The talking machine world (Jan-Dec 1912)

THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD. 2S Everybody's Doing It Now! The fact that dealers are everywhere installing the Columbia line doesn't make half so good a reason for your doing it as the profit there is in it— but if s interesting just the same. Columbia Phonograph Co., Gen'l Tribune Building, New York THE EDISON HOME KINETOSCOPE. Long Looked for Moving Picture and Lantern Slide Machine for Home Use to Be Placed on the Market About May 1 — Factories Busy Turning Out Stock — Details of Machines and Proposed Retailing Methods. On May 1 will appear the long looked for Edison Home kinetoscope, which is a moving picture and lantern slide machine for. the home. Manufacturing of these machines is energetically going on at the huge Edison factories, and it is apparent that in a few weeks the general public will be privileged to see and buy the wonderful machine. The Home kinetoscope, according to J. W. Farrell, sales manager of that department, is absolutely fool-proof ; you can wind films or rewind backward or forward without the least fear; you can throw a picture approximately six feet square at a distance of thirty feet and use a film that has as many pictures as on a thousand foot real of the regular professional machine. The entire machine weighs about twenty pounds, which includes a cover that, when not used for carrying the Home kinetoscope, is used as a stand for showing the pictures. A strap on the top of the case is intended for hand use in transportation. The mechanism itself is simple, there is a metal spool for putting on the reel of film, which looks somewhat like a big typewriter ribbon, the spool being larger at one end than at the other, so that the reel shall be put on exactly the same every time. It is a very easy matter to "get a light," there being three methods, one by acetylene gas, one by a Nernst lamp and the other with a baby arc lamp, the latter being the most powerful, naturally, although the other two are very brilliant. A few minutes' instruction should teach the average person how to operate the entire mechanism, which in its entirety from putting in the reel to the rewind at the end, is exceedingly simple. By pressing a little button the Home kinetoscope is converted instantly into a stereopticon. Special slides can be purchased for projecting these "magic lantern" slides at a cost of 50c. each, which is eight times less than the cost of the ordinary slide now on the market, for the reason that with the Edison slides there are eight views, as against the one view of the others. The lantern slide's to be furnished will be more of an educational nature, as "Views in Holland," "Views in Germany," etc. ; 50c. for eight clean-cut views of the finest photographic art showing pictures about four feet square is considered to be the most reasonable offer ever put upon the market. These Edison slides, by the way, are only 1% inches tall and 4 inches long, which is very small for ten photographs. The most wonderful thing about the films for the Home kinetoscope is the way the photographs are arranged. A film of a thousand feet long for the regular moving picture machine is condensed into 80 feet, although the number of pictures, 16,000 photographs, remains the same. The time for displaying either film is the same, sixteen minutes. The way this is accomplished is by having three rows of pictures running on the Home kinetoscope film, although this film is not quite half the width of the regular film, the former being % inch wide. Thus by the new methods the actual picture on the Home films is A inch long and a trifle over V4 inch high, so small that the views are barely distinguishable by the naked eye, although clear and perfect when projected upon the screen. The operator, who can be man, woman or child, with equal ease reels off the full film on the outside line of pictures, then shifts the picture so that the middle line of pictures is thrown and, by reversing the cranking, re-reels till the film is back to where it started. Then another little shift and the other outside row of pictures goes upon the screen, a total of 16,000 pictures on an 80 foot film in a time of sixteen minutes. Talk about the comforts of home! Perhaps if Thomas A. Edison keeps on he will have things so we can press a button for a full course dinner before the Home kinetoscope entertainment and when concluded another button will give an "after-theater" supper. Then the expression "Home was never like this" will have plenty of popularity. A very ingenious plan has been created for securing new films. When a purchaser buys a Home kinetoscope he has to purchase four films to go with it. The lowest priced film is $2.50 and contains ten feet. This is known as a class "A" film, the company preferring to call them by clas> rather than by the number of feet. This little film has 2,000 pictures and can be run off in a fewminutes. The