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The Evolution of the Kinetoscope
H
JOE
By A. W. THOMAS
lOE
HE Egyptians are said to have used some sort of boxlike contrivance in producing an illusion, dealing simply with the reversible perspective, without any fantastic modeling; but, skipping ages, and taking up the topic with the instruments of Stampfer and Joseph Antoine Plateau, the latter a Belgian physicist . we grasp the first idea which leads to the present-day motion picture machine. Stampfer 's studies were no't directly along the line to bring out the matter discussed, while Plateau's researches were carried on largely in the field of optics, his anorthoscope being the first advanced step toward the development of the stroboscope, an instrument used for studying the motion of the body, the device consisting of a cylinder with a series of slits cut in it, thru which, as the cylinder revolved, the observer looked at the moving objects, which represented a successive stage in action, and thus a lifelike view was secured.
Then came Ottomar Anschutz, a German photographer, an expert, in his day, at instantaneous photography, who made use of the stroboscope principle in his "tachyscope," by rotating transparent pictures, illuminating them by a spark from an induction coil through a Geissler tube — a sealed glass vessel, filled with various rarefied gases, which show a variety of delicate lights and figures, depending upon the shape of the tube, arrangement of the platinum wires within, the gas, and expansion of aeriform bodies. The ' ' tachyscope " was applied, generally, to useful purposes in physiology, and was adopted by a number of European scientists for use in their researches. Anschutz devoted many years to reproducing the movements of men and animals with this invention.
The zoetrope was next introduced, and one of the earliest applications of
instantaneous photography to the instrument was when the Muybridge pho
. tographs of moving objects were employed, a num
^JJjT* *fi^T *£&£* ^er cameras being so placed as to obtain, in rapid
^** \>^ T^y^ succession, instantaneous negatives of moving horses,
grazing cattle, ships, men, and other objects. From
the negatives thus obtained a strip was prepared for the zoetrope, and a more
lifelike reproduction secured.
Improvements upon the zoetrope developed rapidly; the little optical device, or, we might call it a toy, pleased young and old, and gave fresh thought to many a genius.
The magic lantern played an important part in the development of the Moving Picture machine. The various types of so-called animation instruments became of additional interest and study as oxyhydrogen and electricity were applied in the projection of lantern slides, and improvement followed experiment in the march toward proficiency, every year bringing the geniuses, scientists and inventors nearer and nearer a solution of the problem — animated pictures — until Edison, in 1893, seemed to have solved it by the use of a special camera and of sensitized films of celluloid, the results being the most satisfactory yet accomplished ; Edison, with mathematical and philosophical knowledge, applying a scientific truth to a practical end, and the kinetoscope entered the modern era.
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