THE MOVIE AT ITS BIRTH
FOR countless ages Man watched the birds in flight, realized his own
motor handicaps, and relegated his hope of flying to a life which he
might eventually lead in the world of spirits. An insect or an angel
might have wings but the lord of the earth was by nature debarred from
the air. Then somebody somewhere invented a kite, and for another series
of centuries Man played with a toy whose ultimate significance he failed
to grasp. He had not as yet sensed the picturesque truth that the
world’s most potential inventions have come to us, by a process of
evolution, from children’s playthings. The laboratory had its beginnings
in the nursery. The cave-man’s children taught him progress.
Through suggestions from the kite, the Wright brothers made air
navigation possible. From another toy, Edison’s kinetoscope, has come
the cinematograph. And even its inventor, possessing, though he does,
the creative imagination, failed to realize until recent years the
startling possibilities imbedded in the plaything with which he
entertained the cosmopolitan throngs that flocked to the World’s Fair at
Chicago in 1893.
When Edison recently made a visit to the General Electric Company’s
plant at Schenectady, N.Y., to recall old memories and to forecast the
future possibilities of electrical devices, he found there still
standing two insignificant old sheds by the river bank, the modest plant
of the original Edison Machine Works of 1886. In amazing contrast to
this relic of the past there stretched away in every direction factory
after factory, covering an area of 523 acres, and vouchsafing to the
Wizard of Menlo Park a concrete manifestation of the fact that in this
age of progress even the wildest dream may eventually come true. But the
contrast between Edison’s work-shop of 1886 and the General Electric
plant of to-day, astounding as it is, is, in its outward aspects, a
local phenomenon. To visualize it, you must go to Schenectady, N.Y. The
difference between Edison’s kinetoscope of thirty years ago and the
moving picture of the moment can be appreciated, on the other hand, by a
mere effort of the memory and the imagination combined. The kinetoscope
has been relegated to the attic but the moving picture has acquired as
its domain not merely the earth but the starry heavens and the realms of
space. Eventually the very outer edge of the physical universe is
destined to be screened.
Before recounting presently the amazing and romantic story of the
evolution of the motion picture from a plaything to a medium unrivalled
for the promulgation of both good and evil, a Frankenstein created by
Man’s ingenuity that must be given a soul to make it safe for the world,
it may be well to pause at the outset to answer the query, frequently
put to the writer, as to why what seems to be merely a popular form of
amusement should be taken seriously as a factor in the struggle modern
civilization is undergoing to save itself from destruction. Perhaps no
better answer to this question can be given than is furnished by certain
facts and figures presented by Will H. Hays to the National Education
Association in session at Boston, Mass., in July, 1922, in the following
illuminating words:
In a little over fifteen years the motion picture has grown from
a naked idea until to-day it is the principal amusement of
millions. It has become one of the greatest industries in
America, having an investment of $1,250,000,000, with
$75,000,000 paid annually in salaries and wages, and
$520,000,000 taken in annually for admissions. In the United
States, in the big cities and in those ample-shaded towns and
villages which comprise America, there are perhaps fifteen
thousand motion picture theatres and in those theatres more than
seven million seats. Taking into account at least two
performances a day, and applying the collected statistics, we
estimate that every seven days between Maine and California,
fifty million men, women and children look for an hour or two at
the motion picture screen.
Nothing further need be said in regard to the importance of the general
subject we have under consideration. A medium for expression which makes
its imprint weekly upon the minds of approximately one half of our
population is worthy of the closest study by the people of this country.
Its origin, its early growth, its present status and its future as a
universal language, destined, perhaps, to be the greatest civilizing
medium the race has known, are topics the timely importance of which can
hardly be overrated. To paraphrase an old political truism, as goes the
screen so goes the country—and, possibly, the race at large.
Briefly the early history of the cinematograph is in substance as
follows: By the revolutionary achievement of the Frenchman Daguerre, who
discovered a method whereby sunlight could be made to fix a permanent
image of an object upon a sensitized surface, a door was opened showing
the way to the marvellous triumphs that the last century has vouchsafed
to the camera. But impasse after impasse checked the progress of the
pioneers of photography. When Daguerre began his historic career as the
first photographer, an exposure of six hours—more than twenty thousand
seconds—was required to obtain a permanent impression of the object
photographed. Instantaneous photography seemed at that time as remote a
possibility as photography in colors appeared to be but a short time
ago. But the time came when Chemistry, the mother of modern marvels,
solved the problem confronting the early photographers. The laboratory
found a surface so sensitive to light that it could take and retain a
picture perfect in detail in less than one thousandth part of a second—a
feat which in Daguerre’s time would have required an exposure twenty
million times as long. How important in connection with the eventual
advent of the motion picture was Man’s mastery of the time-element in
photography is tersely explained by Frederick A. Talbot, an authority on
the early history of the cinematograph, as follows:
The wonderful achievement of instantaneous photography assumed
at first a scientific rather than a commercial value. Many a
“snap-shot” is taken which does not betray whether the plate has
been exposed for six hours or only one-thousandth of a second;
but, on the other hand, a “snap-shot” of a quickly moving object
may seize upon and fix an interesting characteristic motion. It
was this fact which led certain ingenious minds to perceive in
instantaneous photography a valuable means of analyzing motion.
If a single photograph reproduced the exact posture of a moving
object at any given instant of time, they argued that a series
of such photographs, if taken in sufficiently rapid succession,
would form a complete record of the whole cycle of movements
involved, for instance in the jump of a horse or the flap of a
bird’s wing.
