projection of images, in a system
similar to Kircher’s design for the first magic lantern, but as it had
a stronger light source it was shown how letters, bright enough to
read, could be projected a great distance.
De Chales narrated how fires could be set with the two lens system--as
the old Burning Glasses of Archimedes. He was a practical man as well
as an ingenious one and included details on how to make lenses. Other
studies included consideration of color reflection, a telescope with
two convex lenses, an attempt to make binoculars and even an experiment
with prisms, laying some of the groundwork for Newton.
De Chales wrote that for many things this method of projection--direct
with a strong light source--was “the best and most certain.” Doubtless
he was right, considering available means. He also pointed out the
military uses of the projector and other mirror-lens devices. Today
in enemy waters or where hostile sea or aircraft are expected and a
“radio silence” must be maintained--ships and planes must use optical
signaling devices and de Chales was the first to consider carefully
this subject.
De Chales’ most important refinement in the projector was the
introduction of a two-lens projection system.
He described in his book how the magic lantern first came to his
attention. “We have seen here at Lyons a dioptric machine, called
a magic lantern. Rays of light are projected through a tube for a
distance of ten or twelve feet. An enlarged image, about four feet
in diameter, is shown in all its colors.” The effect was considered
wonderful, according to de Chales. He noted, however, that a convex
lens was used but pointed out that it would be better to use a double
lens “as he demonstrated.” De Chales did not discard the concave
mirror, used as the light collector on almost all types of projectors
from Kircher’s to those of the present day.
In a subsequent chapter de Chales gave more information on this
subject. “As I have indicated in the preceding chapter a learned
Dane” (very likely the same Walgenstein of whom Kircher wrote as a
popularizer of his lantern projector) “came to Lyons in the year
1655.” De Chales continued, “This Dane was well versed in optics and
among other things showed a lantern.” De Chales again noted how he
had developed an improvement, using two lenses, which made possible
a projection to the then amazing distance of 20 feet. The present
projection “throw” at the Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center,
New York, is approximately 200 feet.
In addition to optics and many other fields of study, de Chales was
interested in navigation. He wrote a book, probably on the order of the
King’s general staff, _The Art of Navigation demonstrated by principle
and proved by many observations drawn from practical experience_. He
devised a paddle-wheel ship that would go against the current, “without
sails, without oars and without the traction of any animal”--surely
a military weapon! His most important military work was _The Art of
Fortifying and Defending and Attacking according to the French, Dutch,
Italian and Spanish Methods_.
De Chales mentioned in his writings Alhazen, Witelo and other ancient
authorities. He must have read the first edition of Kircher’s book and
also Gaspar Schott’s before his own was written. However, de Chales
made a definite improvement with his lens system which is essentially
the modern one. Also, his work helped to popularize and extend the art
and science of light and shadow. He was another strange man in this
complex story--a missionary, a teacher and a military expert.
Johann Zahn in _Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus sive Telescopium_,
“The Artificial Telescopic Eye or Telescope,” published at Nuremberg in
1685 and 1702, outlined a better lens system for the magic lantern and
described many applications, including false representations to create
wonder and fear. One of Zahn’s teachers was Jerome Langenmantel, the
editor of Kircher’s autobiography, so the link with Kircher is close
and direct.
Zahn considered the eye, vision and light, basing his work on earlier
writers. It was noted that Kircher, and his aide Schemer, used a
system--probably the natural camera--to observe the sun at Rome in
1635. He also described telescopes and microscopes and a device which
was a forerunner in the Stereoscope.
In his section on the magic lantern, Zahn acknowledges his debt to
Kircher, referring to Kircher’s book and to Schott’s saying “the
projection of images of objects was announced in a wonderful manner
by Kircher.” He also knew de Chales’ work. But he showed that an
improvement could be made.
Zahn showed a complete magic lantern, or Thaumaturga Lantern (names
originated by Kircher) or Megalographica Lantern (Great-writing),
because even little figures and images can appear life-like in size.
The system was complete: reflecting mirror to focus the light, a lamp
as the light source and two projection lenses forming the projection
system.
Zahn wrote, “Very great wonders are presented and set forth in the
magic lantern including the projection of light and curious images.”
He proves himself a showman by saying the purpose is to create “the
greatest admiration and enjoyment of those looking on.”
The regular magic lantern was, he said, “already well known.” He
developed some very ingenious improvements, including table model
projectors which set the pattern right to the end of the 19th century.
All that was later added was improved light sources including, finally,
electric light. (Illustrations facing page 64.)
Zahn for his theatre shows described how images could be projected even
under water. He stressed the importance of concealing the projector in
a separate room so that the audience would not know the source of the
magical vision.
In one model of the magic lantern Zahn explained how the glass slides
could be mounted on a circular disk which could be revolved in front
of the magic lantern lens. In other words, he took the disk shown
by Kircher and combined it with Kircher’s projector. But Zahn’s
modification was the dominant pattern used by later experimenters,
just before the dawn of the motion picture as we know it. The first
projector to show “motion pictures” from hand-drawn slides was
invented about 1851 by Franz von Uchatius and looked very similar to
this model of Zahn.
Zahn had also many curious applications, including the use of the magic
lantern to tell time or rather to project the correct time on a great
“clock” on the wall. Another application was the use of the lantern,
connected with a wind vane atop the structure to show the direction the
wind was blowing at the particular instant. (Illustration facing page
65.)
J. Kunckelius, who wrote on the _Glass Art_, is credited by Zahn
with developing a good ink or paint to be used on the glass for the
magic lantern slides. This information was passed on by him to his
readers. From Kircher’s day until the invention of film and its use in
photography in the latter part of the 19th century, glass slides formed
the physical picture supports for practically every kind of a magic
shadow show.
Kircher’s magic lantern was established on a scientific basis in the
English-speaking world by the writing of William Molyneux, a citizen of
Dublin. Molyneux became an Irish patriot by taking a stand against the
contended right of the English Parliament to rule Irishmen. He was a
leader in the constitutional struggle for Irish autonomy in the early
part of the 18th century.
Molyneux, a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, included his
treatment of the magic lantern in his _Dioptrica Nova_, which the
censor passed on June 4, 1690 with the note, “I think this book is
fit to be printed.” But it was not published until two years later.
Molyneux, as other pioneers in this art-science, had his period of
exile. He wrote in _Dioptrica Nova_, “the present distractions of our
miserable country have separated me and my books.”
In the introduction Molyneux pointed out that up to then there was
nothing written in the English language on that part of mathematics
and, he said, “I am sure there are many ingenious Heads, great
Geometers, and Masters in Mathematics, who are not so well skilled in
Latin.” And certainly Molyneux was right, for the use of the modern
languages was expanding constantly in that period.
Molyneux had a low regard for Zahn, whom he called “a blind transcriber
from others” and asserted that he copied the errors of de Chales.
An early section of the book was “On the Representation of outward
objects in a Dark Chamber; by a Convex Glass.” This was a modified
version of the natural camera, first set down carefully by da Vinci and
dating back to Roger Bacon.
Molyneux devoted a whole section to “The Explication of the Magick
Lantern, sometimes called Lanterna Megalographica” (that last was one
of the names Kircher gave to it). Molyneux scientifically described
a good model featuring a metal lantern and adjustable lenses. He
explained that the pictures to be shown were painted with transparent
colors on pieces of thin glass which were inverted and placed in the
projector. His comment on the type of picture is entertaining: “This is
usually some Ludicrous or frightful Representation, the more to divert
the Spectators.” “Horror” pictures--and comedies--were born centuries
before Hollywood.
Also discussed were focusing lenses, glass and concave mirrors,
adjustments in the picture focus, the throw from projector to the
screen.
However, Molyneux wished to keep strictly on the scientific and
scholarly side saying, “As to the Mechanick Contrivances of this
Lantern, the most Convenient Proportion of the Glasse, etc. this is
so ordinary amongst the common Glass Grinders that ’tis needless to
insist further thereon in this place. ’Tis sufficient to me that I have
explained the theory thereof.”
At the end of the volume there was an advertisement--it was noted that
all the instruments mentioned “are made and sold by John Yarwell at the
Archimedes and Three Golden Prospects, near the great North Door in St.
Paul’s Church-Yard: London.” This makes John Yarwell the first recorded
commercial dealer in the magic shadow science.
In addition to Schott, Milliet de Chales, Zahn and Molyneux, many
travelling showmen such as Walgenstein, the Dane, introduced the magic
lantern and its magic shadow shows in great cities and little hamlets
of Europe. Some were professional entertainers, accepting the projector
as a new device; others were the “vagabonds and imposters,” of the
type condemned by Kircher. This group recognized no law and copied and
appropriated the magic lantern projector whenever opportunity presented
itself. There was no copyright or other protection to restrain them. By
the early part of the 18th Century the magic lantern was commonplace
and many men were skilled in its use.
_VIII_
MUSSCHENBROEK AND MOTION
_Magic shadows move in the projector of
Musschenbroek, a Dutchman--Quest for real
“motion pictures” continues--Abbé Nollet
spins a top--Lantern shows in Paris and
London become spectacular._
Not long after Kircher’s death his magic lantern projector was in
use everywhere in Europe but the apparatus did not do all that was
desired. The goal of motion pictures was still around a corner.
Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761), a Dutch natural philosopher and
mathematician, was the first to successfully simulate motion with the
aid of the projector and glass slides.
The effects of motion produced on the screen through the system
developed by Musschenbroek were crude but progress was made. There was
also further concrete evidence that the primitive urge of the first
painter to re-create nature with all its life and movement was still
powerful and had not been forgotten.
Previously Zahn, as we have seen, mounted a series of glass slides on a
circular disk which could be revolved before the lens of the projector.
But there the method really only assured quick changes from one still
picture to another. In the very beginning Kircher also had the disk
idea and in other models of his lantern arranged the glass slides on a
long panel so the successive views could be changed rapidly.
Musschenbroek, working in Holland in the early part of the 18th
century, achieved his effect of motion by fitting two panels of slides
into the same lantern for simultaneous projection. One slide was
stationary and usually depicted the background; the other was mobile
and was set in motion by means of a cord. With a skilled manipulator
the effects were certainly wonderful--for that period.
The motion magic lantern projector was developed as a hobby by
Musschenbroek, who was unaware of its importance until he had a visit
in 1736 from the French scientist, or more accurately popularizer of
science, Abbé Nollet (1700–1770).
Abbé Nollet corresponded with scientists throughout the world and
his salon in Paris was crowded each evening with French and visiting
scientists and the hangers-on of the great. While in Holland, Nollet
visited Musschenbroek. One evening after a pleasant dinner and much
serious conversation on educational and scientific matter, the host,
Musschenbroek, proposed a bit of entertainment. He may have told his
distinguished French visitor, “I have a surprise for you. I will show
you something that is as yet unknown in your wise Paris.” It is certain
Abbé Nollet’s curiosity was stirred up and he looked forward with keen
anticipation to the demonstration. He was that kind of a person--eager
for any new scientific development or application.
Musschenbroek’s show that evening in Holland included, according
to Abbé Nollet, magic lantern views of a wind-mill whose arms
revolved--wonder of wonders! Also a lady bowing as she walked along the
street. And a cavalier removing his hat in courtesy. That would seem to
prove that Musschenbroek, the staid scientist, in his idle moments had
attempted to create the first “boy-meets-girl” motion picture.
The magic lantern with movement of Musschenbroek’s description was
brought back to Paris by Nollet who started its popularization.
The system became wide-spread following the publication of a book,
_Nouvelles Recréations Physiques et Mathématiques_, by Abbé Guyot which
went through several editions in Paris and was translated and published
also in at least two editions in England by W. Hooper, M.D. under the
title, _Rational Recreations in which the Principles of Numbers and
Natural Philosophy are Clearly and Copiously Elucidated, by a Series of
Easy, Entertaining, Interesting Experiments_. Hooper copied even the
plates from the French book of Guyot.
The projections of the magic lantern, it was said, “may be rendered
much more amusing, and at the same time more marvelous, by preparing
figures to which different natural motions may be given, which everyone
may perform according to his own taste; either by movements in the
figures themselves, or by painting the subject on two glasses, and
passing them at the same time through the groove (of the lantern).”
It was noted by Guyot-Hooper that in Musschenbroek’s _Philosophical
Essays_ there are many methods of performing all these movements, “by
some mechanical contrivances that are not difficult to execute.”
An illustration of the Musschenbroek system was given. The subject
sought to portray how, “To represent a tempest by the magic lantern.”
On one of these glasses you are to paint the appearance of the
sea, from the slightest agitation to the most violent commotion.
Observe that these representations are not to be distinct, but
run into each other, that they may form a natural gradation;
remember also, that great part of the effect depends on the
perfection of the painting, and the picturesque appearance of the
design.
On the other glass you are to paint vessels in different forms
and dimensions, and in different directions, together with the
appearance of clouds in the tempestuous parts.
Precise instructions were set down for this first “motion picture”
storm effect:
You are then to pass the glass representing the sea slowly
through the groove, and when you come to that part where the
storm begins, you are to move the glass gently up and down, which
will give it the appearance of a sea that begins to be agitated;
and so increase the motion till you come to the height of the
storm. At the same time you are to introduce the other glass with
the ships, and moving in like manner, you will have a natural
representation of the sea, and of ships in a calm and in a storm.
As you draw the glasses slowly back, the tempest will seem to
subside, the sky grow clear, and the ships glide gently over the
waves.
With Musschenbroek the magic shadows began to have real motion and
the effect on the audience consequently was much greater. Kircher’s
projector was growing up.
In the Guyot-Hooper book it was also noted, “By means of two glasses
disposed in this manner you may represent a battle, or sea fight, and
numberless other subjects, that everyone will contrive according to
his own taste. They may also be made to represent some remarkable or
ludicrous action between different persons, and many other amusements
that a lively imagination will easily suggest.”
Complete details were given for a “magical theatre” in which regular
magic shadow plays could be presented. An elaborate lantern with a
number of grooves for slides was proposed. The clouds, palaces of the
gods and the like were dropped down from above; the caves and infernal
places rose from below; and earthly palaces, gardens, characters, etc.
came in from either side--all, of course, on glass slides. Projection
was provided by a lamp with a dozen flames. As an illustration a
play based on the siege of Troy was suggested. Slides included the
following: walls of Troy, the Grecian Camp, the background atmosphere,
the Grecian and Trojan troops, ships, the wooden horse, palaces and
houses, temple of Pallas, fire and smoke for the conflagration,
individual characters, etc. Screen directions were given for a complete
magic shadow play in five acts. This surely was among the first--if not
the first--motion picture scenario. The screen was then about three
feet wide.
Musschenbroek, in addition to being the first credited with introducing
effective, though very artificial, motion into light and shadow
entertainment and instruction, was said to be the first man to create
the illusion of white light by revolving very rapidly a disk painted
with seven colors. That effect must have been as magical to Abbé Nollet
as his “moving” pictures. It also indicates that considerable advance
was being made in the knowledge of vision and the means to create
optical illusions, upon which the principle of the motion picture rests.
