THE MOVIE’S FIRST STEPS
NO story of the evolution of the motion picture from an experiment in
photography to a factor in the daily lives of millions of people would
be complete without a passing reference to the impetus given by George
Eastman, of Rochester, N.Y., to what was at the outset a toy for
children—destined eventually to challenge the untried resources of the
laboratory. Thomas A. Edison says: “Without George Eastman I don’t know
what the result would have been in the history of the motion picture.”
For a long time after Muybridge had demonstrated the possibility of
photographing objects in motion any real advance in what was practically
a new art was impeded by the weight, fragility and general inadequacy of
the glass plates employed in camera work. Gelatine, transparent paper,
and other substitutes for glass, were tried in vain. How Eastman finally
solved the problem by the use of celluloid is explained tersely and
clearly by F. A. Talbot as follows:
In the early part of 1889 experiments were being made to
discover a varnish to take the place of gelatine sheets. One of
his chemists drew Mr. Eastman’s attention to a thick solution of
gun-cotton in wood alcohol. It was tested to prove its
suitability to take the place of the gelatine, but was found
wanting in practical efficiency. However, Mr. Eastman recognized
the solution as one which might prove to be the film base for
which he had been searching. He had had such a medium in mind
when engaged in his first experiments in 1884, which resulted in
the production of the stripping film. He decided to utilize this
solution of gun-cotton in wood alcohol and fashion it into the
foundation for the sensitized emulsion, so that stripping and
other troublesome operations of a like nature might be avoided.
He was moved to this experiment because this solution could be
made almost as transparent practically as glass. Accordingly he
set to work to devise a machine to prepare thin sheets such as
he required from this mixture. _Success crowned his efforts, and
in 1889 the first long strip of celluloid film suited to
cinematograph work appeared in the United States._
Thus had George Eastman removed for Thomas A. Edison the one obstacle
that had hitherto made the latter’s projected kinetoscope impracticable,
and celluloid had become the “Open Sesame” to that wonderland in which
the movie fans of to-day delight to wander.
Like the telephone which was, in its early days, looked upon as an
interesting scientific toy not destined to play an important part in the
daily lives of the people at large, Edison’s kinetoscope was not taken
seriously by the crowds who found it but one of many novel features
combining to make the Chicago World Fair of 1893 a success. They flocked
to see it, marvelled at its ingenuity, but failed, as did Edison
himself, to realize that the world had been enriched by not merely a new
plaything but by a novel medium for influencing the destinies of the
race, the ultimate stupendous significance of which we, even thirty
years later, can only vaguely estimate. It is amazing but true that, so
little did Edison appreciate the fact that he had invented not an
ephemeral toy but the only universal language yet vouchsafed to the
race, he neglected to obtain patents for his kinetoscope outside of the
United States. His oversight in this connection had far-reaching
results, the most important of which historically gave to England
instead of the United States the honor of throwing upon a screen the
first “movie,” as that word is understood to-day.
That a Yankee notion should fail to realize its own possibilities and be
forced eventually to thank an Englishman for placing it upon the heights
from which it was to win world-dominion is not an agreeable reflection
to the ultra-patriotic American, but our story of the evolution of the
movie must now take us across the Atlantic and introduce to us Mr.
Robert W. Paul, electrical engineer and manufacturer of scientific
apparatus, whose workshops were located in Hatton Garden, London.
Reversing the process of the “star of empire” it was Eastward that the
movie, in its search for development, had taken its way. Cradled in
California, it had learned to walk in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and
Rochester, New York, and was now to realize its youthful possibilities
in the British metropolis.
Two peripatetic Athenians, one of them a toy-maker, had seen, admired
and coveted the Edison kinetoscope at the Chicago World’s Fair. They had
the European market in mind for the new plaything and acted at once
without looking into the question of patents. To Paul, at Hatton Garden,
London, came the Athenians with a kinetoscope they had obtained in the
United States, urging him to manufacture duplicates with which they
might supply the English, and possibly the Continental, market. Paul,
however, had read his Virgil and heeded the old poet’s warning against
Greeks bearing gifts. Supposing, of course, that Edison had protected
his invention by English patents, Paul rejected the proposition of the
Greeks. Later, however, he discovered that, so far as the English Patent
Office was concerned, he was free to manufacture kinetoscopes for the
European market and presently went at it with a will and with
considerable success.
But Paul was a live wire with a vision, as, years ago, I clairvoyantly
called Will H. Hays. He realized that the kinetoscope was, like our dead
selves, but a stepping-stone to higher things. It furnished a motion
picture to only one observer at a time. What Paul wanted, and what the
world has proved that it craved, was a device whereby thousands of
spectators could gaze at a movie at one and the same moment. Muybridge
had solved the first problem in motion photography, Edison the second,
Eastman the third, and Paul was confronted by the fourth, perhaps the
most difficult of the quartet.
How this resourceful Englishman managed to render the peep-hole of a
kinetoscope obsolete and replace it by a screen upon which countless
eyes might gaze is a matter of technical and scientific interest, out of
place in the story we are telling. Suffice it to say that what he
achieved in overcoming the obstacles confronting him has given him a
high place on the list of inventors who, one by one, and in widely
separated corners of the planet, made possible, during a half century of
effort, the motion picture of to-day.
