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A Scientific Article for Unscientific Minds, Showing the Evolution of Art, Illustration and Motion Pictures
By EUGENE V. BREWSTER
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isten, my children, and you shall hear the story of how Moving Pictures came into the world. Perhaps you already know how Motion Pictures are made and thrown upon the screen, but I doubt if you know how and why they were invented. In the January number of this magazine, I gave you a little history of the life of Mr. Edison, but in that article I did not attempt to show how and why that famous inventor put the great puzzle together. I am going to tell you all about it now. And I am going to tell you of the inventors who lived thousands of years before Mr. Edison was born, and of their children, and of their toys, and of their pictures and art. And I am going to tell you all this in the simplest language I can command, so that the very youngest of you may read and understand.
First, I want to take you back to the time when people lived in caves, when they had no houses like you and I have ; when they had no paper, nor pens and pencils and printing, and when they did not have even an alphabet, nor even words. That was thousands of years ago — how many, nobody knows ; but it was long before the earliest times that history tells about. You know that Darwin says
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that human beings grew from the lower animals; that our ancestors were baboons and monkeys ; that these animals gradually got intelligence, and after thousands of years they very slowly became civilized, and grew into men and women. But these people were much different than those we see now. They had no clothes like we have, and they used leaves and the skins of animals to cover themselves. At first they had no language and could not talk with one another like we do. They were really savages. But even animals have a way of conversing with one another. You have perhaps observed how intelligent the little ants are. Sweeping across country in great armies, they keep up constant communication thruout the whole line, and succeed in sending news to one another about the easiest routes, about the presence of enemies, about obstacles in their way, about where food is to be had. and about how to arrange their forces to carry out their plans. Perhaps you have seen them stop, gather in groups, and talk with one another by means of those little hair-like horns, called antenna?. This kind of talking is called the gesture language. All animals can talk in this way. And some animals have other ways of talking. The cluck of the hen, the howl of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, the purring of the eat, the chirp of the bird, are all