As many other men in this story, Musschenbroek covered the whole field
of science. He studies our old friend, the _camera obscura_, mirrors,
prisms, the eye, the microscope in many forms, winds, waterspouts,
magnetism, capillary tubes, the size of the earth, sound and pneumatic
machines. It is easy to determine from that list of serious studies
that Musschenbroek’s moving shadow projection was the purest kind of an
avocation.
Abbé Nollet who helped to introduce Musschenbroek’s novel movement
magic lantern is not credited with any great scientific discovery in
any field but he served as a clearing house of scientific knowledge in
his day. He traveled widely, to Italy and England as well as to Holland.
So far as this tale is concerned, Nollet’s name is of significance,
after his part in making known the Musschenbroek device, by the fact
that he also popularized a very simple little toy--“The Dazzling or
Whirling Top.”
This little children’s plaything helped to stimulate the study of the
persistence of vision and led to a better understanding of motion. This
in turn resulted, within a half century, in learning a way to re-create
actual motion effects. Around 1760 Nollet developed the top which,
though only an outline in form, when whirled rapidly appears to be a
solid object. Nollet also described the use of the _camera obscura_ and
the various types of lanterns for entertainment and teaching purposes.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), famed American statesman, writer and
scientist, corresponded with Abbé Nollet. Franklin, though disagreeing
with Nollet on electricity, admired him, calling him “an able
experimenter.” Nollet marveled that such science as manifest by the
publication of certain of Franklin’s works in Paris could come from
America. At first he conceived that his enemies in Paris had falsified
the papers to cause his embarrassment. Franklin made no direct
contribution to the art-science of magic shadows but had a pertinent
remark to make about the medium--light itself--which is nearly as true
today as when he wrote it in 1752 for a paper read to the Royal Society
in London: “I must own I am much in the dark about light,” he said.
_IX_
PHANTASMAGORIA
_Magic lanterns mounted on wheels and
images projected on screens of smoke
make ghost shadow plays--Robertson
“resurrects” Louis XVI--Théâtre Robert
Houdin, Paris, 1845, Polytechnic
Institution, London, 1848 and Nazi
Army, 1940--all use magic shadows for
supernatural effects._
The tongue-twisting word, Phantasmagoria, stands for a certain type of
light and shadow show popular immediately after the French Revolution.
It marked a definite throwback in the story of magic shadows. It was
essentially a revival of the medieval black magic or necromantic use of
light and shadow to trick, deceive and keep everyone “in the dark about
light.”
Phantasmagoria is the magic lantern illusion associated with making
phantasms appear before an audience. The only contribution to the
art-science is that it created an illusion of motion through the novel
means of moving the projector instead of the slides or film.
The Phantasmagoria magic lantern was mounted on rollers and the lens
was adjustable so that ghosts would appear to grow and diminish
and move about. Certain dissolve effects were also produced. For
Phantasmagoria the images--regularly ghosts--were projected not on a
screen but on smoke, a factor which naturally contributed to the weird
effects.
Phantasmagoria was most popular in Paris in the late 1790s, probably
as some kind of a psychological reaction to the horrors of the French
Revolution. Men and women of the day thought much of death, ghosts and
the like.
The basic idea for combining motion illusions successfully with the
magic lantern is traced directly to Musschenbroek. The use of smoke for
a screen goes back to the ancient practitioners of light and shadow
trickery.
Guyot showed, on a small scale, how ghost illusions can be projected
on smoke. He noted, “It is remarkable in this representation, that the
motion of smoke does not at all change the figures, which appear so
conspicuous that the spectator thinks he can grasp them with his hand.”
These devices were intended primarily for simple amusement on a private
or semi-private scale.
An indication of the mood of the European people of the time is the
fame granted Alessandro Conte di Cagliostro (1743–1795). This man whose
real name was Giuseppe Balsamo was known throughout Europe in the
latter part of the 18th century. Thomas Carlyle wrote about him under
the title “Count Cagliostro.” He used all kinds of deceptive devices,
and was jailed in France, England and in his native Italy where he died.
The black magic of Cagliostro, the phantasm images, and a third factor,
the Shadow Plays, were to be combined to make the Phantasmagoria.
Earlier mention has been made of the Chinese Shadow Plays which
have been in use in the Far East for thousands of years. Towards
the middle of the 18th century the Shadow Plays were very popular
in Germany. Shadows were used to portray action. The audience sat
before a translucent screen on which were cast, by means of a strong
light source, shadows of the various players or objects. In certain
arrangements a regular magic lantern would also be used, projecting,
from in front of the screen, the background scenery or cloud and sky
effects.
A showman named François Seraphin has been credited with introducing
the Shadow Plays--_Ombres Chinoises_--into France in 1772. He got
the idea during his travels in Italy. Then the shadow entertainment
received its French “first night” at the Palace of Versailles. Light
and Shadow Plays were very popular at the royal court, especially with
the children. In 1784 Seraphin decided that the entertainment was ready
for introduction on a popular basis--the trend of the times may well
have influenced his decision.
The Shadow Play theatre of Seraphin was moved from Versailles to
the Palais-Royal and its popularity continued for a time. Shadow
entertainment was carried on by members of the same family till past
the middle of the 19th century when an attempt was made to regain
popularity by using marionettes. Other Shadow Plays continued to
attract audiences in Paris until the end of the 19th century, when the
pre-motion picture devices became popular.
Phantasmagoria reached its peak under an extraordinary
character--Etienne Gaspard Robert (1763–1837), a Belgian and a
practicer of a multitude of professions and hobbies. Robert, for some
reason, called himself Robertson. Robertson started life on a serious
enough basis and in time became professor of physics in his native town
of Liége.
Robertson tells in his memoirs how he came upon the works of Kircher,
Schott and many others, who, he believed, practiced magic. He read
up on optics and, about 1784, exhibited in Holland, where he was at
the time, an improved magic lantern. He was greatly influenced by
the results of Musschenbroek and the success of the Shadow Plays at
Versailles. Robertson’s characters were ghosts. He commented, “the
encouragements that I received made me try to improve my methods.” More
and more persons were attracted to Robertson’s shows in Holland and
finally even the burgomaster attended.
At Paris Robertson improved his knowledge of the magic lantern. There
he met Jacques Alexandre César Charles, who was using a lantern for
scientific purposes at his laboratory in the Louvre. Robertson sought a
brighter light source for the lantern and persisted in his quest even
though Charles was said to have tried to discourage him by pointing out
that much money had been spent in vain on that project.
At the time of the Revolution, Robertson laid before the Government
a plan which would authorize him to build a huge burning mirror, as
Archimedes did, so that he could destroy any attacking English fleet
before it could reach the “invasion coast.” No action was taken on
the proposal. In our own day the English were ready to burn any Nazi
invasion fleet which sailed from France--not by burning glasses but by
equally amazing devices.
After the Revolution, during the stormy days of the first French
Republic, Robertson held “seances” at the Pavillion de l’Echiquier. A
projector mounted on wheels was used. A patent on the device under the
name of Fantascope or Phantoscope was obtained on March 29, 1799.
Robertson’s characters or ghosts which would appear to grow and
disappear on the screen of smoke were usually such heroes as Voltaire,
Rousseau, Marat, and Lavoisier. At the end of each performance, a
skeleton would appear and Robertson would remark that this was the fate
awaiting each one in the audience. Grim entertainment!
A clever artist, Robertson had a large collection of slides and would
call upon his audience--which never quite knew whether to believe that
he was in league with the devil and brought the ghosts into appearance
or not--to ask for whichever ghost they wished. You can imagine the
effect when some Frenchman called for Marat and then, small at first
and gradually growing large until life-size and more, a shadowy,
recognizable image of Marat would appear.
This “request” part of the program caused Robertson trouble. One night,
a member of the audience who had had a few extra sips of wine, or who
was terrified beyond the others, called for the return of the ghost
of Louis XVI. This was too much. The authorities shut the theatre and
refused to grant Robertson permission to continue his “seances.” They
did not want even the ghost of Louis returned. Political censorship of
screen entertainment had made its first appearance.
Robertson went to Bordeaux to make sure that he, himself, did not
prematurely join Louis and his other ghosts.
Later he was able to return to Paris and open another theatre near the
Place Vendôme. This was a particularly startling auditorium. He used an
abandoned chapel of a Capuchin monastery. Robertson’s light and shadow
ghosts came to life among the mortal remains of ancient monks. (The
reader may be aware of the ancient Capuchin custom of using bones of
deceased members of the order as part of the ornament of their chapels
as a constant reminder of death.)
Even though Robertson had admitted that from childhood he had the
keenest interest in things marvelous, he tired of his magic. Next we
hear of him, he is a pioneer balloonist, credited with the invention of
one of the early parachutes! On July 18, 1803, he made a notable ascent
in a balloon.
In 1845 there was opened in Paris a theatre which was to play a
part in the light and shadow story. It was called for its proprietor
and chief performer, Théâtre Robert Houdin. Houdin, after whom Harry
Houdini of the 20th century named himself, practiced every kind of
trick and wondrous illusion. He used Phantasmagorial effects and the
French public flocked to the shows. Towards the end of the century
Emile Reynaud took over the Théâtre Robert Houdin and showed the best
magic shadow plays prior to the introduction of the motion picture
itself.
During the middle of the century, the Polytechnic Institution, at
London, attracted large crowds with magic lantern shows. Ghosts were
created à la Robertson and the Phantasmagorial methods. Regular
entertainment was also provided with such magic lantern stories as
_Puss in Boots_ and versions of Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_ and _The
Tale of the Tub_. As many as a half-dozen magic lanterns would be used
to create impressive scenes, such as battles.
In our own day attempts have been made to use Phantasmagorial effects
to frighten and deceive. An interesting example is contained in the
following Associated Press dispatch telling how the Nazis attempted to
make the English soldiers believe that Heaven was entreating them to
abandon the war:
Paris, Feb. 15 (1940) (AP)--Press accounts from the front sector
occupied by the British reported today that Tommies manning an
outpost during the night suddenly saw an image of the Virgin Mary
appear in the clouds, with her arms outstretched in entreaty.
The commander sent out a patrol, which returned with the
information that the Germans were projecting the image from a
machine on the ground.
Phantasmagoria is not dead yet. Television may even increase the
possibilities of this type of magic shadow diversion.
_X_
DR. PARIS’ TOY
_An English physician, Dr. Paris, invents
the Thaumatrope, a simple device which
creates the illusion of motion by having
one part of a picture on one side of
a disk and the other on the reverse
side--Scientific instrument and child’s
plaything._
During the period which followed the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo,
there appeared, first in London and later in Paris and elsewhere, a
small cardboard toy which was at once the plaything of children and a
scientific curiosity which illustrated in a startling way the illusion
of the persistence of vision. This toy was the Thaumatrope.
The name Thaumatrope means “wonder-turner” (a word reminiscent
of one of Kircher’s titles for the magic shadow projection
art--_thaumaturga_). The Thaumatrope is a small disk with one image on
the face and another on the back. Two short threads or bits of string
are attached to the disk. The Thaumatrope’s effects are observed by
twirling the disk. The eye, as in the case of motion pictures, does not
distinguish the separate pictures on each side of the disk but only the
one, combined impression.
A variation of the Thaumatrope, however, came even closer to the motion
picture idea--the two ends of cord were not set opposite each other,
which resulted in an irregular motion and an additional illusion.
John Ayrton Paris (1785–1856), an English doctor, has the best claim to
the invention of the Thaumatrope. At any rate, he was responsible for
the popularity of this scientific toy. Paris was a skilled physician
who was specially known for his talent in judging the health of his
patients by their general appearance. He took interest in affairs well
outside his medical profession and was respected as a conversationalist
whose talk enlivened many a drawing room evening in London. A keen mind
and a great memory, even for the smallest detail, were qualities that
helped to make Paris a charming companion.
For recreation Paris wrote a “novel” called, _Philosophy in Sport
Made Science in Earnest; being an attempt to illustrate the first
principles of natural philosophy by aid of Popular Toys and Sports_.
The work was published in three small volumes, in keeping with the
19th century custom that every novel must be issued in three volumes.
Paris used a thread of story as a frame-work on which to build the
various scientific illustrations. The book _Philosophy in Sport_, shows
the influence of the novelist-humorist Thomas Love Peacock. It was
dedicated to the novelist, Maria Edgeworth.
Paris’ work was published anonymously in 1827 and was a “best seller”
all through the rest of his life. On his death-bed in 1856 he was busy
revising the proofs of the 8th edition.
The first part of the third volume dealt with the Thaumatrope which
Paris informed his readers could be obtained “at Mr. William Phillip’s,
George Yard, Lombard Street, the publisher.” Paris continued, “We
mention this circumstance to guard the reader against those inferior
imitations which are vended in the shops of London.” George Cruikshank,
1792–1878, the skilled illustrator, who worked on books of Scott and
Dickens, made some of the designs for Paris’ Thaumatrope.
Paris introduced the Thaumatrope amid a great number of puns which
perhaps were very funny in his day.
No sooner had Mr. Seymour put the card in motion than the vicar,
in a tone of the greatest surprise, exclaimed, “Magic! Magic! I
declare the rat is in the cage!!”
“And what is the motto?” asked Louisa.
“Why is this rat like an opposition member in the House of
Commons, who joins the ministry?” replied Mr. Seymour.
“Ha, ha, ha--excellent,” cried the major, as he read the
following answer: “because by _turning round_ he gains a snug
berth, but ceases to be free.”
“Show us another card,” said Tom, eagerly.
“Here then is a watch-box; when I turn it round, you will see the
watchman comfortably sleeping at his post.”
“Very good! It is very surprising,” observed the vicar.
“Yes,” observed the major; “and to carry on your political joke,
it may be said that, like most worthies who gain a post, by
turning round, he sleeps over his duty.”
One epigram, accompanying a Thaumatrope card, had a reference to the
recent activities of Napoleon:
Head, legs and arms, alone appear;
Observe that nobody is here:
Napoleon-like I undertake
Of nobody a king to make.
Paris, as inventor of the Thaumatrope, could not avoid the temptation
to have a little speech from the anonymous inventor, himself: “The
inventor confidently anticipates the favour and patronage of an
enlightened and liberal public, on the well-grounded assurance that
‘one good turn deserves another’; and he trusts that his discovery may
afford the happy means of giving activity to wit that has been long
stationary; of revolutionizing the present system of standing jokes,
and of putting into rapid circulation the most appreciated _bon mots_.”
The Thaumatrope was advertised in the following way:
The Thaumatrope
being
Rounds of Amusement
or
How to Please and Surprise
by turns.
Through the characters of his “novel,” Paris then commented on the
illusion of the persistence of vision which makes the Thaumatrope (and
the motion picture) a reality. He discussed the whirling flame which
appeared to make a circle; Homer’s reference to “long shadowed” spear;
and the tail of a rocket.
