Moving Picture World (Mar-Dec 1907)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD. 679 Published Every Saturday. Th« World Photographic Publishing Company, New YorK ALFRED H. SAUNDERS, Editor. J. P. Chalmers, Associate Editor and Business Manager. Vol. 1., .DECEMBER 21 No. 42 SUBSCRIPTION: $2.00 per year. Post free in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. CANADA AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES: $2.50 per year. All communications should be addressed to P. 0. BOX 450, NEW YORK CITY. Net Advertising Rate: $2 per inch; 17 cents per line Editorial. FRATERNAL GREETINGS AND HEARTY GOOD WISHES FOR THE YULETIDE, WE EXTEND TO OUR READERS THE WIDE WORLD O’ER. :::::::::::: The United Film Service Protective Association. We congratulate the film renters on the outcome of their deliberations at Chicago. The U. F. S. P. A. is now an accomplished fact, and the power the association can yield is immense, and in the hands of the chosen leaders will be wielded only for the good of all concerned, and that it will result in the uplifting of the exhibitions. We commend to our readers the weighty words of Thomas A. Edison and we sincerely trust they will have the effect of inducing all renters to eliminate from their stock every film that is in any sense objectionable to the good taste of the public who patronize the nickelodeons. Just a word to the exhibitors. A few have got the mistaken idea that the association is formed to put some of the nickelodeons out of business. This is not so. The renters have banded together for mutual protection and to secure for the nickelodeon proprietor greater benefits, cleaner films, and a better service, such as will in the long run obtain for them better patronage and less fussy, irksome persecution. The Operators' Union. We thank our friend M. E. Backenstoss for his timely letter which appears in our correspondence column. We had not forgotten the Philadelphia Union, which we have watched for some time, and congratulate every member thereof on its continued success and the results already accomplished. But Philadelphia is not New York, and the Union here is but a farce; it is a standing joke in the ranks of the operators, who, either through shortsightedness, jealousy, or*place seeking, have allowed it to drop. It might be resuscitated with benefit to the whole profession. Boys are being employed in the place of men, to the great discredit of the shows. Proprietors, for the sake of a few dollars, are employing them to their standing disgrace and poorness of exhibitions. We indeed welcome articles such as this letter and await with eagerness future communications that have a tendency to elevate and educate our readers, especially from those who can speak with authority. Edison's Place in the Moving Picture Art. By Frank L. Dyer, General Counsel, Edison Manufacturing Company. It is a curious fact in connection with most great inventions, almost without exception, that prior to their actual accomplishment their possibility has been predicted by ingenious speculators of the Jules Verne and H. G. Wells type. Just as there are many of us who have no difficulty in imagining an ideal social condition, while the accomplishment of any radical socialistic reform involves the highest order of genius, so in the field of science and invention there appear to be many men who can fortell what ought to be done in the arts, although there are very few who actually accomplish the predicted result. Long before the invention of the telephone the possibility of transmitting speech electrically had been foretold, and not only so, but strange to say, almost the exact mode of accomplishment was predicted. The possibility of lighting by incandescence was known long before Edison’s actual realization of the modern art ; the electric telegraph was suggested many years before the work of Morse ; the modern sub-marine finds its prototype in the famous “Nautilus” of our boyhood ; and more than two hundred years ago Cyrano de Bergerac in his imaginative account of a visit to the moon and sun foretold all the possibilities of the modern phonograph. No one doubts for a moment that aerial navigation will be eventually accomplished and, when it does come, I do not hesitate to say that the invention by which that accomplishment is realized will be found to be substantially anticipated in some of the descriptions which we now are familiar with, but from which with our present knowledge we have obtained no solution of the problem. The moving picture art is no exception in this respect. The phenomena concerning persistence of vision were well known over a hundred years ago. The possibility of producing the semblance of animate motion by means of toys of the zoetrope type was clearly understood. The fact that the pictures necessary for the illusion might be obtained photographically was also realized. Many of the early inventors and dreamers were undoubtedly handicapped by defects in photographic processes, necessitating the use of fugitive wet plates requiring long exposure.