Thomas A. Edison, in an interview given to Mr. Hugh Weir and recently
published in _McClure’s Magazine_, enlightens us regarding Mr. Talbot’s
proposition. Asked what first suggested to him the idea of the
motion-picture camera, Mr. Edison said:
The phonograph. I had been working for several years on
experiments for recording and reproducing sound, and the thought
occurred to me that it should be possible to devise an apparatus
to do for the eye what the phonograph was designed to do for the
ear. It was in 1887 that I began my investigations, and
photography, compared with what it is to-day, was in a decidedly
crude state of development. Pictures were made by “wet” plates,
operated by involved mechanism. The modern dry films were
unheard of. I had only one fact to guide me at all. This was the
principle of optics, technically called “the persistence of
vision,” which proves that the sensation of light lingers in the
brain for anywhere from one-tenth to one-twentieth part of a
second after the light has disappeared from the sight of the
eye.
In other words, the fact that the human eye is a photographic camera
possessing memory may eventually save civilization from the cataclysm of
which contemporary prophets warn us, _in that it has made possible a
medium of communication for the race at large denied to us by the
tongue_.
Posterity will owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas A. Edison for
various revolutionary inventions but it begins to be apparent to
optimistic observers that perhaps his chief claim to the thanks of
mankind will be due to the initial impetus he gave to the motion
picture, vouchsafing to a bewildered race the universal language of the
eye, by which, possibly, the brotherhood of man may eventually function
to overcome the evils that have darkened our past. Says Edison: “I do
not believe that any other single agency of progress has the
possibilities for a great and permanent good to humanity that I can see
in the motion picture. And these possibilities are only beginning to be
touched.”
Will it not repay us, then, to examine the “possibilities” to which Mr.
Edison refers, to the end that we may take the screen more seriously
than heretofore, may regard motion picture theatres more attentively and
hopefully as being, perhaps, civilization’s one best bet? Unless,
however, we get a somewhat comprehensive view of the variegated past of
the movies “the permanent good to humanity” that they can accomplish
will not be apparent to us. Let us, therefore, get on with our story.
The early history of the cinematograph presents a study in international
rivalry. The United States, England and France wrote names on the scroll
of fame upon which the scientists and promoters who rendered motion
pictures possible make their bid for immortality. Edison and Eastman,
Americans, Daguerre and the Messrs. Lumière and Sons, Frenchmen, and
Muybridge and Robert Paul, Englishmen, are the leading names among the
_dramatis personæ_ who took part in the first act of a drama that began
as an amusement for children but which now promises to develop into a
miracle-play regenerating the human race.
Scientific technicalities have no place in a book designed to tell the
story of the movies from what is called in newspaper circles “the human
interest standpoint,” but it is necessary to apportion credit here for
what the three nations above mentioned did respectively toward solving
the initial problems confronting the pioneers who raised photography
from a tortoise to a bird, giving it pinions that defy time and space.
To change the metaphor, Daguerre, a Frenchman, rocked the cradle of
photography, Muybridge, an Englishman, taught it to run, and Edison, an
American, gave it wings. Behold here, at last, a triple alliance that is
changing the face not merely of a continent but of a planet. The
mountains were in labor and brought forth not a little mouse but a
marvellous creature whose dynamics for both good and evil can not be
over-estimated.
The claim that England can put forward for furnishing first aid to the
movies bears the date 1872 and is summarized as follows by Mr. Edison:
An Englishman of the name of Muybridge, who was an enthusiast on
two subjects—cameras and race horses—was visiting, at his
California farm, Senator Leland Stanford, who was also something
of a “crank” on the subject of blooded trotters. During the
visit the merits of a certain horse, owned by the Senator, came
under discussion, Stanford contending for one fact, and his
guest arguing for another. To settle the dispute Muybridge
conceived an ingenious plan.
Along one side of the private race-course on the farm he placed
a row of twenty-four cameras. Attached to the shutter of each,
he fastened a long thread, which in turn was carried across the
track, and then, to make sure of obtaining sharp exposures, he
erected a white screen opposite to serve as a reflector. When
all was in readiness the race horse was turned loose down the
track.
As it dashed past the rows of cameras the various threads were
snapped, and a series of photographs, establishing each
successive point in the “action” of the horse, were
automatically registered. When they were developed they revealed
for the first time a complete photographic record of the
minutest details of a horse in actual motion, and Muybridge had
the satisfaction of using them to win his argument.
He would have laid the pictures away in his private collection,
but someone suggested trying the effect on a Zoetrope (akin to
the Kinetoscope) apparatus. The result was so startling that it
created something of a public sensation. But, except as a
novelty, there was little practical benefit gained. To have made
an actual motion picture, lasting even for the space of a single
minute, at the rate of twelve exposures per second, the minimum
for steady illusion, would have required, under the plan of
Muybridge, seven hundred and twenty different cameras.
Half a century has passed since that historic day when Muybridge
demonstrated that he had a better eye for trotting horses than Senator
Stanford and put California on the map as a prominent centre of motion
picture progress, a position which that State has most brilliantly
maintained. During the fifty years from 1872 to 1922, the period from
Muybridge to Griffith, the scientific problems confronting the pioneer
inventors of the cinematograph, and they were many and difficult, were
solved; and from the crude pictures of a trotting horse in motion were
evolved the screen marvels of to-day. The high lights of that crucial
half century in the development of the movies, a development that is not
only interesting in itself but full of encouragement to the optimist who
believes that the new and universal language of the eye may be employed
to warn the race against repeating the errors of the past, will be
considered in the following chapters of this book.
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