Paris also described an improved model of the Thaumatrope. In this
card device a center disk is allowed to change from one position to
another as the whole revolves. In one illustration a jockey was on
one side and a horse on the other. By tightening the strings as the
card revolved the jockey appeared to be falling over the neck of the
horse. In another an Indian juggler was represented as using two, then
three and finally four balls. Other illusions indicated were a sailor
rowing a boat, “a dandy making a bow.” Through the words of the vicar,
Paris then warned, “I hope that, amidst all your improvements (in the
Thaumatrope), you will still keep in view your first and most laudable
design, that of rendering it subservient to classical illustration.”
It is certain that Paris developed the Thaumatrope, first, for
scientific illustration of the persistence of vision, perhaps to better
explain the phenomenon to one of his patients or students. But being a
clever man, he immediately realized its commercial value and arranged
to have sets of the cards made up and sold in London. Doubtless the
chapter in his book on the Thaumatrope did much to increase the sale of
the toys.
David Brewster (1781–1868), Scottish scientist whose work on
the polarization of light led him to invent, around 1815, the
Kaleidoscope--an optical instrument which creates and exhibits by
reflection a variety of beautiful symmetrical designs in varied
colors--was the first to comment in print on the Thaumatrope of Paris,
the year before the latter’s book appeared. In the fourth volume of
his _Edinburgh Journal_ Brewster wrote, under the description of the
Thaumatrope, “a very ingenious philosophical toy, invented, we believe,
by Dr. Paris.” Brewster remarked that the circular disks should be
2½ inches in diameter and that the cord should be of silk. Brewster
described the following Thaumatrope cards: Rose-tree and garden-pot,
horse and man, a branch with and without leaves, woman in one dress
and then another, body of a Turk and his head, watchman’s box and the
watchman, Harlequin and Columbine, comic head and wig, a man asleep
and awake, and the use of the cards for cipher writing. According to
Brewster, “the principle of the thaumatrope may be extended to many
other devices.” He also commented on the imperfections of the toy
arising from the hobbling effect of irregular rotation. He suggested
that a “solid axis of rotation is decidedly preferable and will produce
much more pleasing combinations.”
Brewster himself was deeply interested in light and vision phenomena.
Despite its original scientific purposes, his Kaleidoscope also was a
popular toy. Brewster patented the toy in 1816 but it was pirated.
Some 200,000 were sold in three months. In his _Treatise on the
Kaleidoscope_, 1819, Brewster told it was discovered while he was
testing the successive reflections of gold and silver plates. He also
noted the application of the Kaleidoscope to Kircher’s magic lantern in
order to bring the effects before a large audience at one time.
The invention of the Thaumatrope has been attributed to others besides
Paris, despite the weighty authority of Brewster and Paris’ own book.
Charles Babbage (1792–1871), English scientist and mathematician noted
for his calculating machine and his campaign against noise (which
he said robbed us of one-quarter of our working life), attributed
the discovery of the Thaumatrope to his friend and classmate,
John Herschel, the astronomer, (1792–1871). Babbage wrote in his
autobiography that one evening Herschel spun a shilling before a mirror
so that both sides of it could be visible--the Thaumatrope effect.
Dr. William Fitton, Captain Kaster and Dr. William Hyde Wollaston
(1766–1828) were told about the method and various Thaumatropes were
made, according to Babbage, about 1818 or 1819. “After a lapse of some
time the device was forgotten. Then in 1826,” Babbage wrote “during a
dinner at the Royal Society Club, Sir Joseph Banks being in the chair,
I heard Mr. Barrow, then Secretary to the Admiralty, talking very
loudly about a wonderful invention of Dr. Paris, the object of which I
could not quite understand.” Babbage then claimed it was his invention.
At any rate, Paris and not Herschel, Fitton, Wollaston or Babbage, was
the one to popularize the Thaumatrope.
In passing, it may be noted that at the time Paris was making the
Thaumatrope well known Babbage was thinking about submarine craft:
“Such a vessel” (a four-man submarine equipped for a 48-hour stay under
water) “could be propelled by a screw and might enter, without being
suspected, any harbour, and place any amount of explosive matter under
the bottoms of ships.”
_XI_
PLATEAU CREATES MOTION PICTURES
_Plateau, blind half of his life,
develops devices to show motion from
hand-drawn images, opening the road to
the modern motion picture--Stampfer
independently invents similar
apparatus--Persistence of vision studied._
Plateau, a Belgian scientist who became blind in work that resulted
in making it possible for millions all over the world to see motion
pictures, deserves more than anyone else the title, “Father of the
Motion Picture.” Just as Athanasius Kircher originated projection as we
know it with the magic lantern, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau has
the best claim of all to credit for making the motion picture illusion
a reality.
Never interested in profits for himself, Plateau did not trouble to
patent his magic disk picture machines but took pains to issue correct
instructions when commercial imitators made devices lacking in some
essential.
Plateau was born on Oct. 14, 1801, at Brussels, Belgium, the son of
a landscape and flower painter. His mother was the former Catherine
Thirion. From earliest boyhood, Plateau was trained to be an artist and
the nature of his studies and work in later life indicated that he must
have shown great promise, for he had the temperamental qualities of a
great artist. After his elementary studies, his father lost no time in
directing his son’s attention towards the arts by sending him to the
Academy of Design at Brussels.
At the age of 14 Plateau was left an orphan, and was made a ward of
his maternal uncle. In delicate health young Plateau was sent into
the country to recuperate from the shock of losing both his parents
in two years. The location selected was near Waterloo and Plateau had
to take shelter in the woods for ten days and nights while the battle
raged. Soon the plans Plateau’s father had made for him to study art
were altered. The uncle was a lawyer and wished his ward to succeed
him in that profession. Plateau himself evidently was strong-willed
and persevering even at an early age, for during the next few years he
studied both arts and sciences. This would make it possible for him to
follow his father’s, his uncle’s, or his own wish. He wanted to strike
out into a new field, and this he did.
Higher studies were carried on at the Royal College and in 1822, at
the age of 21, Plateau entered the University of Liége as a candidate
for a degree both in philosophy and letters, and in science. As
the years progressed Plateau turned more and more of his attention
toward science, especially problems concerning color, vision and the
perception of motion. But all through life he retained the fullness of
viewpoint of a man with a background and interests in many fields so
his imagination never was dulled, as sometimes happens in the cases of
specialists in a restricted field of science. The art of his father
never left him.
While studying for the doctorate Plateau carried on his first important
work in vision and motion which resulted in the scientific approach to
the first motion picture machine. He investigated the visual effects of
whirling a disk which was colored half in yellow, half in blue.
In 1827 part of Plateau’s research was published in Quetelet’s
_Correspondance Mathématique et Physique_. Quetelet (1796–1874) was a
pioneer in statistics and Plateau’s professor at the Royal College,
and also taught at the Museum of Science and Letters in Belgium. The
next year, 1828, Plateau sent another communication to M. Quetelet
on the appearances produced by two lines turning around a point with
uniform motion. In that letter Plateau referred to the work of Roget on
persistence of vision published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of
the Royal Society, London, 1824.
Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), English doctor best known for his
_Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases_, combined his medical work
with interest in the sciences. On December 9, 1824, he read, at the
Royal Society, a paper called, “Explanation of an optical deception
in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical
apertures.” Roget pointed out that the phenomenon had been noted but
not explained by an anonymous contributor who signed himself “J. M.” in
the _Quarterly Journal_ of December 1, 1820. “J. M.” commented on the
curvature of spokes when a wheel is in motion and is viewed through a
series of vertical bars. Everyone has noted the strange rotations of
motor car wheels when viewed under certain conditions, as in the modern
motion picture. “J. M.” pointed out that at times the wheel appeared to
rotate backwards; at other times, forward and still again seem to stand
still. A nod of praise should be bestowed towards “J. M.” (these are
not the initials of any of the better known English scientists of the
period). Ten years later the great Faraday confessed he did not know
the identity of this man who had stimulated those investigations which
we now know led directly to the first actual motion pictures formed
from hand-drawn designs.
Roget, in 1824, noted that a certain velocity and a certain amount of
light were necessary before the “wheel phenomenon” was visible--both
speed of motion and bright light source are necessary for the motion
picture illusion. Roget said, “It is evident from the facts above
stated that the deception in the appearance of the spokes must arise
from the circumstances of separate parts only of each spoke being seen
at the same moment; the remaining parts being concealed from view by
the bars” (equivalent to the shutters in the motion picture machine).
Roget continued, “so that it is evident that the several portions of
one and the same line, seen through the intervals of the bars, form
on the retina the images of so many different radii.” Roget remarked
that the illusion was the same as when a bright object is whirled in
a circle--“an impression made by a pencil of rays on the retina, if
sufficiently vivid, will remain for a certain time after the cause has
ceased.”
A few weeks later, on December 24, 1824, Roget lectured on the
persistence of vision with regard to moving objects, a phenomenon first
recognized by the ancient scientists.
Plateau wrote in 1828 as follows:
I have made an instrument by means of which I could produce
these fixed images with ease and I also could make visible the
formation of changes in the curvature ... when working at my
first experiments relative to sensations, I observed that while
turning rapidly a wheel whose teeth were perpendicular to its
axis, and placing the eye at some distance from the plane of the
axis, one perceived the image of a series of perfectly immobile
teeth; that also with two wheels revolving, the one behind the
other, with considerable speed and in opposite directions,
produced in the eye the sensation of a fixed wheel. I have
remarked further that, while the two wheels are not concentric,
the fixed image appears to be made up of curved lines.
Today stroboscopic machines, based on the principles of Plateau’s
devices, are used to study moving objects. In this way modern
scientists learn more about the nature of movement and its stresses on
wheels and other objects.
Plateau received the degree of doctor of physical and mathematical
sciences from the University of Liége on June 3, 1829, when he was
28. His thesis was on “Certain Properties of the Impressions Produced
by Light upon the Organ of Sight.” It is strange that such a learned
paper would have so much influence on what was to be the modern motion
picture.
The chief points--all of importance in building motion pictures--of the
Plateau thesis dated April 24, 1829, were: First, the sensation (result
of the picture presented to the eye) must stay for a time to form
completely--this hinted definitely at the necessity of intermittent
movement for a really successful and practical motion picture machine.
Second, the sensations do not disappear immediately but gradually
dim--this makes motion pictures possible. If each image disappeared
all at once, only individual still pictures would be recognized. The
gradually dimming makes possible fusion of one image with the next
which results in appearance of motion. The third point covered was the
relative effect on the eye of various colors. Plateau concluded that
the intensity of the chief colors decreased from white, yellow, red,
blue--in that order. He also announced results of perception of various
colors at different angles, studies made in the shade and in the light.
It was further pointed out that two colors--as two images--changed
rapidly result in only one sensation or image.
After receiving his doctor’s degree from the University, Plateau taught
at the Royal College of Liége while he continued his research on vision
and related matters.
[Illustration:
Annuaire, L’Académie de Belgique, 1885
_JOSEPH PLATEAU sacrificed his own eyesight in an effort to enable
others to see pictures in motion._]
[Illustration:
Correspondance Mathématique, 1829–1833
_PLATEAU’S first real motion picture device, shown above, see page 89.
Below, the Phénakisticope with which a single person could see pictures
in motion._]
The first machine creating the illusion of motion from a series of
drawings was described by Plateau in a letter to Quetelet dated Liége,
December 5, 1829, with the scientific title, “Different Optical
Experiments.” (_Relative à différentes expériences d’optique._) A
similar instrument was already referred to by Plateau in his paper
written in the preceding year. Although the device made by Plateau in
1828 and described in the 1829 article followed by several years the
introduction of the Thaumatrope, it rates as the first motion picture
machine because the Thaumatrope was really only a scientific toy, just
as Paris called it.
Plateau illustrated his letter describing his instrument in writing
to Quetelet in answer to an inquiry. The drawing (opposite page) of
Plateau shows that, though a scientist, he never forgot his early
training and was something of an artist. The principles of his machine
could be illustrated by drawings of lines and other geometrical
figures, but Plateau chose a woman’s head.
In the following words Plateau described his instrument:
Two small copper pulleys, (a) and (b), drive by means of an
endless cord a large wooden wheel, (c), which has a double
groove; the diameters of the small pulleys are such that the two
cords are equally taut and the system is placed in movement by
means of the handle, (d), the speed of one pulley being an exact
multiple of the other; the axes terminate in the form of a vise
and are divised in such a way that you can attach to them by
little screws the drawings or cartoons with which you wish to
experiment. The pulleys are held by iron supports, (f) and (g),
which slide in two grooves practically parallel with the stand or
base (hk), and are held in position by means of thumb screws.
Lines or drawings to be studied are mounted on the two pulleys. The
machine is of such a nature, Plateau pointed out, that drawings can be
easily changed, the relative speeds of the two wheels (one serving as
a shutter when drawings are used) can be regulated, alignment can be
readjusted and by crossing the cords the disks can be made to rotate in
opposite directions.
Plateau continued by explaining that when the speed on one disk is
not an exact multiple of the other they do not keep the same relative
positions after rotation.
A different image is produced at each revolution and the eye,
instead of seeing one fixed line (or image), sees only a rapid
succession of different lines (or images); however if the swifter
is little more than a multiple of the other, the difference is
very little in a manner which the eye cannot distinguish one from
another. In this case the spectacle will appear to change little
by little....
There is the germ of the motion picture--a real instrument which makes
pictures move.
The diagram illustrates a model in which “a perfectly regular image is
produced from a deformed figure” turning in a speed proportional to the
distortion behind the shutter disk.
Plateau pointed out that the deformed figure can be painted black and
turn before a white surface, or be white and turn behind a slot pierced
in a black disk. He said, “This last method is preferable to the other
because it gives an image of greater lifelikeness....” This of course
is the quality sought in all dramatic representations--realistic living
pictures.
“For this effect,” he explained, “you design the deformed figure on
white transparent paper and paint the surrounding space with a very
opaque black, then make the experiment carefully, and place a strong
light behind the paper.”
In the example shown in the drawing the two disks, mounted one behind
the other, are rotated in an opposite direction, the motion of the
deformed figure is double that of the shutter and the effect produced
is that of the regular image shown in Figure 3.
Plateau then remarked, “The construction of these images is very
simple.” He gave the method and an example. “While the shutter
will be making a third part of a revolution all the points of the
circle carrying the deformed figure will be present behind it and in
consequence it will produce one regular complete image. Then during
the second and third part of the revolution of the shutter it will
be able to form itself into second and third images resembling the
first.” These were the words Plateau used to explain the nature of the
operations of the first movie machine.
He concluded: “As you are master of the production of the figures you
can make them as bizarre and as irregular as you wish.” Producers of
the modern motion picture have indeed made pictures that are both
“bizarre” and “irregular.” Plateau would have liked modern motion
pictures because he was fond of the theatre, especially liking comedies.
While Plateau was making the experiments in 1829 which led to
scientific presentations of visual and optical phenomena as well as
construction of the first motion picture machine to illustrate those
principles as well as to entertain, a tragic event happened. Plateau in
his investigations of seeing light and motion gave special attention to
the chief source of all light on earth, the sun.
