Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1911)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 781 X-RAY MOVING PICTURES. From the Literary Digest. So long as w are able to. take radiographs and moving pictures, it would seem not to be difficult to combine them and have a moving radiograpb — an x-ray picture, for instance, of the bones of a moving arm or hand. The difficulty is, however, that a radiograph is not a photograph, and that the x-rays do not behave in all respects like ordinary light. It is necessary, therefore, to vary the ordinarv processes, and this has not been done with complete s iccess until very recently, although, as we are told by R. Villers in an article on "The Cinematograph and the X-Rays," contributed to La Nature (Paris, July 18), the idea is as old as the beginnings of radiography. We read: ''Since the x-rays act on a photographic plate, the first idea that presents itself to the mind is to receive them on the cinematograph film after their passage through the opaque body whose interior it is desired to photograph. But we must not forget that the x-rays are not refracted; it is thus impossible to concentrate them with a lens and we are obliged, in this process, to use films exactly the size of the object to be photographed. This is possible with small creatures like frogs or mice, but we are soon brought to a standstill by the mechanical impossibility of imparting motion, at the rate of sixteen photographs per second, to a film of considerable dimensions. "The x-rays have the property of rendering certain substances flourescent . . . [and] the rays emitted by a flourescent substance acted upon by x-rays are of quite different nature from the exciting rays that produced them; they are rays of ordinary light; a lens refracts them. . . . Here is the solution: a cinematograph picture is made of the images formed on a fluorescent screen as would be done with an ordinary moving object." The light given off by ordinary fluorescent substances is greenish, and poorly adapted for taking rapid-exposure pictures, but it has been found that tungstate of lime gives off rays, which although faint to the human eye are rich in the chemical radiation that counts where photography is concerned. Thus the apparatus with which Messrs. Comandon and Lemon have successfully taken moving x-ray pictures has three parts: the device for producing the Roentgen radiation; the fluorescent screen covered with tungstate of lime, and the cinematographic apparatus with its object lenses of special form made of pure quartz. The accompanying pictures give an idea of how well this machinery has worked. The writer quotes the inventors as saying, in conclusion: "We have now scarcely passed the period of experimentation and material organization. The field of physiological and anatomo-pathological investigation is open; here resides the interest of cineradiography and toward this our efforts should be directed." THE SARDINE INDUSTRY. This Lubin industrial film is also an educational one. The process of the sardine industry from the ocean to the consumer is one of the most thorough of its kind ever shown; there is no omission, but a detailed illustrative exhibition from the beginning to the end. People are always most thoroughly interested in pictures depicting the process of preparation of those things which are a household commodity, and yet the nature of which may be hidden from them; especially so when prepared in a foreign land. Children, too, are delighted to see the marvelous changes together with the strange history of those things with which they are familiar, and the procuring of which is a mystery to them. Accustomed to seeing sardines only by the small boxful, the beholder of this picture is astonished to see the fishermen bringing them in netfulls from the ocean by the tens of thousands, until he stands with them knee deep around him, an enormous wriggling, diving mass. Onward to the factory, sorted, dried, boxed, singly, fish by fish, covered, sealed, made airtight, shipped and sold; such is the interesting progress of the picture, ending with the portrait of a typical old Brittany fisherman enjoying his meal of sardines and biscuit with evident relish — everyone enjoyed this enlightening and entertaining picture. Digestion in a Guinea-Pig. Internal Movements of a Guinea-Pig. • • 1 i t 1 % \k Elbow of a Monkey. The Human Hand. Illustrations by courtesy of the Literary Digest. MOVING PICTURES TAKEN WITH THE X-RAYS.