The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

November, 1925 Among The Magazines and Books 531 ception included taking the photographs on and reproducing the positive prints from a tape of light, tough, flexible material, such as a narrow celluloid film. In this particular development I was very materially assisted by the intelligent and hearty cooperation of Mr. George Eastman, of Rochester, New York. Accordingly, Edison started his experimental work late in 1837 or early in 1888. His first photographs were made on a cylinder, somewhat resembling a phonograph record, which demonstrated that it was possible to obtain a perfect reproduction of an object in motion. Turning then to my original thought of using a continuous film, I first employed a film of a width of one-half inch, but found that the pictures were still too small for satisfactory reproduction, especially if enlarged by projection on a screen. I then experimented with photographs one inch wide by three-quarters of an inch high. These dimensions were adopted by me in 1889 and remain today the standard of the art. To meet the problem of feeding such a film intermittently past the field of a camera lens, with sufl&cient speed and at the same time keep the film stationary at the instant of exposure, Mr. Edison adopted the scheme of using sprocket holes outside the photographs on back sides of the film — four holes for each picture. He describes his first successful camera as follows. Very many forms of start and stop mechanism were tried, and by the summer of 1889 a satisfactory arrangement was adopted by me and was embodied in an actual full size camera by means of which the first motion pictures were taken on a celluloid film. These pictures were made in the summer of 1889; they were exactly like the present pictures except that they were tal^en at a considerably higher speed. In the latter respect they were actually superior to the present practice of the art, because the reproduction was smoother and less jerky. By its means I had been able to secure as early as the summer of 1889 motion pictures on a long celluloid film representing exactly a scene as it would be observed by the eye with all of its details both as to background and as to objects moving with respect to the background. No such fihn had ever before been secured. No such camera for feed ing a film intermittently and making exposures during the periods of rest had ever before been made or suggested. After making my camera, the question then was, how shall the pictures be reproduced? It was obvious that they could be viewed directly through a suitable magnifying lens or that they could be projected on a screen as had been done by Muy bridge and Marey in their classical work on the analysis of motion. Mr. Edison observed the most fruitful field before him was the exhibition of pictures by direct observation rather than projection, for he could then appeal to the popular form of entertainment in those days — the so-called "slot parlor," where phonographs were installed to be operated by coin-controlled mechanism. It therefore occurred to me to start out with a device by which the motion pictures could be made use of in the many hundreds of slot parlors which were then doing a flourishing business in the United States. This resulted in the development of the peep hole kinetoscope in which the film was moved continuously by a coin-started electric motor passing a magnifying lens of about two diameters; the picture was illuminated by an electric light below it and was observed through a slit in a shutter which exposed the picture when substantially in the optical axis of the lens. This gave an entirely satisfactory reproduction and anyone who remembers the old peep hole kinetoscope will, I think, agree with me that the results secured were remarkably clear and natural. Several thousands of these first kinetoscopes were made and distributed throughout the country in the years following 1890 and many of them were exhibited at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Hundreds of films were made from 1890 and even earlier, for which purpose the first motion picture studio was erected, known as the "Black Maria." I had always had in mind the projection of motion pictures on a screen even before the completion of my first successful camera in 1889. As a matter of fact, it was our practice from the very first to test the character and quality of films by projecting them on a screen by equipping the kinetoscope with a more powerful light and with a projecting lens. For the public exhibition of pictures by projection, Mr. Edison says: For this purpose I saw that the successful projector should be based upon the principle of my