One day, to see for himself the effects of a great stimulus, the
greatest possible in nature on his eye, he stared at the sun for 25
seconds without glasses or other protection. The intensity was great
and the effect equal. He was blind for the rest of that day. In a few
days his sight came back but it was permanently injured. It gradually
waned and was gone in 1843. A choroid inflammation persisted and
blotted out the vision of one of the greatest investigators of vision
in all history.
During the period while his sight was gradually going, Plateau
continued work on vision and made great contributions to the then
unknown motion picture. From 1843 he had to discontinue teaching on
account of total blindness but this did not stop his experiments.
In 1830 Plateau published a further explanation of his wheel device in
Quetelet’s Journal.
In 1831 and 1832 Plateau and Michael Faraday (1791–1867), English
scientist, had a written argument over certain phases of priority in
observing the “wheel phenomenon” which led to the motion picture. On
December 10th, 1830, Faraday, the son of a blacksmith, who attracted
the attention of Sir Humphry Davy, addressed the Royal Institution
of Great Britain “On the Peculiar Class of Optical Deceptions.” The
paper was published in February, 1831, in the Institution’s _Journal_.
Faraday, called by Tyndall, “the greatest experimental philosopher
the world has ever seen,” was attracted to the wheel phenomenon which
he noted “J. M.” had discussed in 1820 and Roget in 1824. At the lead
mills of Messrs. Maltsby Faraday saw cog wheels rapidly revolving one
in one direction, the other in another. The optical effect was curious.
He designed in his laboratory a disk machine in order to create
the same illusion, noting that the effects produced were sometimes
beautiful. Faraday said that the device of the revolving wheels could
be spun before a mirror and interesting results observed. He did not
propose the use of images or pictures. Mr. Wheatstone, Faraday said,
was engaged in the general exploration of the subject and hoped soon
that the results would be made public.
Plateau later in the year wrote in the _Annales de Chimie et de
Physique_, a scientific publication printed in Paris and edited by
Guy-Lussac and Arago, that scientists both in France and England were
studying the effects of two revolving wheels, one placed behind the
other and each revolving at different speeds.
Plateau claimed priority in these words: “Several years ago I observed
those phenomena and from that conducted experiments whose results
were published. My experiments attracted little attention outside the
country and Mr. Faraday without doubt had no knowledge of my work....
It is because such a man as Mr. Faraday has decided that the phenomenon
in question was not unworthy of his attention that I attach some merit
to the honor of having observed it before him.”
In the 1832 edition of the _Correspondance Mathématique et Physique_
of Quetelet, Plateau remarked (in a note dated January 20, 1833) that
following the letter published in the _Annales_ of November, 1831,
“He (Faraday) wrote me and recognized in a manner most flattering for
me the priority of my observations.” Plateau finally concluded that
Faraday had had some knowledge after all of his earlier work when the
Englishman wrote his paper at the end of 1830.
Plateau acknowledged that Faraday’s paper had some interesting
observations which he explained and enlarged upon. Following the
principle outlined in his work of 1828, Plateau then constructed the
first Fantascope or Phénakisticope, the first machine which created
illusions of motion from a series of pictures. Madou, a brother-in-law
of Quetelet, was credited with copying Plateau’s drawing with extreme
care.
Plateau conceived the idea of having successively different pictures
which would give the illusion of motion for use on the revolving disk.
With each figure showing some changes of position from the preceding,
the illusion is that the figures move and not the disk; and so it is
with modern motion pictures. We have no consciousness of the movement
of film through the machine before our eyes--only of movement of the
figures on the film as projected on the screen. (Illustration facing
page 89.)
Plateau also pointed out that a strong light was necessary for the
motion pictures--as today--and that the “projector” must be a certain
distance from the mirror (now a screen) on which the images are seen.
“I shall not describe the variety of curious illusion which can be
produced by this new method,” Plateau concluded. “I leave to the
imagination of persons who would try these experiences the care to find
out the most interesting.”
Motion picture producers down to this day, using their imagination,
have followed the challenge of Plateau, and still the field is
inexhaustible.
In the _Annales de Chimie et de Physique_ for 1833 Plateau gave a
further explanation of his device, named by others the Phénakisticope.
Others had also commercialized it. McLeans’ Optical Illusions, No. 26
Haymarket Street, London, and other firms were selling models based
on Plateau’s invention. “I wish to take this opportunity to state,
that while the Phénakisticope has been made from an idea which I have
published on this new method of creating illusions, I have no part
whatsoever in the execution of this instrument which leaves much to be
desired according to reports. The theory and experiments have shown
that to obtain results as perfect as possible it is necessary to take
certain precautions which have been omitted in the Phénakisticope.”
Plateau went on to explain that he had made some models in which the
necessary steps had been taken and “these models now constitute a
new instrument which has been published in London under the name of
Fantascope.”
The improved instrument was described with the original dancer and
marching men as illustrations. He also pointed out that the disks must
revolve at a certain speed--if too slow, the illusion of motion is not
present, and if too rapid the figures become blurred.
At about the same time Plateau invented his Phénakisticope or
Fantascope independently, the same device was invented by Simon Ritter
von Stampfer, an Austrian geometrician and geologist. Stampfer was
born October 28, 1792, in the Tyrol. As a young boy he stared at
the sun for a long period but recovered his normal sight after the
image of the sun persisted for 24 days. When a professor of practical
geometry at the Polytechnical Institute at Vienna, Stampfer published
his account of the Stroboscope, as he called it, in 1834. Stampfer in
his article mentioned Dr. Paris’ Thaumatrope, Dr. Roget’s paper on
the persistence of vision in regard to wheel spokes and the paper of
Faraday--all mentioned above. Stampfer’s treatment of the disks to
create the illusion of motion was a mathematical one. He explained
many complicated mathematical formulae and unlike the Plateau papers
his were not accompanied by a drawing. Stampfer, though not having
Plateau’s artistic talent, was a more practical man. On May 7, 1833, he
took out an Imperial patent on his invention. Stampfer died on November
10, 1864, in Vienna.
Plateau himself is the best authority for the respective claims of
himself and Stampfer, though as always he may have been much more
modest and generous than the facts warranted for basically his disk had
much greater influence than Stampfer’s and his research was started
first.
While describing an improved form of his original Anorthoscope, or
machine used to create distorted images developed first in 1828 and
1829, Plateau wrote on the invention of the Phénakisticope, Fantascope
or Stroboscope, in 1836 in the _Bulletin_ of the Royal Academy of
Belgium:
I would like to take this occasion to say here a few words on the
question of my priority to the invention of another instrument,
the Fantascope or Phénakisticope, priority which is shared
equally with Mr. Stampfer, professor at Vienna, who has published
a similar instrument under the name of Stroboscopic Disks.
In the notice which accompanies the second edition of these
Stroboscopic Disks printed in July of 1833, Mr. Stampfer stated
that he had commenced in December of the preceding year to repeat
the experiments of Mr. Faraday on certain illusions of optics
and that these experiments had resulted in the invention of the
instrument which he had published. Also the editors affirmed in a
foreword that in the month of February of the following year Mr.
Stampfer had assembled a collection of these disks and had shown
them successively to his friends, including prominent persons.
They brought it about that on May 7 of that year he was given an
exclusive Imperial patent to the rights to his invention.
So much for what concerns Mr. Stampfer. One sees that the
patent above mentioned was not obtained until May 7, 1833.
The professor has not been able to place his first publication
prior to that time. But, on the other hand, the letter which
gives first description of my Fantascope is dated January 20,
1832. Thus my first publication is over a year before that of
Mr. Stampfer. As for the time when I first got the idea for this
instrument, the idea to which I was also led by the paper of
Mr. Faraday, it is difficult for me to be precise; however, the
drawing which accompanies that letter proved that I had already
at that time finished the first disk and when I recall my labor,
the difficulties which I encountered in the first construction
and the extreme care which I had given to it, I believe that I
can place the invention at about the same time, that is to say,
as Mr. Stampfer, in the month of December, 1832.
Roget also may be considered a pioneer in this field. In 1834 he
wrote that Faraday’s writing had called again to his attention wheel
devices and that in the Spring of 1831 he had constructed several
“which I showed to many of my friends,” he wrote, “but in consequence
of occupations and cares of a more serious kind I did not publish
any account of this invention which was last year reproduced on the
continent.”
From 1835 until 1843 Plateau continued his work and teaching at the
University of Liége in his capacity of professor of experimental
physics, taking time off to be married in 1840 to Fanny Clavareau. But
all the while the man who had helped to bring visual education and
entertainment to millions who were to come after him was gradually
going blind. He was a popular teacher, despite his handicap.
From 1844, when his vision was entirely gone, Plateau worked
continually at home, having set up there a laboratory in which friends
and relatives acted as his assistants. Plateau himself gave all the
instructions to his aids; they reported to him every detail of the
results of the experiments and he then dictated the notes covering
the work, relying on a remarkable memory. Later the notes would be
revised for publication. Plateau supplied the imagination and piercing
intelligence; his helpers supplied the eyes and were the reporters.
Plateau was the editor. Scientific critics have held that he not only
overcame his handicap but actually did better work.
In 1849 Plateau published in the _Bulletin_ of the Royal Academy of
Belgium further studies on revolving disks and the use of a shutter.
This time he also treated the effects when colored, and vari-colored
disks are used. The system was similar to the Anorthoscope. Sixteen
images were mounted on the margin of a glass disk. Another disk with
four slots was revolved four times as swiftly. A number of spectators
could see the effect at the same time. The chief illusion was a devil
blowing up a fire. Edison’s peep-show film machine of 1891 also had a
revolving disk with four slots.
The last time Plateau wrote for publication directly on the motion
picture machine was in 1852, 20 years after his invention. Once more he
had to lash back at critics, this time at those who said he stole not
from another of his own time but from the ancient Romans.
In the May 30, 1852 issue of _Cosmos_, a French weekly review of
science, edited by Abbé Moigno, comments were made about an article
written by one Dr. Sinsteden in the German science review, _Annalen der
Physik und Chemie_, which asserted that Lucretius in the fourth book of
_De Rerum Natura_ described the Fantascope or Phénakisticope invented
by Plateau “with such exactitude that, if it were not for the long
series of theoretical considerations and practical experiments that led
the Belgian scientist to arrive at the construction of the apparatus
one would suppose that he took the idea from the Roman philosopher.”
To back up the position, the text from Lucretius was quoted in Latin
and French and Abbé Moigno made another comment, “What is the effect of
that but the Phénakisticope--could Lucretius have described it in terms
more precise or more clear?”
Plateau replied in the issue of July 25 of the same year and answered
for all time the assertion that Lucretius had invented the first motion
picture machine many hundreds of years before.
Moigno realized his mistake and prefaced Plateau’s words with an
apology, “We are always ready to retract the errors which we print.
Our learned friend, Plateau, has written us today about a translation
written from a preconceived idea. He has a hundred reasons for
complaint.”
Plateau’s few lines were devastating. He pointed out that the passage
of Lucretius used by Dr. Sinsteden and picked up by Abbé Moigno had
suppressed one line of the text and had mistranslated others. It was
proved that Lucretius was describing not an optical instrument but
dreams.
Plateau concluded, “These few words suffice, I hope, to show the true
relationship which exists between the passage of Lucretius and the
Phénakisticope, and to remove from me all suspicion of having stolen
the idea of my instrument from antiquity.”
A re-examination of the Latin text of Lucretius leaves no doubt
whatsoever that Plateau was correct and Lucretius was writing about
dreams and not the first movie device. The lines of Lucretius talk
about images, the imagination and dreams. Dr. Sinsteden and others
in the 19th century who believed that Lucretius was describing an
instrument were confused by failing to understand his words and
confusing his theory of vision with an actual piece of apparatus and
its effects. It was a simple mistake and accounts for Lucretius’
recorded connection with the origin of the motion picture which has
been repeated in many books.
A few years before his death Plateau published a complete, annotated
bibliography of works on vision from the earliest time to his own day.
He started with Aristotle and followed the entire historical trail.
About 100 years before his own experiments, the first efforts to
measure the persistence of vision were made. All the many years he was
blind he was most interested in light, color, vision, the illusion of
motion and related phenomena. Plateau regularly attended scientific
meetings and his fame was well known throughout the scientific world.
He was well known for his religious devotion and piety.
Plateau, honored by his scientific colleagues and the Belgian
Government, died at Ghent on September 15, 1883, a few years before the
motion picture was presented to the public and acclaimed throughout
the world. The art science of magic shadows had made great progress
under this Belgian who was endowed with rare talent and an indomitable
spirit.
_XII_
THE BARON’S PROJECTOR
_First impact of war on magic
shadows--General Uchatius invents a
projector combining Kircher’s magic
lantern and the Plateau-Stampfer picture
disks--Motion pictures reach the screen._
The first man to combine Kircher’s magic lantern and the
Plateau-Stampfer disk and thereby achieve moving images on a screen
visible to an audience was Baron General Franz von Uchatius. A type of
bronze was named for this Austrian ballistic expert but, though his
machine was the pattern for motion picture projectors until the advent
of film at the end of the century, his name was not linked with the
device. With Uchatius also came the first impact of projected pictures
on the science of war. From these small beginnings, in less than a
century, the motion picture--in our day--became a great weapon of
psychological warfare.
Franz Uchatius, the second son of a former artillery officer and
instructor in the cadet school who resigned after 19 years’ service
to become street commissioner in a small Austrian town, was born on
October 20, 1811, at Theresienfeld, Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The
father had married a woman from Bavaria and lived comfortably, for in
addition to his town job he managed an estate and derived income from
an agricultural sowing machine which he had invented.
After elementary and high school education near his home, Franz was
apprenticed to a Viennese merchant. His father had to pay an annual
fee of some 300 gulden (about $120) for the privilege. Franz, a small,
sensitive boy, was very unhappy as an apprentice, having no interest
in merchandising. After much persuasion, for his father evidently had
found life happier outside the army, Franz received permission to
join his eldest brother, Joseph, in the artillery. There was another
difficulty. Franz was under the minimum height established for that
branch of the army. Special permission had to be received from Archduke
Ludwig, the youngest son of Emperor Francis and the general inspector
of artillery, before he could enter the artillery school.
But everything was arranged and on August 5, 1829, when Uchatius was
17, he was taken to the Rennweger armory in Vienna to start training as
an artillery sub-cadet. Uchatius was especially interested in physics,
mathematics and chemistry. Chemistry was not highly regarded then and
was usually reserved for non-commissioned officers. Uchatius overcame
this prejudice by becoming the laboratory assistant to the professor.
Military advancement came slowly to Uchatius. At 25 he was a gunner
but also was able to attend lectures at the Polytechnical School. The
next year, 1837, he again became assistant to the chemistry professor
at the artillery school, keeping this position until 1841. During that
period he served as special tutor to Turkish officers, then studying in
Vienna, and also worked in the gun foundry.
