The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The Birth of the Talkie ( Continued from page 106). pared celluloid was drawn, with the edges squeezed into narrow slots in the rim, like the old tin-foil phonograph. We had to take our pictures spirally, and they were so limited in size as a result that only the center of each could be brought into focus. '"TT was along about this point that 1. George Eastman came into our experiments. I heard that he was working on a new kind of dry film, and asked him to come down and talk it over. The result was that his representative went back home to see what he could do in making a narrow strip of sensitized film that would operate on a roll. Without George Eastman I don't know what the result would have been in the motion picture. The months that followed were a series of discouragements for all of us. While he was busy with the problem of chemicals we were busy with the problem of mechanics. "It is almost impossible for the layman to appreciate the extreme niceties of adjustment we had to overcome. Try to realize that we were dealing always with minute fractions of seconds. For instance, allowing forty-six exposures per second, as we did at first, we had to face the fact that the film had to be stopped and started again after each exposure. Now, allowing a minimum of one hundredth part of a second for every impression that was registered, you can see that practically half of our time was already gone, and in the remainder of the time we had to move the film forward the necessary distance for the next exposures. "And all this had to be done with the exactness of a watch movement. If there was the slightest variation in the movement of the film, or if it slipped at any time by so much as a hair's breadth, this fact was certain to show up in the enlargements. Finally we completed a mechanism that allowed the film to be moved in the uniform ratio of one-tenth part of the time needed for a satisfactory exposure, and permitted from twenty to forty such exposures per second. "It looked as though we were finished, and we tried the first roll of film jubilantly. Success was in our hands. But we had counted too soon. THE strips had been made in a onehalf inch width that we thought was ample, but it was not enough. We had to make a large size, allowing a oneinch surface for the emulsion, with a one-half inch margin for the perforations needed for the locking device that we used for starting and stopping the film. "This meant, of course, adjusting our mechanical apparatus also to carry the new-sized roll; but we did it at last and in the summer of 1889 the first of the new cameras was ready to show what it could do." "When was the first patent applied for?" "Not until two years later. I was very much occupied with other matters, and while we all congratulated ourselves on what we had accomplished, and knew we had an interesting and novel apparatus, we generally regarded it more or less as a curiosity with no very large practicable possibilities. It probably seems strange to the world now, but such was the fact, even after we had exhibited our first pictures. "These were shown originally in an apparatus that we christened 'The Kinetoscope,' consisting of a cabinet equipped with an electrical motor and battery, and carrying a fifty-foot band of film, passed through the field of a magnifying glass. They attracted quite a lot of attention at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, but we didn't think much of it until we found that two Englishmen, who had been interested in the exhibit, finding that I had carelessly neglected to patent the apparatus abroad, had started an independent manufacture on a considerable scale. "Of course, it was too late then to protect myself, and I concentrated my efforts in devising a mechanism that would project the pictures on a screen before an audience. This consisted largely in reversing the action of the apparatus for taking the original pictures. THE main trouble we found here was the question of 'flicker' and eye strain. It was necessary primarily to find and establish a uniform speed both for photographing and projecting the pictures. If we kept the number of exposures down too low it made the action jerky and hard to follow on the screen. Nearly all of our first pictures allowed from thirty to forty exposures per second, although the number has since been reduced to from fifteen to twenty." "What do you consider the greatest mission of the motion picture today?" "First, to make people happy — to bring more joy, and cheer and wholesome good will into this world of ours. And God knows we need it. "Second — to educate, elevate, and inspire. I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system, and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of text-books in our schools. Books are clumsy methods of instruction at best, and often even the words of explanation in them have to be explained. I SHOULD say that on the average we get only about two-per-cent efficiency out of school books as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture— a visualized education, where it should be possible to obtain a onehundred-per-cent efficiency. "The motion picture has tremendous possibilities for the training and development of the memory. There is no medium for memory-building as productive as the human eye. "That is another basic reason for the motion picture in the school. It will make a more alert and more capable generation of citizens and parents. You can't make a trained animal unless you start with a puppy. It is next to impossible to teach an old dog new tricks. "I do not believe that any other single agency of progress has the possibilities for a great and permanent good to humanity that I can see in the motion picture. And those possibilities are only beginning to be touched." Watch Next Month's New Movie Magazine for — The first appearance of J. P. McEvoy, Famous Creator of "Show Girl" Adela Rogers St. Johns Herb Howe Walter Winchell Homer Croy Rosalind Shaffer Grace Kingsley ioy