International photographer (Feb-Dec 1929)

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Four The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER July, 1929 until it was displaced by the moving picture. The invention of this apparatus is usually attributed to Athanasius Kircher, a German scholar and mathematician, of Geisa, near Fulda, who was living in Rome in the Seventeenth century. However that may be, he describes such an instrument in his "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae," published in 1646, and with the aid of a scientifically minded mechanic constructed a lantern with the definite object of projecting an image on a white wall or screen. A woodcut in the book shows the lantern in use; and we learn from an observer of the period that the rooms of the Jesuit College at Rome were filled nightly with all nobles and grandees who thronged to witness the wonderful picture of a skeleton shown upon a screen. Although the method of projecting a picture upon a screen was thus early discovered, and photography was invented at the beginning of the last century, the nearest approach to the moving picture until recent years were the dissolving view and the phantasmagoria which mystified and delighted our grandfathers. To England belongs the honors of first producing a photograph, or, as it was then called, a "photogenic drawing." In June, 1802, Thomas Wedgewood, the fourth son of Wedgewood the potter, published in the Journal of the Royal Institution a paper giving "an account of a method of copying paintings upon glass and of making profiles by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver," with observations by Sir Humphry Davy. But although Wedgewood prepared a paper which received the image and retained it for a time, he had not, when he died three years later, discovered a method of permanently fixing his prints, no washing being sufficient to eliminate the traces of the silver salt which occupied the unexposed or shaded portions. The Daguerreotype The first to find a process of photography which gave pictures that were subsequently unaffected by light was Nicephore de Niepce, who, with his partner, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, gave us permanent portraiture under the process named after the patentee, "Daguerreotype." Then came the invention of William Henry Fox-Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, which placed photography on a commercial basis. Fox-Talbot described his process in a paper to the Royal Society in January, 1839. This process Talbot protected by a patent in 1841. It is remarkable to note that in his provisional patent specification he claimed to be able to secure photographs of any rapidly moving object and so reproduce life-like action. This claim, however, he was unable to substantiate, and it was deleted from the specification, but his process of photography laid down the principles which form the basis of cinematography as it is known today. While photography was thus being perfected, researches into the prob lem of the persistence of vision were proceeding on parallel lines. Dr. Peter Mark Roget, secretary to the Royal Society and author of the notable "Thesaurus," was the first to find a clue to the portrayal of movement by means of pictures. He disclosed it in a remarkable paper, read before the Royal Society on December 9, 1824, entitled "Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures." The phenomenon on which Dr. Roget based his theory was a simple, everyday occurrence. Watching a baker's cart through a Venetian blind, he noticed that the rapidly revolving wheels appeared to be stationary when he passed his eye up and down the blind. This effect was produced by the slits of the blind acting as shutters and giving a momentary view of the wheels in a stationary position. Early Motion Pictures Based on this principle was the little toy invented by Sir John Herschell in 1825, which he called the "Thaumatrope." Ten years later two practically identical instruments for the portrayal of lifelike motion by means of pictures were invented — the "Phenakistoscope," by Dr. Plateau, of Ghent, and the "Stroboscope," by Dr. Stampfner, of Vienna. Two of these instruments were on view in 1838 at the opening of the Polytechnic Institute, Regent street, which therefore has the credit of giving the first public exhibition of the results of these early efforts to produce moving pictures. In the meantime Dr. Faraday had given much time and study to the theory advanced by Dr. Roget, and in 1831 gave to the Royal Society an explanatory paper entitled "A peculiar class of optical deceptions showing wheel phenomena." The next noteworthy step in the direction of the portrayal of movement from inanimate drawings was the "Daedaleum," invented by Dr. W. G. Horner, of Bristol, who published a full description of his invention in 1834. This same instrument was, however, patented in 1860 by a Frenchman named Devigny, under the name of the "Zeotrope," or Wheel of Life. It consisted of a hollow cylinder turning on a vertical axis, and having its surface pierced with a number of slots. Round the interior was arranged a series of pictures representing successive stages of such a subject as a galloping horse, and when the cylinder was rotated the observer, looking through the slots, saw the horse apparently in motion. The pictures were at first drawn by hand, but photography was afterwards applied to their production. Thus far all the inventions based on the theory of the persistence of vision were the fascinating mechanical toys of our grandfathers. It was an Austrian lieutenant, Franz Uchatius by name, who first turned his attention, in 1851, to the projection of lifelike movements on a screen by the use of an optical lantern. He painted figures upon a glass disk and used an opaque slotted shutter disk to make the successive phases of the movement portrayed. A similar instrument was later evolved by Monsieur Dubossq and exhibited by him at the Polytechnic Institute, Regent street, in 1852, where also were depicted many remarkable lifelike moving effects produced by mechanical lantern slides. "Life in the Lantern" In 1865 John Arthur Roebuck Rudge, a native of Bath, began his researches on the subject of the portrayal of movement by photographic means, using an optical lantern to show images on a screen by means of lantern slides taken to show successive phases of movement. This invention Rudge called "Life in the Lantern," and he undoubtedly succeeded in mystifying his audiences by showing on the screen a human head going through the movements of facial contortion. Some time later Rudge improved on his invention and produced what he called the "Bio-Phantoscope," an instrument which contained moving parts working from one rotating handle almost similar to those of the present-day motion-picture projection machine. It was, indeed, the "Bio-Phantoscope" which taught W. FrieseGreene, the inventor of commercial cinematography, how to make a picture come to life upon the screen. Another inventor who gave lifelike movement to the picture of a human head was Beale, of Greenwich, who in 1867-8 invented an arrangement whereby 16 full-sized views of a man's face painted upon a glass disc were exposed through an opening cut to represent the man's head and shoulders, the face being shown smiling and making a series of grimaces. Mr. Beale was also the inventor of the "Choreutoscope," a mechanical lantern slide for showing various phases of movement. Another method of exhibiting cinematographic effects which was invented about the same period was to bind the pictures in book form by one edge, and then release them from the other in rapid succession by means of the thumb or some mechanical device as the book was bent backwards. The subject was thus viewed, not by projection, but directly, either with the unaided eye or through a magnifying glass. Such was the invention patented on March 18, 1868, by Linnett, who gave it the name of "Linnett's Kineograph." A year later came another "wheel of life," the invention of Thomas Ross the younger. This invention embodied all the principles subsequently adopted by Thomas Alva Edison in his "Kinetoscope." In 1870 Professor E. J. Marey, of Paris, embarked on the research of the analysis of motion, and after many failures he secured in what he called a "SteroZoetrope" some remarkable records of movement, including photographs showing the blood and heart in action and the movement of gnats' wings.