Finally in 1843, at the age of 32, he was commissioned a lieutenant. It
was at this period that he did his first inventing. A special fuse for
guns was his initial achievement. Somewhat later he invented the first
European hydrocarbon lamp. This was a special lantern designed for use
aboard ship. It was so constructed that it would not go out even when
completely overturned. A modification of this lamp was used by Uchatius
in one model of his pre-film motion picture projector.
The description of Uchatius’ “Apparatus for the presentation of motion
pictures upon a wall” was not published until 1853. The account
appeared in the _Sitzungsberichte_ of the Kaiserliche Akademie der
Wissenschaften of Vienna.
But, as Uchatius himself said, he was asked to develop the invention
as far back as 1845, at the request of Field Marshal Lieutenant von
Hauslab. That general very probably thought that if moving figures of
the Plateau-Stampfer magic disks could be projected on the wall there
would be available a potent instrument for military instruction. In our
own day the motion picture has come to be an important aid in military
training all over the world.
Uchatius wrote as follows:
The well known illusion caused by means of the Stampfer disk
arises from the fact that the eye receives on the same portion of
the retina pictures succeeding one another at short intervals,
which present some recurring motion in its various phases, and
through this arises an effect which equals that of one picture
observed in motion.
The method used by Uchatius to throw a connected series of images on a
wall “in any desired size” is indicated by the illustrations.
Uchatius noted that the Plateau-Stampfer disk had a certain
disadvantage not only because but one person could observe the effects
at a time but also because the pictures were not sharp and clear.
The first model developed by Uchatius was described as follows:
The pictures (a), (a) ... are painted on transparent glass and
mounted on a disk, (A), at equal intervals, and the lowest of
the pictures was illuminated from behind by the lamp (S) and the
illuminating lens (B). A second disk, (C), contained the slits
(b), (b) ... (the modern shutter) to be brought before each
picture. The slits correspond to those in the Stampfer disk. Both
disks are mounted on the same axis, (D), and are rotated by the
crank (E). The slit, (c), corresponds to the pupil opening of
the eye and the achromatic lens, (F), to the crystal lens of the
eye. The lens is adjustable to allow the picture to be focussed
sharply. The surface, (G) (the screen) finally corresponds to the
position of the retina of the eye.
When the disks are turned, the successive pictures appear on
the wall, (G), just as they are seen in the Stampfer disk, in
intervals so short that they are not noticed by the eye.
This machine was satisfactory but limited. Uchatius was a sharp critic
of his own work: “The apparatus produced very good motion pictures
whose size, however, could be enlarged to a maximum of only six inches
in diameter, because should the wall, (G), be moved far from the
projector the pictures became too dark on account of the light cut off
by the slits. And an enlargement of the slits brought about greater
indistinctness. However, a projected motion picture had been attained
which could be viewed simultaneously by a considerable number of
people. But it still remained desirable to project this picture in a
suitable size on a wall and thus show it in an auditorium or theatre.”
The first model had shown that the use of slits, even with the
brightest light, could not result in a successful picture, according to
Uchatius. (Illustration facing page 105.)
He then constructed the improved model.
The pictures (a), (a) ... are painted transparently and set
upright in a circle as close together as possible on the wooden
slide (A). In front of each picture is a projection lens (b), (b)
... which can be inclined towards the center of the apparatus
by means of a hinge and set screw. The inclination of all
the projection lenses is so adjusted that their optical axes
intersect at the distance at which the picture appears (in other
words on the screen). It follows there that all the pictures must
appear at one and the same point on the wall, (W).
The light source consists of a lime cylinder, (B) glowing in a
stream of oxyhydrogen gas and the condensing lens, (C), which
gives somewhat converging rays and illuminates only one picture
at a time. The light is turned in a circle by a simple mechanism
by means of a crank, (D), either rapidly or slowly as desired,
(the first slow motion projector as well). During the movement
the light source retains its upright position because of its own
weight, since it is suspended from its support, (c), so as to be
easily movable. The two rubber gas tubes rise and fall through
the opened bottom of the cabinet. The lead weight, (E), serves as
a counterweight to the light source.
Uchatius was pleased with this machine. “The result is now evident. The
successively illuminated pictures appear on the wall in the same way as
the so-called dissolving views but much more rapidly, thereby causing
the effect of a moving picture. The size of the picture is not limited
by the slits and the sharpness is not affected since no motion of the
object picture occurs.”
In this manner Uchatius solved the problem of projecting these pre-film
hand-painted motion pictures. In the very beginning of magic shadow
projection Athanasius Kircher had sought the same results but did not
have the apparatus or the knowledge of vision and movement necessary to
carry out his wish. The lantern model of Zahn equipped with a revolving
disk approximates the plan of Uchatius but failed, as did Kircher’s,
and for the same reason. So far as Plateau was concerned, the illusion
of moving images visible to one person at a time was sufficient.
Anyway, the blind man--missing his own sight--probably did not feel
impelled toward arranging simultaneous viewing for others. Doubtlessly
he thought that to see motion pictures--one person at a time--was a
sufficient marvel. Edison, more than half a century later, tended to
the same opinion.
Uchatius said that his model projector was equipped with space for
twelve pictures painted on glass slides, but he added: “There are no
insuperable obstacles in the way of constructing a similar apparatus
with 100 pictures, thereby a moving tableau with an action lasting
one-half minute could be presented. The apparatus would not need to be
more than six feet high.”
This shows that Uchatius also was looking ahead to the story motion
picture. Until the middle 1890s there were no real motion picture
scenes on any screen for more than the one-half minute indicated by
Uchatius. His machine was the basic model for four decades and had an
influence on the design of many early motion picture projectors and
cameras.
Uchatius pointed out that the projector would be useful in
demonstrating its own principle in physics and vision classes and could
show in a vivid way action of sound waves and “indeed all motions which
cannot be demonstrated by mechanism.”
The first motion picture projector dealer was W. Prokesch, an optician
and lens maker of 46 Lainbruge Street, Vienna, who, Uchatius said,
“prepares apparatuses of this sort with greatest precision and upon
request also furnishes pictures therefor.” Prokesch wrote many years
later that the records show that Uchatius began his correspondence with
the optical firm about the motion picture projector on February 16,
1851.
It is possible that Uchatius solved the problem of the projector soon
after the assignment was given to him by General von Hauslab in 1845.
But he was a very busy man from that year, when he became a member of
the Academy of Science, until the 1851–53 period when he had time to
complete the work, arrange for commercial construction of projectors
and write the report for the journal of the Polytechnical School,
Akademie der Wissenschaften, _Sitzungsberichte_.
In 1846 Uchatius was given orders to open up a section of the gun
foundry and astounded military circles by producing the then great
quantity of 10,000 six-pound cannon balls in three months. He taught
the Emperor’s brothers at the Polytechnical School in 1847. At the age
of 37, in 1848, when he had a family of three children and had been in
the artillery service for 19 years, he received a promotion to first
lieutenant. Advancement was slow because this extremely talented man
had no influence in political circles.
In 1848 Uchatius was assigned to Italy and assisted at the siege
of Venice. There he started the unenviable precedent of the aerial
bombardment of cities. In three weeks he had constructed more than 100
balloons fitted to carry explosive charges to be dropped on the heads
of the “besieged, rebellious Venetians.” Uchatius and his brother,
Joseph, studied the problem on the spot. The experiment was only
partially successful. The Venetians were probably as terrified by rumor
of bombs falling from the heavens as were the invaders under Marcellus
before Syracuse when Archimedes developed his Burning Glasses.
Uchatius’ relations with the Navy which was directing the siege were
not the best and he was glad to be able to return to Vienna. During the
next few years he continued to make little progress in the military
world but was doing excellent scientific work. He began to test guns
and had an opportunity to travel and inspect foreign ordnance and
manufacturing methods. In 1867, at the age of 56, he received his first
important recognition. He was decorated for his work and made colonel
commander of the artillery ordnance factory in 1871. Previously he had
helped to direct the construction of the arsenal at Vienna.
In 1874 he developed the first steel-bronze cannon out of “Uchatius”
bronze. Through the next few years he carried on a struggle for the
establishment of a native ordnance industry so that Austria would not
depend upon a foreign munitions supplier. Some in authority wanted the
heavy guns made at Krupp, in Prussia, but Uchatius finally won and
was promoted to the rank of major-general by the Emperor, given the
Commander’s Cross of the Order of St. Stephen, a lifetime personal
annual bonus of 2,000 gulden, together with baronship.
Uchatius’ weapons were used by Austria in the occupation at Bosnia and
Herzegovnia in 1878–79, when the Turks withdrew, in accordance with the
Treaty of Berlin.
It is easy to see that a man of such activity had no time to further
work on the motion picture projector which he had invented as a
young man, passing away tedious years while awaiting promotion and
responsibility.
Eventually Uchatius became a Field Marshal, but he died unhappy. He
wrote a farewell note, “Forgive me, my dear ones, because I am unable
to endure life any longer,” and killed himself on June 4, 1881, at the
age of 69. He was broken-hearted. Though his artillery weapons had
been a great success, he had yet to perfect coast defense guns. The
final blow was a remark passed on from the Austrian War Department,
that the officials doubted they would live to see successful completion
of Uchatius’ coastal guns. Also, an order was sent to Krupp for four
such guns for the harbor of Pola, then an Austro-Hungarian seaport,
and after World War II, a port in the area disputed by Italy and
Yugoslavia. It was said that the general was ill, suffering from an
incurable cancer of the stomach.
Uchatius was naturally a hero of the Austrian artillery. A monumental
obelisk was raised to his memory by subscriptions from the men who were
using his weapons. His biographer, Karl Spaĉil, wrote: “As often as
this country (Austria) begins to rearm, it is no wonder that the name
of Uchatius is mentioned and praised anew.”
But Uchatius then and now should have been praised not for his
engines of war but for his important contribution to the magic shadow
art-science. For by perfecting a motion picture machine which would
bring living pictures before audiences, Uchatius, together with Kircher
and Plateau, the other great magic shadow pioneers, deserves credit and
the gratitude of untold millions who down through the years have had
their lives enriched through this great new medium of expression.
The use of Uchatius’ projector spread rapidly. It satisfied a natural
urge. Man from the beginning sought to recreate life naturally and
realistically. Large screen motion pictures, even of but one scene,
repeated over and over, represented a definite step on that road.
[Illustration: Abb. 1. Franz Freiherr von Uchatius.
_Ölbildnis von Sigmund l’Allemand im Besitz des Wiener Heeresmuseums._
Schweizerische Zeitschrift, 1905
_FRANZ VON UCHATIUS in 1853 combined Kircher’s projector of 1645 and
Plateau’s revolving disk of 1832 to achieve the first projection of
animated designs._]
Within a few years after the publication of accounts of the Uchatius
motion picture projector, models were brought out by English and French
inventors. Projectors, including one which threw onto a screen by means
of a mirror system images of living persons, were used at the London
Polytechnic Institute.
For many years after the announcement of the Uchatius picture
projector, only hand-drawn designs were used. The new photographs were
available only in single stills. But now the modern motion picture was
just around a not too distant corner.
[Illustration:
K. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1853
_PROJECTORS by Uchatius. Shown are two versions of the 1853 picture
projector. In the one above a picture disk is revolved by a crank.
Below, the drawings are in fixed mounts, each before a projection lens,
and the light source is revolved._]
_XIII_
THE LANGENHEIMS OF PHILADELPHIA
_Brothers Langenheim perfect a system
of printing photographs on glass
slides permitting projection on the
screen--Projectors are made by Duboscq
in France; Wheatstone and Claudet in
England; Brown and Heyl in the United
States._
William Penn’s “City of Brotherly Love”, Philadelphia, was the home
of several important American contributors to the magic shadow
art-science. The first of these were two brothers, Frederic and William
Langenheim.
William Langenheim came to the United States from Germany in 1834, the
year Ebenezer Strong Snell, a professor at Amherst College, introduced
in America the Plateau-Stampfer magic disks. Successively, he served
in Texas during its war for independence from Mexico; was present at
the recapture of the Alamo by American forces; was captured himself and
sentenced to be shot; escaped, and served in the United States Army in
the Second Florida Seminole War.
After three years of adventure, William decided in 1840 to settle in
Philadelphia and enter business. He had his brother, Frederic, come
to America to be his partner. Frederic Langenheim brought to his
brother news of the latest developments in photography and they decided
to embark upon that pursuit. The year before, 1839, Louis Jacques
Mande Daguerre (1789–1851), in France, and William Henry Fox Talbot
(1800–1877), in England, had announced successful still pictures made
with a modified portable form of our old friend, the _camera obscura_,
fitted with a chemically coated plate which after development made the
picture permanent.
Frederic Langenheim was familiar with all these advances when he came
to Philadelphia in 1840 and he either brought with him a good camera
or one was ordered from Vienna shortly afterwards. In the winter of
1840–41 the Langenheim brothers opened a studio at the Merchant’s
Exchange, 3rd and Walnut Streets, Philadelphia. They were not the first
photographers in the United States but were among the pioneers.
Pictures from the size of a pea to very large ones were advertised.
President Tyler and Henry Clay were among those who sat for Langenheim.
In an early adventure in the use of photography for advertising,
the Langenheims had something less than a complete success, from
the client’s point of view. A picture was made showing a number of
prominent persons drinking at a local establishment. It was not good
for business--a rigorous public objected to the “drinking scene.”
Frederic, who was the “outside man” of the business and the principal
photographer of natural subjects--William handled the business end
and the portraits--went to Niagara Falls in 1845 and made scene
pictures that brought fame and renown to the firm of Langenheim Bros.
Copies were sent to Queen Victoria, the Kings of Prussia, Saxony and
Wurtenberg and the Duke of Brunswick, the province in Germany whence
the brothers originally came; and to Daguerre himself. The latter
praised the successful photography in a letter transmitted to the
Langenheims.
In 1848 William went abroad and in England concluded a deal with
William Henry Fox Talbot, British pioneer in photography, giving
the Langenheims exclusive contract rights to the Talbot calotype
process which used a negative from which any number of paper prints
could be made. It was a vast improvement over the Daguerreotype
negative-positive system which did not make possible printing of copies
but the Langenheims were not successful in sub-licensing the Talbot
process in America.
Shortly after this the Langenheims made an important contribution to
the art-science of light and shadow pictures by developing a system
which made it possible to project the photographs in the old Kircher
magic lantern. This prepared the way for the projection of a series of
photographs showing a single movement.
Kircher and the others who used his magic lantern, including the
projection model of Uchatius, painted or drew their various scenes on
glass slides. Until about 1850 when the Langenheim development was
announced, there was no satisfactory method of making glass plates of
positive photographs. Of course, the heat of the projecting lamp made
it impossible to use pictures printed on paper.
Frederic Langenheim, with U. S. patent No. 7,784, dated November 19,
1850, solved the problem. The Langenheim system was called “Hyalotype,”
from the Greek, meaning “glass” and “to print” or to print on glass.
