The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

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Among the Magazines 291 pr the reek of furs; and the men, unfa- niliar with the wonderful imaginative creations and art of civilization were lifted >y accident and the floods of money that >oured in upon them to be the exponents )f the greatest social instrument of the vorld. . . The motion picture industry oday stands before the public bankrupt n character." Mr. Post is no more earnest in his con- lemnation of the element above-mentioned ban in his eulogy of the other element, the notion picture itself. "It is the greatest nvention for conveying human thought and tor visualizing that has yet been invented; he motion picture—in its capacity for story-telling—fills a deep,, vital human need. . It makes everyone an eyewitness of iny event, and it gives everyone a front seat. It is reality itself multiplied indefi- nitely and for every beholder. It is no toy; it is a social instrument of enormous service in every field of human thought, in svery art, and in every channel whereby it is desired to spread ideas and give them a yuick, firm, visible root. . . It is an in- strument of civilization just as the printing press is. . ." Perhaps the most arresting statement made in the whole article is the following: "The motion picture is an instrument of :ivilization just as the printing press is. , . It is essentially the evolution of the printing press and not of the theater." (There is indeed food for thought here, it is an idea which would bear much elabora- :ion. Conceive, for instance, the state of things if the present movie producers were in charge of the world's printing presses!) Hence—as was the case with the printing press—the Church should have seized upon this tremendous force in the very begin- ning and exercised a guiding influence upon its development. Not to do so was gross negligence on the part of the religious or- ganizations, they missed a vast opportunity. "The motion pictures can accomplish in decades what the printing press and the slow processes of academic education have taken centuries to accomplish. But it can do none of these things unless it have art— and the dominant theatrical elements have long since recognized this. It must have intelligence as well as purpose; sincerity is no substitute for skill." THE AMERICAN CITY (Septem- ber) presents interesting evidence of the growing use of the camera for other than amusement purposes, in an arti- cle entitled "Mosaic Maps of Cities." Nu- merous ends are served by aerial photos of cities in municipal administration and publicity work. New York City recently mapped itself from a 10,000-foot elevation, by means of 100 photos taken in 69 minutes—something of a revolution in former map-making meth- ods. Some interesting results were ob- tained : the location of one park, for in- stance, was corrected, which had been a whole block out of place on previous earth- made maps; the police department was able to locate every scuttle and skylight for its information in trailing burglars; illegal sewage disposal in rivers was shown; a leak in an oil pipe was shown to have caused the burning of a ship at its pier, etc. The Erie fire was shown to have caused more than the fire-damage, for the terrible blockade of traffic for blocks around ap- peared in the photo as silent evidence of large losses directly resultant upon the fire. "Such demonstrations may save cities millions of dollars and enable Chambers of Commerce to show prospective manufac- turers the value of transportation facilities in specific locations within the cities." Photos at regular intervals show city growth in detail, and it can be done in no other way with equal effectiveness. Real estate development companies use this means constantly, These photos can be made directly into maps by ink-lining the essentials desired and eliminating the rest by chemicals.