next class is "B," which has 20 feet and costs $5; the next "C," with 30 feet at $7.50; "D," with 40 feet at $10; "E," with 50 feet at $12.50; "F," with 60 feet at $15; "G," with 70 feet at $17.50, and "H," with 80 feet at $20, the highest priced film that will be manufactured. As this article is going to the trade is the reason that the number of feet is mentioned, because the films will be sold only by class designation. When the purchaser has had the films long enough to be tired of them he can send one or more back to the Edison factory at Orange and by a small payment secure a new film of the same class as sent. To facilitate things, coupon books have been published and are on sale at all authorized dealers, each book containing 50 ten cent coupons and costing the buyer $5. Suppose a man has a class "B" film (retail price $5) and grows tired of it; he detaches four ten cent coupons from the book, sends the film and coupons to the Edison factory at Orange with a request that a selected film number be sent in exchange. The entire exchange problem is to be cared for by the home plant, and monthly bulletins of new films will appear like is now the policy of the phonograph record end. The exchange fee of the various classes is as follows: A, 30c; B, 40c; C, 50c; D, 60c; E. 70c; F, 80c; G, 90c. ; H, $1. A person 'buying four films can exchange and exchange indefinitely, getting new films every week or every day if wanted, at a very small cost. A wide variety of subjects in various ranges of interest will be offered and all Home films will be of the character that mark the regular Edison films — sharp, clear and brilliant. Most important of all, the pictures are printed on non-inflammable film, so the kinetoscope can be used with safety in homes, schools, clubs, lodges, churches, halls, etc. The Home Kinetoscope prices are based upon the lens system used and also upon the system of lighting purchased. Sixty-five dollars is the lowest retail price of the Home kinetoscope, this price being for a machine with acetylene generator, lens system "A," or for a machine complete with the Nernst lamp equipment, with the same lens system. Eighty-eight dollars is the highest retail price, this figure covering a machine complete with arc lamp and transformer for alternating current (110 volts) with lens system C. Three lens systems are used, A, B and C. Through the courtesy of Mr. Wilson, of this department, J. W. Farrell, sales manager of the Home kinetoscope branch of the Edison industry, and G. B. Ward, foreman of the Home kinetoscope and film department, a representative of The Talking Machine World was extended a special demonstration of the ease, efficacy and points of merit of this machine. The pictures displayed were clear and showed every movement distinctly, in every way they were as good as those seen of the large regular size. The stereopticon pictures were marvels of sharpness, resembling a photograph taken by a high priced camera and printed upon the best grade of paper. Mr. Ward operated the kinetoscope, doing it with ease, which shows that this work is performed without fatigue. "Getting a light" was simple, Mr. Ward explaining that the bugbear of not getting lights frightened more professional operators for some unwritten reason that he couldn't explain. The process of "getting the light" on the Home is simple indeed. With the production appearing on May 1, it is natural that the sales manager, J. W. Farrell, is doing considerable hustling these days in an effort to create a strong jobbers' field. Demonstrators are going about the country showing the advantages of the Home kinetoscope and, which is better, also the profits that they say are bound to come to jobber and dealer alike. So far only one Edison jobber of phonographs and records has signified his intention of handling the kinetoscopes, and this house is the Pardee-Ellenberger Co., Inc., of New Haven, Conn., and Boston, Mass., one of the most aggressive and up-to-date jobbers of Edison phonographs in this country, but the idea at present seems to be to create jobbers rather than to have the line handled by the talking machine trade. For instance, in the optical field, concerns like Williams, Brown & Earl, of Philadelphia; H. E. Murdock Co., Portland, Me.; J. H. Hallberg, New York, and others are already enrolled as jobbers. There seems to be no question, however, but that the line will be a remarkable seller with dealers, not alone for its low price and ease and cheapness of securing films, but because of its novelty. Take a family living in the country nowhere near a theater, as an illustration, it will be possible for them to have all the latest moving picture films at a very low cost. The field in a mail order way seems boundless. The Home kinetoscope adds more laurels to the achievements of Thomas A. Edison, and is the result in its present completeness of many years of experimenting at a cost of thousands of dollars,