Prior to the invention, some time in the winter of 1847–48, the period
of the California Gold Rush, it was said the Langenheims, by means of
a Viennese camera converted into a magic lantern equipped with a gas
lamp, projected Daguerreotype pictures. This probably was achieved with
the aid of a mirror system.
The early Langenheim glass projector slides were circular and of a
deep sepia tint; later excellent black-and-white plates were made. The
Langenheim glass photo slides reproduced nature on the screen “with
fidelity truly astonishing.” The two plates of the slide were made
adherent with Canada Balsam, which is still used in this way as well as
to attach parts of projection lens systems. Only very recently have new
synthetic resins begun to displace Canada Balsam for these purposes.
In 1851 the Langenheim Hyalotypes made their debut in Europe under
great auspices, at the famous Exposition of the Works of All Nations
at London. The glass projection photos were “very remarkable and well
appreciated by competent visitors,” according to Robert Hunt, a pioneer
British photographic authority, who inspected the exhibit and wrote
about it.
There is no evidence that the Langenheims combined their glass
projection slides with the magic disk of Plateau to achieve motion
pictures. They made one contribution and seemed to be satisfied with
that. And it was successful for them, for in the next twenty-five years
many thousands of these slides were sold in the United States.
Others who perhaps were much more familiar with the Plateau-Stampfer
magic disks than the Langenheims combined their process with the Wheel
of Life. The link nevertheless with the Langenheims is direct and
immediate. All the followers used the photos on glass slides and the
method was popularized by the Langenheim exhibition at the Exposition.
Relatively little was done, however, in combining the glass photo
slides in motion picture sequence with the magic lantern, because at
the time there was no method of obtaining a number of successive photos
of the same action.
Jules Duboscq (1817–1886) in Paris copied the Langenheim process
of glass plates with great success. Duboscq was an exhibitor of
optical instruments at the Exposition of 1851. He had been the
licensee of Daguerre for England, but the method was never popular
there as it was in the United States. On February 16, 1852, Duboscq
received a French patent on an apparatus which combined photos and
the Plateau Phénakisticope or Fantascope. His device was called the
Stereofantascope or Bioscope.
One Duboscq model had two strips of pictures made with a binocular
camera running next to each other on a vertical disk, as the original
Plateau model, and the whole was rapidly revolved before a mirror by a
spectator who wore specially-made glasses. The second and better system
had the pictures mounted on the horizontal Fantascope or Wheel of Life,
as developed by Horner in 1834, with one picture mounted above the
other. There was, however, slight distortion because the pictures were
bent to fit around the inside of the cylinder.
Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875), who also combined photos and
the magic disk, in 1852, had a marked influence on magic picture
development during the middle part of the 19th century. In fact, it
may well be that the efforts expended in trying to combine the third
dimensional effect of his stereoscope with the magic disk retarded
development of screen projection of motion pictures.
Wheatstone was a timid man, though a great scientist, and frequently
had the great Michael Faraday announce his inventions at the Royal
Society meetings. The Stereoscope was invented in 1838. (The reader may
recall that centuries before d’Aguilon had coined the name “Stereo”
for “seeing solid” effects). The Stereoscope achieves its effect by
blending into one image pictures or drawings of an object taken from
slightly different points of view so that the impression of relief is
obtained in our sense of vision. Without our two eyes the stereoscopic
effect would not be possible.
It had been known for a very long time that the two eyes did not
see the identical picture. Wheatstone made an instrument which took
advantage of this fact. He said he conceived the idea in 1835 and
made the first presentation of the Stereoscope in August of 1838 at a
meeting of the British Association held at Newcastle.
In 1850 Wheatstone was in Paris and showed his improved Stereoscope to
Abbé Moigno, to Soleil and his son-in-law, Duboscq, who were commercial
instrument makers, and to members of the French Institute. Its value
was immediately recognized not only for amusement but for the arts and
sciences, especially portraiture and sculpture, Moigno reported in _La
Presse_ of December 28, 1850. Duboscq immediately started to make one
and used Daguerreotypes in it. Moigno praised Duboscq’s “intelligence,
activity, affability, indefatigable ardour.” In 1851 Moigno brought
Duboscq to the attention of the Queen by presenting her with a
Wheatstone-type Stereoscope which he had made. That was the year Louis
Napoleon seized power and was named president for a ten year term. In
November, 1852 he proclaimed himself Emperor.
Wheatstone also developed a combination of photos and the Plateau disk
which was fitted with a cog which made each photo rest momentarily as
it was held before the mirror. The same instrument was made in France
under the name of Heliocinegraphe.
Antoine François Jean Claudet (1797–1867), was a Frenchman who married
an English girl and moved to London in 1827. In 1852 he combined the
Plateau-Stampfer disk with the Langenheim method of photographs on
glass plates. It is claimed that, while Claudet started work ahead of
him, Duboscq had satisfactory results first. Claudet’s experiments were
successful in May of 1852, about one year after the Langenheim exhibit
at the Exposition. In 1853 Claudet became a member of the Royal Society.
Claudet, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science held at Birmingham in September, 1865, spoke “On Moving
Photographic figures, illustrating some phenomena of vision connected
with the combination of the stereoscope and the phenakisticope by means
of photography.” Claudet noted that from the beginning of photography
those acquainted with Plateau’s disk thought that pictures would be
more suitable than hand drawings to show the illusions of motion.
But they also sought the third dimensional effect. Duboscq’s efforts
were not completely successful, according to Claudet who described
a machine he had worked out. The illusion of motion was effected by
having one eye see one picture and the other eye the next picture. This
resulted in a simultaneous motion and solid effect. The spectator was
not conscious of the vision being transferred from one eye to another.
Claudet’s example was a boxer about to strike and then delivering the
blow.
The pictures in Claudet’s machine must have left much to the
imagination but an interesting perfection of this device was shown
in New York in late 1922 and early 1923, under the name of Hammond’s
Teleview. An entire theatre was equipped with a special shutter device
for each spectator. The shutters were synchronized with the shutter
of the motion picture projector and the spectator, looking through
the device, saw motion in three dimensions. The development was not
commercially practicable because the apparatus was expensive, a
nuisance to the spectators and the many little motors operating the
shutters created an annoying hum in the auditorium.
In the United States the Langenheim brothers did much to popularize the
Stereoscope and its various modifications. About 1850 they started to
make and sell stereoscopic views in Philadelphia, by mail and through
agents throughout the country. In those days, with the Gold Rush in
California just subsiding, there was great interest in scenic wonders
and views of remote places. Stereoscopic photos had a great sale and
were eventually found in almost every parlor of the day.
Before the Civil War the Langenheims opened at 188 Chestnut Street the
“Stereoscope Cosmorama Exhibit.” There each spectator sat and could see
one stereoscopic view after another by turning a crank. It may very
well have been this turning crank system which suggested an interesting
motion picture device to the fellow citizen of Langenheims, Coleman
Sellers.
Coleman Sellers (1827–1907) was a skilled engineer. He reproduced
Faraday’s electric experiments in this country; constructed locomotives
in Cincinnati chiefly for the Panama Railroad; he also worked on
the Niagara Falls power development. Even for hobbies he turned to
scientific toys and gadgets. In 1856 he was called to Philadelphia
again to take his place in the family engineering company. Sellers’
family dated from one Samuel Sellers who received a royal grant of land
in Pennsylvania in 1682.
Sellers patented on February 5, 1861 a device which he called the
Kinematoscope, evidently the first use of the word “cinema” if we
exclude the Frenchman who copied Wheatstone’s device under the name of
Quinetoscope.
The Sellers device revolved a series of posed still pictures,
paddle-wheel fashion, before the eye of the observer. A period of
relative rest was achieved through this motion as each picture was
coming towards the observer for a specific time and then out of view as
the next photo came into position. Sellers’ motion photos include his
wife sewing, his two sons, Coleman, Jr. and Horace, playing and rocking
a chair. Sellers tried to combine motion and solid effects. He found
the wet plate photographic process invented by Frederick Scott Archer
(1813–1857) in 1850 quite unsatisfactory for “posed” motion work.
Archer did not trouble to patent the process.
During the Civil War the Langenheims took nearly 1,000 pictures which
were mounted for showing in the projection magic lanterns, and during
the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71 several hundred photographs and
drawings were released by the Langenheim brothers for lantern use.
The last catalogue of the firm was published in 1874 and included
some 6,000 colored slides priced at $33 a dozen, and those specially
photographed and made at $4 each. William Langenheim died on May 4,
1874. Frederic tried to continue the business for a time but he, too,
was getting old and eventually sold out in the Autumn to Caspar W.
Briggs, another early Philadelphia photographer. At the Philadelphia
exhibit Frederic had a showing of the Voigtlander lenses made in Vienna
which were the best then available for certain types of photographic
work.
Another Philadelphian, Henry Renno Heyl (1842–1919), a friend and
associate of Sellers on the Board of Trustees of the Franklin
Institute, was the first person in America to develop a projector which
used “posed” motion photographs. The individual pictures were taken by
the same method used by Sellers for his Kinematoscope.
[Illustration:
American Museum of Photography
_LANGENHEIM BROTHERS, William (seated) and Frederic, pioneer
Philadelphia photographers, who developed, in 1850, picture projection
using glass slides._]
Somewhat earlier, O. B. Brown, of Malden, Mass. obtained U. S. patent
No. 93,594, dated August 10, 1869, on what is the first American
“motion picture” projector. It, however, used only drawn designs and
not photographs. In principle it was based, as other projectors of the
time, on the system developed by Uchatius. In Brown’s projector
the Plateau magic disk with the figures was mounted between the light
source and the projection lens and was rotated by a gear arrangement.
In front of the lens there was a rotating shutter with two holes which
interrupted the light when the pictures were in intermittent motion.
[Illustration:
Maurice Bessy Collection
_ETIENNE JULES MAREY, French physiologist, whose research on the
movement of men and animals contributed to progress in photography of
motion, 1870 to 1890._]
Heyl perhaps may have obtained his basic idea from Brown or it may have
come to him independently because the urge to combine the new photos
and the older magic lantern was felt by many persons. At any rate,
the Heyl apparatus bears very little relation to Brown’s. There is no
evidence that Heyl attempted to patent his device, so the Patent Office
never was called upon to decide the point.
Heyl, a native of Columbus, Ohio, who designed many types of machinery,
including boxes and paper and book stitching devices, has been
hailed by some as the first to use photos in a projection device. He
himself, however, never claimed that honor. He published a letter
dated Philadelphia, February 1, 1898, in the _Journal_ of the Franklin
Institute, “A contribution to the history of the art of photographing
living subjects in motion and reproducing the natural movements by the
lantern.”
“Among the earliest public exhibitions” of such a combination was
one given by him at an entertainment held in the Academy of Music,
in Philadelphia on February 5, 1870. A catalogue note announced as a
feature of the varied entertainment the showing of “The Phasmatrope, a
most recent scientific invention,” whose effects are similar “to the
familiar toy called the Zoetrope.” The management expressed pleasure at
having “the first opportunity of presenting its merits to our audience.”
Heyl and a dancing partner posed for six pictures in the various phases
of the waltz at O. H. Willard’s photographic studio at 1206 Chestnut
Street. Other photo slides were made of a then popular Japanese
acrobatic performer--“Little All Right.” The time exposures were taken
on wet plates, then prints were transferred to thin glass plates with
the images only about three quarters of an inch high.
The six stills were duplicated three times to fill the eighteen spaces
in the wheel of the projector.
The Heyl projector had an intermittent movement controlled by a ratchet
and pawl mechanism operated by a reciprocating bar moved up and down by
the hand. The fast movement was used for the acrobats with a complete
stop at the end of each somersault, and a slow tempo for the waltz
which was accompanied by an orchestra.
The problem of a shutter to interrupt the light while the pictures
were moving was solved in the following way, according to Heyl: “This
was accomplished by a vibrating shutter placed back of the picture
wheel that was operated on the same drawbar that moved the wheel, only
the shutter movement was so timed that it moved first and covered the
picture before the latter moved and completed the movement after the
next picture was in place. This movement reduced to a great extent the
flickering and gave very natural and life-like representations of the
moving figures.”
Heyl’s Phasmatrope was an ingenious apparatus but the imagination had
to compensate for its many imperfections. When it was demonstrated on
March 16, 1870, at a meeting of the Franklin Institute, it created
so little notice that mention of the showing was not included in the
minutes. It is interesting to note it was at this meeting that Sellers
was elected head of the Franklin Institute. We can wonder what his
reaction was to the fact that Heyl, a man fifteen years his junior, had
added projection to the principle of his Kinematoscope which had also
used “posed pictures” in a peep-show apparatus.
In 1875, in Philadelphia, Caspar Briggs, who had bought out the
Langenheim interest the year before, introduced a device similar to the
Heyl projector which also used still photographs made of drawings to
simulate motion. His most popular subject was “The Dancing Skeleton,”
a selection reminiscent of Phantasmagoria and the “black arts” or
necromancy. The little pictures were mounted on the edge of a mica disk
which revolved before the projection lens. Briggs also improved the
Langenheim magic lantern slide process and gave a further impetus to
photographic activity in Philadelphia.
From the Langenheims and their contemporaries in America the spotlight
of magic shadow development shifts back to the Old World, to France,
and to a scientist of distinction.
_XIV_
MAREY AND MOVEMENT
_Marey in Paris, and Muybridge and
Isaacs in San Francisco, record motion
by photographs--Ducos du Hauron has an
idea for a complete system--Janssen makes
a “movie” camera--Reynauld keeps magic
shadow showmanship alive--Anschütz uses
electricity._
The development capital in the story of the magic shadow art-science
shifted many times. Seas, mountains, oceans and time itself were
no barriers. Successively, Greece, Arabia, Persia, England, Italy,
Holland, Belgium, Austria and the United States took the lead in
showing the way toward the goal of genuinely life-like pictures. After
the great spurt of activity in Philadelphia, during the working life of
the Langenheims, the chief center of activity was Paris and the leader
was Etienne Jules Marey.
Plateau in Belgium came to the invention of the magic disk, which
was the first “motion picture” device, through his study of vision
and the desire to understand more about it. Marey, by his own action
and the work of others influenced by him, gave great impetus to the
photographing and projection of motion pictures, through his wish to
learn more about movement, the movement of life--animals, birds, and
men.
Marey was one of the first great physiologists and conducted for years
what was then the only private, scientific laboratory in France. He
was born in Beaume, France, in 1830, and when nineteen went to Paris
to study medicine. Six years later he became an interne and, in 1859,
received his doctor’s degree, doing at this time his first important
work on animal locomotion. In 1869 he became a professor at the College
of France and three years later he was admitted to the Academy of
Medicine, and, in 1878, to the Academy of Science.
About 1867 Marey started to study the attitudes of animals in movement
through the aid of a Plateau magic disk and drawings made with the aid
of Mathias Duval, professor of anatomy at the School of Beaux Arts.
Some of the designs used by Marey in the Wheel of Life and a magic
lantern projector were drawn by Col. Duhousset, a great horseman and
artist, from very early and imperfect instantaneous photographs.
