Marvels of Modern Science

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department capable of photographic demonstration is being covered by moving pictures. Negatives are now being made of the most intricate surgical operations and these are teaching the students better than the witnessing of the real operations, for at the critical moment of the operation the picture machine can be stopped to le

achines whereby things are magnified to a great degree. By this means the analysis of a substance can be better illustrated than any way else. For instance a drop o

atre. It is estimated that at the present time in America there are upwards of 20,000 moving picture shows patronized daily by

and tragedy. The grotesque farce of vaudeville and the tawdry show which o

culum. Millions of dollars are annually expended in the production of films. Companies of trained and practiced actors are brought together to enact pantomime

r cameras to "catch" every incident, every movement even to the wink of an eyelash, so that the "stay-at-homes" can see the show as we

isco. This was in 1878. A revolution had been brought about in photography by the introduction of the instantaneous process. By the use of sensitive films of gelatine bromide of silver emulsion the time required for the action of ordinary daylight in producing a photograph had been reduced to a very small fraction of a second. Muybridge utilized these films for the photographic analysis of animal motion. Beside a race-track he placed a battery of cameras, each camera being provided wi

inches wide, open at the top, around the lower and interior rim of which a series of related pictures were placed. The cylinder was then rapi

s circumference. This disk was mounted conveniently for rapid revolution so that each picture would pass in front of the condenser of an optical lantern. The difficulties involved in the preparation of the disk pictures and in the

ent which would reproduce to the eye the effect of motion by means of a swift and graded succession of pictures, so that the reproduc

y behind a lens provided with a shutter, and so arranged as to alternately admit and cut off the light from the moving object. He adjusted the mechanism so that there were 46 exposures a second, the film remaining stationary during the momentary time of exposure, after which it was carried forward far enough to bring a new surface into the proper position. The time of the

at the time and for a short period was much in demand, but soon new devices came into the field a

as great as that necessary to move an unexposed portion of the film into position. No shutter was employed. As time passed many other improvements were made. An ingenious Frenchman named Lumiere, came forwa

magniscope, mutoscope, panoramagraph, theatograph and scores of others

ctric focusing lamp. At or near the focal point of the projecting lantern condenser the film is made to travel across the field as in the kinetoscope. A water cell in front of the condenser absorbs most of the heat and transmits most of the light from t

nd so well as almost to deceive the eye. In fact in many cases the counterfeit is taken for the reality and audiences as much aroused as if they were looking upon a scene of actual life.

g employment to an army of thousands. It would be hard to tell how many mimic actors and actresses make a living by posi

ustrate some of the productions. They send their photographers and actors all over the world for settings. Most of the business,

drowning of a cat to the hanging of a man; a horse race or fire alarm is not out

ce is divided into sections for the setting or staging of different productions, therefore several representations can take place at the same time before the eyes of the cameras. There are "properti

s influence on susceptible youth. But all such pictures have for the most part been eliminated and there is a strict taboo on anything with a degrading influence or partaking of the brutal. Prize fights are often barred. In many large cities there is a board of censorship to which the different manufacturing firms must submit duplicates. This board has to pass on all the films before they are releas

nd moral lines tending to uplift and ennoble our boys and girls so that they may deve

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e phonograph acts in perfect unison supplying the voice suitable to the moving action. Men and women pass along the canvas, act, talk, laugh, cry and "have their being" just as in real life. Of course, they are immaterial, merely the reflection of films, but the one hundred thousandth of an inch thick, yet they give forth oral sounds as creatures of flesh and blood. In fact every sound is produced harmoniously with the action on the screen. An iron ball is dropped and you hear its thud upon the floor, a plate is cracked and you can hear the cracking just the same as if the material plate were broken in your pres

the right kind of pictures impossible to get. Bit by bit, however, a machine was perfected which could "hear" so well that the actor could move at his pleasure within a radius of twenty feet. That is the machine that is being used now. This new combination of the moving picture machine