We get from Frederick A. Talbot a side-light on an historic episode in
London that was the turning-point in the career of Robert W. Paul, and
of even greater importance to the human race than any but a few
far-seeing movie enthusiasts have yet realized. Says Talbot:
About three o’clock one morning, in the early months of 1895,
the quietness of Hatton Garden was disturbed by loud and
prolonged shouts. The police rushed hurriedly to the building
whence the cries proceeded, and found Paul and his colleagues in
their workshop, giving vent to whole-hearted exuberance of
triumph. They had just succeeded in throwing the first perfect
animated pictures upon a screen. To compensate the police for
their fruitless investigation, the film, which was forty feet in
length, and produced a picture seven feet square, was run
through the special lantern for their edification. They regarded
the strange spectacle as ample compensation, and had the
satisfaction of being the first members of the public to see
moving pictures thrown upon the screen.
Unfortunately the law-abiding fervor that animates the soul of the
London “Bobby” did not get into the camera on that epoch-making night.
Had it done so, the early career of the motion picture might have been
less objectionable to the guardians of morals on both sides of the
Atlantic. But that’s another story—to be told in a later chapter. It is
only just to say here, however, that it was not the fault of Robert W.
Paul that in their early years the movies went, more or less, to the
bow-wows.
Of Paul and his sensational achievement as the father, or, rather, the
step-father, of the movie there is much interesting data extant, the
leading features of which are destined to hold a permanent place in the
history of the newest of the arts developed by Man’s genius. How, in
partnership with Sir Augustus and Lady Harris, he made of the Olympia
Theatre in London the first picture palace in the world, catching the
popular fancy with what he called his “theatograph”; how he was
eventually in control of eight London theatres showing motion pictures;
how his contract with the Alhambra Theatre for two weeks of pictures in
March, 1896, was stretched eventually to cover four years are part of
the early records of the screen and account for the name “Daddy Paul” by
which this ingenious and daring Englishman is known in movie circles
across the water.
But even Paul’s early successes with motion pictures in the London music
halls did not open his eyes, or the eyes of his colleagues, to the
possibilities and permanency of the new form of entertainment they had
given to the world. Both Paul and Sir Augustus Harris believed that the
fickle public would soon tire of what seemed to be to them merely an
ephemeral novelty, to be soon relegated, as had been countless
vaudeville innovations, to the over-flowing theatrical lumber-room. One
of the strangest features of the history of the motion pictures during
the period of their early youth is that hardly one of their scientific
or commercial exploiters, from Edison down, had anything like a full
appreciation of the future that awaited the screen, of the marvellous
power for growth that lay in the germ from which the toy kinetoscope had
sprung.
There are those who assert that the ultimate salvation of modern
civilization will be accomplished by a triple alliance established by
the United States, England and France. Those who make this prediction
have in mind, of course, a trio of fighting nations who, by force of
arms, will eventually compel an unruly world to come to order and accept
the point of view cherished by the conquerors. But is it not possible
that America, England and France, having worked together as a triple
alliance to perfect the motion picture, have given to the race a medium
for enlightenment that may make another world war in defence of
civilization unnecessary? Is it not, at least, conceivable that these
three nations, whose inventive and progressive genius made, through
Daguerre, Edison and Paul, the motion picture possible may find, in time
to save humanity from a hideous cataclysm, that the screen, in a
democratic world, may so strengthen the influence of peace-making
diplomacy as to render eventually armies and navies practically
obsolete?
And in this connection, it is interesting to note that the claim of
France to a high place in that triple alliance which made the movies a
tremendous power for both good and evil in a perturbed world does not
rest wholly upon Daguerre and his invention of the daguerreotype. No
account of the evolution of the motion picture would be complete without
reference to the impetus given to the new industry in “Daddy” Paul’s
halcyon days by the Messrs. Lumière and Sons, of Paris, France,
manufacturers of photographic apparatus, dry plates, etc. The Edison
kinetoscope had come within their purview in 1893 and they had realized
at once, as had Paul, that a motion picture that could have but one
observer at a time was merely a butterfly in the chrysalis. The Messrs.
Lumière solved ingeniously, and in their own way, the problem that had
confronted Paul and are entitled to a part of the glory that goes to
those who changed the kinetoscope from a peep-show for one to a screen
display for hundreds.
It was the French machine that brought Edison’s one-eyed toy back to the
country of its birth raised to the dignity of an amusement for adults.
Through the energy and far-sightedness of Richard G. Hollaman, head of
the Eden Musée, of New York, the Lumière apparatus, in the Fall of 1896,
created something of a sensation in the American metropolis. To the Eden
Musée, known to fame for its presentation of historic personages of the
past, belongs the honor of making the path to glory easy to the
celebrities of to-day. Fame was now to discard stuffed effigies as a
reward for greatness to use the screen to bring the exalted of the earth
down to the masses. The movie had been finally launched upon a career
that was to lead it toward heights from which to-day it can see a future
that, unless the human race wantonly commits hari-kari, will be
unimaginably glorious.
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