Prior to Marey there had been a number of attempts to record motion
by photography. The most successful was by the French astronomer,
Pierre Jules César Janssen (1824–1907) who used a photogun, _Revolver
Photographique_, to record the transit of Venus in Japan in 1874.
Janssen may have been influenced by Marey’s earliest work. Dr. R. L.
Maddox in 1871 had developed in England dry plate photography, based
on Scott Archer’s wet plate process. This helped to make instantaneous
photography, or Chronophotography, as it was called, possible.
Janssen perfected the first workable motion picture camera. But it
was a large, stationary piece of apparatus, limited in scope and
sensitiveness. The device was described by a French astronomer, C.
Flammarion, in the magazine _La Nature_ of May 8, 1875, and by Janssen
himself in the _Bulletin of the French Photographic Societies_ of
April 7, 1876. Janssen’s device took forty-eight pictures on a simple
revolving plate but he said the number could easily be doubled or
tripled. A time clock mechanism controlled the revolutions of the
photographic plate but it was so arranged that it could also be rotated
by hand. An electrical hook-up also was possible.
The influence of Plateau’s magic disk is clear and so acknowledged by
Janssen. The device simply reversed the old Plateau disk which showed
motion pictures through two revolving disks, one with the pictures and
the other with the shutter slits. In the Janssen astronomical gun the
one disk was coated with photographic chemicals and the other had the
usual slits; the necessary intermittent movement was provided by the
gear driven mechanism which rotated the disks.
Janssen pointed out that the apparatus could be used for physiological
purposes--to study walking, running, flight and the movement of
animals; but he never had time to develop the device for physiological
uses, which was not in his immediate field. He was, however, interested
in Marey’s later refinements and applications.
The most important “precursor” of motion picture photography and
projection, so far as the basic idea was concerned, was Louis Ducos
du Hauron (1837–1920), a Frenchman who developed the first successful
method of printing color pictures. Louis liked science, painting and
music but was held back in school on account of poor health. At the age
of 15, he was a good pianist. He began his experiments in natural color
printing around 1859 and by the Fall of 1868 had achieved success. The
public reaction was not enthusiastic and Louis became discouraged. Many
persons were hostile to his method which he hoped would bring books,
illustrated with many color plates, within reach of everyone (as others
following his system eventually achieved). It was for this reason that
he failed to exploit his camera and picture projector idea.
In March and December of 1864 Louis Ducos du Hauron took out the first
patents on a complete motion picture system, including an apparatus to
register and reproduce motion by photography. The French patent was
described in these words, “Apparatus for the photographic reproduction
of any view together with all changes the subject undergoes during a
certain time.” A mechanic of Agen where Louis lived for many years
with his older brother, Alcide, constructed a model of the device. It
was not successful because the available photographic materials were
not sufficiently sensitive. Ducos’ patent even provided for the use
of “bands” of paper; bands or reels of film finally solved the motion
picture problem but not until near the end of the 19th century. As in
one of Uchatius’ projectors, the camera and projector of Louis Ducos du
Hauron used a number of small lenses.
Other patents taken out by this small, slender, timid Frenchman who
only became truly animated when talking about one of his inventions,
included color photography in 1868, a horizontal wind-mill in 1869, a
combined natural and photographic camera in 1874, photographic devices
in 1888 and 1892. In 1896 he again turned to motion pictures, after
others had perfected them, proposing an optical system intended to do
away with all interruption of light in motion picture projection and
photography.
Honors came very late in life to Ducos du Hauron and to his dying day
he reproached himself for not exploiting sufficiently his ideas. But
when he had tried to do this he encountered only indifference because
the scientists were not interested in the work of one who was without
academic status. Now Ducos du Hauron is regarded as one of the greatest
geniuses of photography. He actually predicted and described a monopack
color film. The many good color processes of this type are modern
realizations of his extraordinary scientific analyses.
Marey was familiar in a general way with all these developments and
ideas, but he was essentially a scientist and not a photographer.
Motion picture photography to him was just a good way of learning more
about living movement. About 1870 he had made studies of movements in
other ways in addition to primitive photographs and drawings made from
such photographs. The results of these studies were known all over
the world and had a direct influence on the photographers who first
successfully took successive pictures of animals in motion. These
photographers were Eadweard Muybridge and John D. Isaacs.
Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), or Edward James Muggeridge, as he was
originally named, was born in England, at Kingston-on-Thames. As a
young man he was an adventurer who called photography his profession.
He made a number of trips back and forth between the United States and
England. He was seriously injured in a run-away stage coach accident
in July of 1860, in Arkansas, and later obtained several thousand
dollars in damages from the Southern Overland Stage Company. Returning
to the United States after a visit in England, following the accident,
Muybridge received an assignment to photograph, for the United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey, the new territory of Alaska, purchased by
the United States in 1867. After this assignment he settled in San
Francisco.
In 1872 Governor Leland Stanford of California made a $25,000 bet
in connection with a dispute as to whether or not all the legs of a
horse running at a full gallop are off the ground simultaneously. The
eye was not quick enough to find the answer. Horsemen had never been
completely satisfied with the drawings and pictures made by artists of
horses in motion. Sanford, as Terry Ramsaye describes in his history of
the motion picture, _A Million and One Nights_, in 1872 sent for the
photographer Muybridge and had him go to the Sacramento race track to
get photographic proof in order to settle the dispute. Over a period of
years Stanford spent considerably more than the $25,000 wager on the
photographic experiments. And out of the experiments grew the legend
that Muybridge had invented “motion pictures.”
About 1870 Marey had established the movement of the legs of a horse
in a gallop through his physiological investigations. But at that time
he had no photographic proof of his theory. Years later Muybridge said
that Stanford obtained his basic ideas for photographs to win the bet
from the writings of Marey.
Muybridge might have been successful in his early experiments if
it had not been for an interruption which was of about five years’
duration. He had domestic troubles of a nature that ended in violence.
In October 1874, he shot and killed Major Harry Larkyn who had eloped
with his wife. After a sensational trial in which the defense was able
to succeed in putting the jurors mentally in Muybridge’s place, he was
acquitted on February 5, 1875, at the courthouse in Napa, California.
Stanford maintained a friendly interest in Muybridge because he had
become increasingly interested in the problem of the movements of a
horse in fast action and he wished to obtain evidence to confirm the
new theory of animal locomotion which had been developed chiefly by
Marey in France. Stanford was primarily interested in the running gaits
of horses and other movements secondarily.
The stories of what really happened in 1877 are not identical.
Muybridge said in 1883 at a lecture at the Franklin Institute in
Philadelphia, “Being much interested with the experiments of Professor
Marey... I invented a method of employing a number of cameras ....
I explained my intended experiments to a wealthy resident of San
Francisco, Mr. Stanford, who liberally agreed to place the resources of
his stock breeding farm at my disposal and to reimburse the expenses
of my investigation, upon the condition of my supplying him, for his
private use, with a few copies of the contemplated results.”
On the mere statement, Muybridge’s position is subject to serious
question. It certainly is unlikely that Stanford would pay all expenses
just to obtain a few copies of the “intended results for private use.”
The ownership of the results was subject to considerable dispute.
Stanford copyrighted the pictures in 1881 and had them published
in a book edited by Dr. J. D. B. Stillman, entitled _The Horse in
Motion_. In that book the story is that when Muybridge returned to
San Francisco in 1877, he was engaged to continue the experiments by
Stanford. According to Stillman, in 1877 pictures were taken of one of
Stanford’s horses, with a single camera and “one of these, representing
him with all his feet clear of the ground, was enlarged, retouched and
distributed to the parties interested.” This then was just another
effort to obtain a good, sharp, fast, single picture of action.
John D. Isaacs, later chief engineer for the Harriman Railroad System,
had designed and supervised all the installation of the battery
camera apparatus. His name was suggested to Stanford by Arthur
Brown, then chief engineer of maintenance of the Central Pacific,
one of Stanford’s interests. Isaacs was a young man fresh from the
University of Virginia, where he had graduated in 1875. He was an
amateur photographer and very familiar with Marey’s work and that of
the photographers in France and England and in the eastern part of the
United States.
In 1878 further efforts were made at Stanford’s private track at
Palo Alto, where the battery system of cameras was introduced and
good results obtained. Each camera in the battery was equipped
with a fast-acting shutter and was set off successively by a
mechanical-electrical device. (Illustration on opposite page.)
The most successful results, which were little better than silhouettes,
were obtained when twenty-four cameras, set about one foot apart,
were used. The photographs actually were not made at equal intervals
of time but of space. The cameras and background were lined up for a
measurement of distance and not of time.
Although Isaacs contributed engineering skill to the development of the
apparatus, because he was chiefly interested in railroad engineering
and this assignment in his photographic hobby was a favor for the “big
boss,” Muybridge alone obtained the patents on the method. On June 27
and July 11, 1878 he applied for a patent on, “A method and apparatus
for photographing objects in motion” (the battery system), and for
the double action shutter controls. The patents were issued in March,
1879. Wet collodion plates were used in each camera and a speed of up
to 1/5000th of a second was claimed by Muybridge in his applications.
Isaacs later became chief engineer of the Southern Pacific Railroad
System while Muybridge made “scientific” photography a profession.
[Illustration:
The Horse in Motion, 1882
_CAMERA SYSTEM developed by John D. Isaacs, engineer, and Eadweard
Muybridge, photographer, which made pictures at equal intervals of
space rather than of time. It settled a wager on the nature of the
movements of a horse._]
During later life Muybridge sought to establish himself as a scientist
and in this effort he drew heavily on physiological data which
originated with Marey in France. Muybridge was a photographer, who,
through the resources of Stanford, a rich and determined backer, came
into possession of a method of taking successive pictures of action.
Even though the method was cumbersome and inexact, Muybridge never
changed it but continued to exploit it for the rest of his life.
[Illustration:
La Nature. 1882
_PHYSIOLOGICAL PARK. Paris, above, the first motion picture studio.
Marey installed the camera in a box on rails. Below, Marey’s photo gun,
first portable camera for photographing motion._]
Marey, in France, was delighted to hear of the results of Muybridge’s
work and to inspect them, for here at last was excellent confirmation
of his physiological theories. Marey, while praising the work of
Muybridge, noted certain errors resulting from the battery camera
system--the landscape and not the animal appeared to be moving when the
resulting photographs were analyzed in the Plateau magic disk and also
the time interval, as noted above, was not exact.
Marey was the first to synthesize motion from the photographs by
mounting them so the action could be reconstructed. Muybridge had no
interest in this phase of the subject until he met Marey and learned
from him. Even afterwards Muybridge continued to be interested chiefly
in taking pictures and not in studying and analyzing them. Technically
speaking, Marey analyzed and synthesized the results obtained in the
Muybridge photographs.
In addition to using the simple Plateau disk which only one person at
a time could see, Marey somewhat later had the photographs copied on
glass slides, mounted on a revolving disk and projected onto a screen
with the Uchatius type projector, equipped with a revolving slit
shutter. This scientific demonstration was the first actual motion
picture show of real motion and not posed as in the Heyl, Bourbouze and
other demonstrations of about 1870.
Gaston Tissandier, editor of _La Nature_, in the December 7,
1878, issue wrote on “The Attitudes of the Horse, represented by
instantaneous photography,” and discussed the photographs of Eadweard
Muybridge of San Francisco which were on display at the firm of Brandon
and Morgan Brown, 1, Rue Lafitte, Paris. The early work of Marey was
mentioned and the importance of the new pictures was stressed.
On December 28, 1878, a letter of Marey’s, published in _La Nature_,
expressed the hope that Muybridge would also record and analyze the
action of birds in flight as well as animals in motion. Marey mentioned
how effective such pictures would be in the Wheel of Life disks and
their value in zoology. There also Marey spoke of a photographic gun
which he was to invent later.
A return letter from Muybridge was published on February 17, 1879 in
the same magazine: “Please have the goodness to transmit to Professor
Marey the assurance of my highest esteem and tell him that the reading
of his celebrated book on animal mechanism had inspired Governor
Stanford with the first idea of the possibility of solving the problem
of locomotion with the aid of photography. Mr. Stanford consulted me in
this matter and, on his request, I decided to undertake the task. He
asked me to follow a most complete series of experiments.” Muybridge
said also that he was using as many as thirty cameras, mounted twelve
inches apart, and that he planned to study all movements, including
flights of birds in which Marey was so interested at the time.
In the March 17 issue of _La Nature_, Marey expressed pleasure that
Muybridge was undertaking study of birds in flight. In the same issue
there appeared an interesting letter from Eugene Vassel, Captain
of Armament at the Suez Canal, dated January 20, 1879, commenting
on Marey’s idea of a photographic gun and telling of an idea for a
similar automatic camera. This illustrates that at the time, even at
the ends of the earth, farthest removed from principal educational and
scientific centers, the problem of photographing objects in natural
movement was under study. It was then a long way, indeed, from Paris to
San Francisco to Suez.
By 1880 Plateau magic disks equipped with Muybridge photographs were on
sale in England and at about the same time in France. In the December
31, 1881, issue of _La Nature_ several of these were illustrated and
the possibilities of their use for instruction and entertainment were
discussed. It was evident that they were common as toys in Paris.
Subjects included the original one of a horse in motion and even a
comedy item of a mule kicking a ball.
Muybridge, in the Summer of 1881, went to Paris and there came directly
under the influence of Marey who was always most generous in expressing
his appreciation of valued work. In this Marey’s nature reminds one
of Plateau, the Belgian. Evidently Muybridge had not dreamed of the
importance of his pictures for physiological study and other such
purposes until it was explained to him. It was the pressing quest
of Marey for greater perfection in duplicating nature that gave a
great stimulus to the development of the motion picture art-science.
Perhaps he, too, would have been surprised had he known that the motion
picture, while a great instrument of science, would for many years
at least find its chief use as an entertainment medium. To the last,
Marey always thought of it for science and, while he did not disdain
amusement uses, his interest was exclusively in broadening the field of
knowledge.
In Paris Muybridge met many notables, including Jean Louis Ernest
Meissonier (1815–1891), French painter who specialized in great detail
and exact duplication of nature. Meissonier appreciated the value of
the Muybridge photos, as he did Marey’s work in analyzing motion in
animals and men, as an aid to painting. From that time on Meissonier
always kept a Plateau disk and projection device in his studio so that
photographs of objects which were to be painted could be studied first
by himself and his colleagues. Muybridge evidently took a liking to
Meissonier and his work because he singled him out in later years as a
painter (one of the few) who was exact in his representation of animals
in movement even before the evidence of instantaneous photographs was
available.
During his visit in Paris Muybridge not only obtained scientific
knowledge from Marey and his associates but took up a practical
projection device, even to the extent of appropriating the name from
Charles Reynaud, a French inventor who was later to be the first great
motion picture showman, even though he preferred using hand-drawn films
to photographs.
Charles Emile Reynaud (1844–1918) in 1877 developed the Praxinoscope
which was an ingenious arrangement of the Plateau magic disk device.
