The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

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July-August, 1952 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 85 welfare, domestic hygiene, epidemics, etc. When this department is formed, will it be obliged to forgo the aid of the screen because the Government has scrapped the necessary machinery? There is a great fight to come when peace is declared. Germany and America will try to flood the world with their commercial propaganda films. Both countries are already armed for a great campaign and our trade will suffer, to an extent that few people have yet realised, if we are not able to adopt similar and as efficient measures. Germany, to give only one branch of her activities, has already bought cinemas in every part of the world accessible to her, in order to ensure the exhibition of these commercial propaganda films. One of the first aims of the British Board of Trade at this moment should be the preparation of similar films, and the development of means of distribution. We have now an opportunity to show the peoples of enemy countries (on the films) what we have done in the war, what were our aims, how they have been misled, and what we are like. And what are we doing? Nothing — except that our men are going to the German cinemas, and are seeing German films! For all these reasons a central government film department will be even more necessary during the next few years of reconstruction than during the war; and without it, there will be an immense waste of the money, time, and energy which are so badly needed for the problems before us. The country that wastes the least time will win the Peace. Our Government must learn quickly that there is no quicker and no surer way of teaching and driving facts home than by means of the film. It is a tragedy to see the days and weeks rush by, while our rulers ignore the golden opportunity for their country that lies to hand in the great invention of the cinematograph. EDISON'S KINETOSCOPE An article of 1894 about Edison's short-lived peep-show kinetoscope THIS instrument is to the eye what Edison's phonograph is to the ear. The moving and, apparently, living figures in the kinetoscope are produced in the following manner: Mr. Edison has a stage upon which the performances he reproduces are enacted. These performances are recorded by taking a series of 43 photographs in rapid succession, the time occupied in taking them being one second only. Thus every progressive phase of every single action is secured, and the photographs are successively reproduced on a film of celluloid. When this film is passed before the eye at the same rate of speed as that at which the photographs were taken, the photographically disjointed parts of a given action are united in one complete whole. Thus supposing a person to be photographed taking off his coat — as is done in one case — the successive views representing the phase of action at every forty-third part of a second are joined up, and the complete operation of taking off the coat is presented to the eye as it would appear in reality. The apparatus in which the reproduction takes place is a cabinet about 4ft. high, 2ft. wide, and lft. 9 ins. deep. It contains the celluloid film band, the apparatus for reconstructing the disjointed views, and a small electric motor for driving the apparatus. The chief detail of the mechanism is a flat metal ring having a slot in it, which makes about 2,000 revolutions per minute. The film passes rapidly over the ring, beneath which is a light. The spectator looks through a lens on to the film, and every action recorded on it passes under his view. Ten machines were shown, in which the most rapid and complex actions were faithfully reproduced.