We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
appears to be flickerless. But without any shutter at all the 'rain* on the screen is far worse than any flicker — the whole idea was a bad mistake. I bought one of these otherwise excellent mechanisms, fitted it with a shutter, a 'gate' which did not scratch the films, and a 'take-up' to rewind them as they came from the machine, instead of letting them fall into a basket or on to the floor, which was the very reprehensible custom of the time. Then I adapted the machine to my change-over device and I had a good and reliable apparatus.
But though my first attempts at the travelling show business consisted of half a dozen forty-foot films from Paul's junk basket, plus a little music and a hundred or so lantern-slides, it required considerable ingenuity to spin that material out to an evening's entertainment. I showed the films forwards in the ordinary way and then showed some of them backwards. I stopped them in the middle and argued with them; called out to the little girl who was standing in the forefront of the picture to stand aside which she immediately did. That required careful timing but was very effective. But with it all I very soon found I must have more films and better ones.
So I collected from Fuerst Brothers, in Dashwood House, some Lumiere films, and some others from Paul. There is a little story that I have told so often that I have almost come to believe it. Maybe it belongs to the si non e vero class: I will admit that it is perhaps a little exaggerated. I was ready to begin my show in a crowded hall built beneath a chapel. I do not know its denomination and that doesn't matter. The apparatus was set up, as was quite usual in those days, in the very middle of the audience, quite regardless of fire risk or panic. Everything was ready to make a start when the pastor came and sat down beside me. He said that, of course, he was quite certain that there would be nothing in my programme which could possibly be offensive to any of the pure young people who formed the majority of his congregation, but, as the pastor of his little flock and merely as a matter of form, he would ask me to show him a list of my titles. I handed it to him and watched him reading slowly down and nodding approval until he suddenly frowned and said he couldn't possibly allow a vulgar music-hall actress to be shown in his hall. It was my chef d'oeuvre, a beautifully hand-coloured film of Loie Fuller in her famous Serpentine Dance. It was completely innocuous, and I told him so with some heat. He was adamant and
33