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small for picturization by straight photography or which will not operate when opened up to the view of the camera. A recently made mechanigraph showed an entire unit of hydro-electric generation at Niagara Falls (Fig. 1). The power house in which the generators are placed is on a level with the river above the falls, and the turbines which drive the generators are just above the level of the river below the falls — that is, nearly two hundred feet below the generators. Drive is through a long vertical shaft reaching from turbine to generator through a pit cut in the rock, and the penstocks, which carry the water to the turbines, run down through the pits. Obviously it is impossible to actually photograph anything but the power house and its contents. The mechanigraph, however, being blissfully ignorant of such limitations, makes a sharp cut, so to speak, through the rock from top to bottom of the pit and lays bare the whole system. More — it slices off exterior parts that hide inner workings. On the screen the whole unit and all its activites are visible — the water from the canal rushing down the penstock to the turbine, the turbine spinning under the impulse, the long shaft transmitting power to the generator and even the generator armature itself turning in its field. The appearance of the job is true to life, as nearly as it is possible to make it — so true, in fact, that one skeptic asserted, with a shake of his head, that he did not believe it zvas really a photograph, for he did not see how it could be done.
We have succeeded in making water flow on the screen in much the way water appears to flow in reality. That is, the observer sees that a transparent body is in motion, but there are no visible lines or streaks to help his eye to deceive his brain. The flow of gases is shown in the same way, without the use of arrows, dots and dashes or other arbitrary symbols which savor of the drawing board and take away from the appearance of reality. Smoke and steam look like smoke and steam. Clouds and lightning arc clouds and lightning, and not caricatures. Even the afterglare of a lightning flash glows on the screen.
In electrical work, such as was embodied in a picture showing the principle of the induction motor and its revolving magnetic field, it is of course necessary to assume that electricity looks like something and that magnetism is visible. It is possible, however, to do this and still keep away from an excess of conventionalism, with the result that the screen shows the theory of the motor in a way that appears realistic. This particular picture brings out clearly and understandably principles that are extremely difficult to grasp by the ordinary text-book method.
The same methods are employed in showing the operation of the vacuum gasoline feed system, for instance (Fig. 2). The somewhat complex action of vacuum and atmospheric pressures are clearly brought out, the operation of the valves, the flow of liquid throughout the whole system, and, in fact, every detail. The effect is the same as if the system were split open but still continued to operate.
In a general way, it may be said that the mechanigraph con
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