The several pictures were mounted on the inside of a horizontal wheel
and were viewed on a polygonal-mirror in the center. In this device
a number of spectators could watch the moving figures. Light was
reflected from a lamp mounted above. Photographs were also used in
various of the Praxinoscope models. It was useful for color research.
In an article in _La Nature_ of February 1, 1879, it was stated that
Mr. Reynaud had already planned a projection model which would throw
life-size figures from the Praxinoscope onto a screen before a large
audience. In 1880 the French Society of Photographers was asked to
interest itself in this problem.
In 1881, or in the following year, Reynaud achieved success with the
Projection Praxinoscope or Lamposcope described by Gaston Tissandier,
in the November 4, 1882, issue of _La Nature_. One lantern threw the
background and the moving device projected the motion pictures. The
designs were colored on glass slides which were joined in a band. A
special advantage of the Reynaud Projection Praxinoscope or Lamposcope
was that no special light source was required. A common table lamp was
suitable. Of course, only one scene at a time could be shown in the
device for it had no reels to handle the band of glass slides.
One evening, early in 1882, Marey had Muybridge present at a large
gathering. Helmholtz, Bjerknes, Govi, Crookes and others of the French
Academy of Science also were present. The projector fitted with
Muybridge’s photos of action was given its debut. Marey, years later,
commented that those scientists never had seen anything that went so
far in the reproduction of nature as Muybridge-type photographs mounted
in his Zoopraxinographoscope disk and projector.
In March of 1882 Muybridge was in his native England and presented
two showings of his photographs, illustrated with a projector which
he called the Zoopraxiscope, borrowing the name almost entirely from
Reynaud and the scientific data from Marey. Muybridge gave a lecture,
“Attitudes of Animals in Motion, illustrated with the Zoopraxiscope,”
at a special meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, held on
March 13, 1882, with His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, honorary
member, presiding. The material was previously presented in a paper
read before the Royal Society. Muybridge said, “The analyses of some of
the movements investigated by the aid of electro-photographic exposures
... are rendered more perfectly intelligible by the reproduction of the
actual motion projection on a screen through the zoopraxiscope.”
The walk, trot, amble, rack, canter, run and gallop--which are the
several gaits of a horse--were discussed at length with much emphasis
on the physiological aspects. Figuratively, Marey must have been
standing beside Muybridge as he talked. The lecture, virtually word
for word, was given by Muybridge in February, 1833, at the Franklin
Institute in Philadelphia. But it is significant to note that then
there was no mention of the Zoopraxiscope. Muybridge evidently was
not a good operator and there seems to have been difficulty with the
projector. Operation of the projector was a problem then because there
had to be a relation between the number of pictures and the slits in
the projection shutter. Muybridge seems to have found it all too much
trouble and turned to the task of taking successive stills which could
then be made up into handsome illustrated books.
Meanwhile, Marey in the Spring of 1882 finally finished work on his
Photographical Gun which he had conceived several years previously.
By this time Marey had a large open air studio set up in the Bois de
Boulogne. (Illustrations facing page 121.)
Marey said that he had worked twelve years on the general subject
of movement, thereby placing his first efforts back in 1870. The
“beautiful instantaneous photographs of Muybridge proved his work,”
he declared. He continued, saying that in 1878 he had the idea of a
photographic gun somewhat analogous to the astronomical revolver of
Janssen. Finally, he resolved to devote the Winter of 1882 to the
realization of the project.
Marey used his gun to study his favorite project of birds in flight.
Marey’s photographic gun was the first practical motion picture camera,
primitive and limited though it was. In this sense it was the original
of all newsreel and other portable motion picture cameras. It is worth
noting that in our own time cameras are mounted as “photographic guns”
in airplanes as a substitute for gunnery in peacetime and as a check on
results during war.
About this time, Georges Demeny (1850–1917) became associated with
Marey in this work. Marey always gave credit to his pupil, aide
and collaborator. Eventually, however, they parted company because
Demeny was interested in commercializing the work and Marey wished
to continue with pure science. Later Demeny asserted that his motion
picture ideas were superior to Marey’s and that he was responsible for
the actual execution of all the plans. Demeny at thirteen had begun
inventing at his home, but his father, a musician, wanted him to be
a university professor. In 1874 he went to Paris and at the Sorbonne
was a pupil of Marey in physiology and of Mathias Duval--who also
worked with Marey--in anatomy. He did some medical studies and opened
one of the first physical education establishments called, _Le Cercle
de Gymnastique Rationnelle_. From 1880 on he supervised many of the
studies at Marey’s Physiological Park.
In July, 1882, Marey proposed the use of a band of sensitized paper in
the camera. For various reasons the paper was not satisfactory and,
of course, was impractical for direct projection as it might be set on
fire by the projection lamp. The Langenheims of Philadelphia had solved
the problem of projecting photographs in the magic lantern by devising
a method of printing the picture on glass. However, a projector
equipped, as the original model of Uchatius, with a revolving disk
could only hold a few glass slides. This limited the projected pictures
to brief action.
In 1887 and 1888 Marey achieved his first real success in what he
called chronophotography, using a box machine which took eight pictures
a second on a single metal plate, or on a sensitized paper band. Marey
had difficulty controlling the paper film because it was not perforated
and the pictures were not equally spaced. This, however, made no
difference to Marey since his main purpose was to obtain data for
physiological study, and not entertainment motion pictures.
In 1888 Marey obtained a successful series of photographs of fishes
swimming, taken with intermittent action on a paper roll film. The
images were taken at the rate of either twenty or sixty per second.
This method of using paper strips obviates the necessity of operating
in a dark camera chamber. At first the paper photographic strips were
loaded in a dark room, limiting the scope of the camera, but later
light-proof cameras were perfected. Marey also proposed an optical
system featuring a turning mirror which would make intermittent action
unnecessary. But this method was wasteful of film.
A contemporary of Marey and Muybridge, and a skilled photographer in
his own right, was Ottomar Anschütz (1846–1907), a German who worked
out one of the best systems for exhibiting a series of pictures prior
to Edison on whom he had an influence. Shortly after the Muybridge
pictures came to Europe, Anschütz began similar experiments. According
to Marey, he achieved better results than Muybridge, though the results
were not perfect, having a certain amount of distortion. Anschütz
obtained sharper photographs of action than Muybridge for his pictures
could be used in the Plateau magic disk or the projector without being
copied as silhouettes as was done with Muybridge’s photographs until a
late date.
In 1883 Anschütz tried to use a single camera on the Marey gun
principle but achieved better results with a battery of as many
as forty-eight cameras. The shutter openings in the Zoetrope or
magic disk were modified according to the number of pictures in the
particular series.
Anschütz’s chief claim to fame rests on the fact that he was the first
to combine successfully the instantaneous pictures of an object in
motion with the brilliant intermittent flash of the electric Geissler
tube. Heinrich Geissler (1814–1879), a German mechanic and physicist,
about 1854 invented an electric tube for the purpose of studying
discharges in rarefied gases. The apparatus consisted of a thin tube
of glass, equipped with platinum wires sealed into each end and filled
with a rarefied gas, and an electric battery connection.
In 1889 Anschütz announced the Electrical Tachyscope, a motion picture
viewing machine which became popular all over the world. His action
photographs were mounted on a wheel and were lighted successively by a
Geissler tube’s intermittent electric flash. The large photographs were
viewed directly by the audience in an adjoining room. Anschütz’s device
was first depicted in the United States in the _Scientific American_ of
November 16, 1889. A slot machine model was also devised and was shown
at Frankfurt, Germany in 1891, and at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893,
where several persons saw it and were given the idea of attempting to
achieve projection of life-size motion pictures of complete actions
instead of mere phases of motion. (Illustration facing page 149.)
The general technique developed by Anschütz in his Electrical
Tachyscope is now used in the taking of stroboscopic motion pictures.
It also may be applied in new photographic, motion picture and
television processes for increased depth of field.
In 1893 Muybridge lectured at the World’s Fair in Chicago at the
Zoopraxographical Hall, where hundreds of his pictures were shown. The
same material was published by the University of Pennsylvania under
the title of _Descriptive Zoopraxography, or the science of animal
locomotion made popular_.
Muybridge had settled down in 1885 with a position at the University of
Pennsylvania, where he took many pictures with the same battery system,
borrowing, however, some ideas about the studio arrangements from
Marey. Muybridge never improved his technique or realized that such
a cumbersome method could not produce satisfactory results. This did
not seem to disturb him for there is no evidence that he sought large
screen projection of the magic shadows before audiences.
In February 1886, Muybridge visited Edison at his New Jersey laboratory
and showed him plates of successive motion pictures, or, more
accurately, a succession of stills of various phases of the same action.
When Muybridge lectured at the London Institution in the Fall of 1889 a
complete report was published in the _British Journal of Photography_
for December 20, 1889, in an article by W. P. Adams. From this we
learn that Muybridge was then using a simple projector fitted with
a gear system which revolved before the lens a glass disk of some
fifteen inches in diameter on which the photos were mounted; in front
of this was a zinc shutter disk with radial slits totalling one more
than the number of pictures, in order to give a forward motion to
the figures. That was the old Plateau magic disk idea. With the same
number of openings in the shutter as pictures, the figures would appear
to move their arms and legs and yet stay in the same place; if less
shutter openings, there would be an appearance of backward motion.
“The disks are rotated at the same speed in opposite directions, and
the figures rapidly following each other appear on the screen as a
continuous movement of the animal,” the English reviewer remarked.
Muybridge showed slow and normal action motion. The subjects included
a mule kicking, a woman emptying a pail of water, a girl walking down
steps carrying a breakfast cup and saucer, and what was said to be the
best of all, a little girl finding and picking up a doll. In passing,
we may note that in addition to singling out Meissonier for praise,
Muybridge asserted that the Japanese were far ahead of everyone else in
representing motion in art!
Muybridge eventually retired to his native Kingston, England, after
winning fame through his work in America. But he obtained more than
fame, for he was able to leave a considerable sum of money, in addition
to his instruments, to the local museum. Efforts to locate the
Muybridge instruments at the Kingston-on-Thames Museum in 1943 were
unsuccessful.
In 1889, Thomas A. Edison, already working on the problem of motion
pictures for a year or two, visited the Exposition at Paris and
there met Marey who showed him the results obtained with his methods
of motion photography, and the reproduction of the scene with a
Plateau-disk combined with a projector and the disk illuminated by an
electric Geissler tube.
This electrically driven machine, displayed at the exhibit of Fontaine,
a French engineer, showed pictures of animals in motion, as well as
men and birds. The old photo stand-by of horses in motion in different
gaits again was featured. This system rather pleased Marey, as he
remarked that it would be hard to construct a better Wheel of Life,
though Edison had even then accomplished it in his laboratory at West
Orange, New Jersey. The limitations of the method, however, were fully
recognized by Marey who mentioned the small number of images which
could be shown, the restricted enlargement, and the intermittent
movement troubles. Also, the device was noisy and the flicker had not
been eliminated.
Thus the year of 1889 brought together two great figures, Marey, a
pure scientist whose zeal for learning about locomotion resulted in
improvements in what was to be the motion picture art-science, and
Edison who invented the first entirely practical motion picture camera
and the first film peep-show device which was to be the inspiration for
projectors as they were finally established, setting the pattern even
to our day.
_XV_
EDISON’S PEEP-SHOW
_Edison turns to motion
pictures--Donisthorpe of England works it
all out on paper--Eastman manufactures
film--Edison perfects a motion picture
camera, the Kinetograph, and a peep-hole
viewer, the Kinetoscope--World Premiere,
New York--April, 1894._
In the laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison the development of a
practicable motion picture camera and viewing apparatus was really
achieved. Leadership in the magic shadow art-science came with Edison
once again to the United States and it has not left this country since.
As a sequel America and motion pictures are linked in the minds of
millions throughout the world.
Edison came to the motion picture through his Talking Phonograph, which
he had developed not as an entertainment machine but as a device which
would be a substitute for the court reporter and in other proceedings
requiring exact recording. The motion picture experiments were made
rather as a hobby and a diversion from more serious research and
invention; the aim was to combine the automatic hearing and speaking of
the phonograph with the sight and action of the motion picture.
Curiously enough Plateau, a man who went blind, made the first motion
picture possible; Edison who was quite deaf made a great contribution
to recording and reproducing sound.
Edison, in November of 1877, sent to his friend Alfred Hopkins, editor
of the _Scientific American_, several sketches of models of his new
invention in which “speech was capable of indefinite repetition from
automatic records.” The next month a model was perfected. The incident
was described as follows in the December 22, 1877, issue of the
_Scientific American_: “Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this
office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned the crank, and the
machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph,
informed us that _it_ was well, and bid us a cordial good night.” It
was noted that the sound was fully audible to a dozen members of the
staff who gathered around. The writer also noted, “When it becomes
possible to magnify the sound, as it doubtless will, the witness in
court will have his own testimony repeated. The testator will repeat
his own will.”
The editor of the _Scientific American_ concluded his comment on
the Edison “Talking” phonograph by saying: “It is already possible
to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view
of an audience (i.e., still pictures). Add the talking phonograph
to counterfeit their voices and it would be difficult to carry the
illusion of real presence much further.”
The description of the Edison phonograph attracted wide attention.
The article referred to above was quoted fully in _Nature_, a British
publication. This led Wordsworth Donisthorpe to set down the first
complete plan of the talking motion picture. Others, of course, had
had the idea but up to that time the plan had never been expressed so
clearly and completely.
Wordsworth Donisthorpe, born in 1847, was an English lawyer who
throughout life maintained a lively interest in many affairs. He was an
outspoken individualist, being a firm believer in local government. He
wrote books on such subjects as _Law in a Free State_, and _Love and
Law_, as well as on scientific matters. When he designed his device,
the Kinesigraph, he was living at Princes Park, Liverpool.
After reading about Edison’s phonograph, Donisthorpe wrote to the
_Nature_ magazine and referred to the idea of combining the phonograph
and still projection suggested by the Editor of the _Scientific
American_. Donisthorpe quoted that comment and then said:
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.
[Illustration:
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._]
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration:
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._]
[Illustration:
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.
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.
[Illustration:
French Information Service
_LOUIS LUMIERE, inventor of the Cinématographe camera and projection
system._]
[Illustration:
Cambridge Instrument Co.
_ROBERT W. PAUL, instrument maker, constructed cameras and projectors
in England._]
[Illustration: The Vitascope being Exhibited in a Theatre or Public
Hall.
(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.
CHAPTER I
ARISTOTLE. _Problems._
_On Dreams._
EUCLID. _The Elements of Geometrie_ translated by H. Billingsley.
London, 1570.
_La Prospettiva di Euclide._ Florence, 1573.
LUCRETIUS, _De Rerum Natura._
PTOLEMY (CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS). _Ptolemaei Mathematicae._
Wittenberg, 1549.
_Almagest._ Edited by J. Baptiste Ricciolus, S. J. 1651.
ALHAZEN. _Opticae Thesaurus Alhazeni Arabis._
Basel, 1572.