Living pictures; their history, photoproduction and practical working. With a digest of British patents and annotated bibliography (1899)

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2 LIVING PICTURES. Picture—a history which could never have been written were it not for the physiological phenomenon of Persistence of Vision, that basis upon which rests every one of the mechanical appliances which will be described. The stock experiment which proves Persistence of Vision is of so elementary a character that man must be supposed to have noticed the effect long before he was capable of theorising upon its cause. If a stick with lighted or glowing point is taken and whirled in a circle (an action doubtless performed in prehistoric times), it will be at once noticed, if the speed is great enough, that the glowing end of the stick is no longer seen as a point; but a luminous circle filling its whole path is visible instead. Again, take a flat steel spring and fix it at one end, strike the other so as to cause it to vibrate, and the spring will appear to fill the whole of the space over which it moves, as seen in Fig. I. Now it cer- tainly does not require much proof that neither stick nor spring can be in two places at once ; and the only possible solution of the mystery is that the luminous point or spring is seen in any given spot after it has moved away, and continues to be visible there until its return to the same position, when its image again falls on the same spot in the eye and thus gives an impression of continuous presence. This taking place all along the path of the moving object naturally causes it in appearance to fill the whole space. For- tunately this, as most other experimental facts, admits of simple verbal expression—one sentence suffices— we continue to experience the visual effect of light after it has ceased to act This phenomenon is called, Fig. I.