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about that red-hot electric lamp at the Crystal Palace exhibition. Being used to limelight which required manual attention every thirty or forty seconds, I couldn't see why an electric lamp, used for a similar purpose, shouldn't be similarly trimmed by hand. I determined that as soon as I had sufficient dexterity I would make a hand-feed lamp for use in magic or optical lanterns. I did in fact design and make and patent1 such an arc-lamp exactly three months after I received the lathe and before I had attained sufficient dexterity to make it decently, but it worked and it was good enough to serve as a model for others to work from. Soon it was put on the market by Ross, the opticians, and presently the makers of the finest cinematograph projectors.
Then my father and I went to Olympia and saw among other things a little side show of 'Living Photographs' by R. W. Paul, who was projecting through a translucent screen some films made by Edison for his peep-show Kinetoscope. This was a modern miracle I shall never forget. We had somehow missed the first showing, several months earlier, of Lumiere's 'Living Photographs' at the New Polytechnic in February, 1896, and I hadn't even read about it, so I was completely unprepared and immensely impressed, and my first reaction was that here was a chance to sell my electric lamp. With a sudden access of unusual business enterprise I pushed through the crowd and into the operating room behind the screen and tackled Paul about it. He said I could come and see him at his office at 44, Hatton Garden in the City. I went there and found that his work-room was at the very top of a tall building and I stumbled up the narrow staircase, trying not to tread upon the dozen or more sleeping Polish and Armenian Jews who had been waiting there for days and nights for delivery of 'Animatographs,' as Paul's machines were called. And there at the top was Paul himself, perspiring freely and cranking away at his big clumsy machines in the hopeless endeavour to run them in and make them usable by the weaker brethren outside. Robert Paul later became one of my best and firmest friends, and on this occasion he purchased half a dozen of my lamps at a profit of over a pound apiece and thus laid the foundation of my fortune.
Thus, at about 21 years old, was I caught in the outer fringe of the film-net that Fate was spreading and baiting for me, but even then I did not know that I was snared.
It was then that in my working hours — always to be distinguished
Patent No. 11,892. June 19th, 1895.
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