The theatre of science; a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914)

6 Cbe Cbeatre Augustus Harris was negotiating with Paul, he told Paul that he had heard of a similar machine in Paris. Paul expressed profound surprise. The Lumieres' invention was called the Cinematograph, and the exhibition resulting from the outset of its advent as an amusement attraction vras hailed everywhere as a genuine sensation. It was simpler, more accurate, and immeasurably more scientific than Paul's Animatograph. The latter had easily scored a popular success, both at the Olympia and the Alhambra in London before the Lumieres' Cinematograph was revealed to an astonished London audience at the Regent Street Polytechnic under the direction of Herr Trewey, in April, 1896. Trev/ey will be recalled by many readers of this volume as a famous impersonator and shadowgrapher, who even in the late 80's was accorded as high as $700 a week in the variety theatres of this country. It was Trewey's photographic instinct that drew him to investigate the merits of the existing apparatus, and he cast his fortunes with the Lumiere invention unhesitatingly, securing the English concession. The Lumiere machine, as far as I am able to discover through diligent inquiry while abroad, was utilized for exhibitions in Paris stores (where auditoriums seating about 200 persons were constructed) several months before Paul gave his first London exhibit. I do not know how Thomas A. Edison felt when the cables heralded the commercial success that the foreigners had made with the Wizard's practically discarded Kinetoscope as the basis for their achievements, but undoubtedly he was now aware of the importance of his own invention, for it was after the London news of Paul and Lumiere's triumph that the Vitascope was intro