Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1921)

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to exhibit pictures, as easily as we play a Victrola. Such devices are already available, and will evolve into the animated newspaper of tomorrow. Public libraries of course will have individual screens and projectors for each reader and great collections of highly specialized films on every conceivable topic. The motion picture engineer is concerned with the total effect on the audience. The limit of your field is your vision and your opportunity, and you create both. Just one or two casual thoughts on the theatre, suggestive rather than definitive. The form of the theatre may receive radical treatment. Today's crowding resembles the days of unregulated street traffic. We may establish one-way aisles and apply every other device of trafiic management to ensure easy entrance and exit. Hats and wraps must be cared for by some perfect system not yet devised. Seats must be designed by correctposture experts for perfect comfort and health, with two independent chair arms for each person. The seats will of course fold automatically as soon as vacated to allow easy exit. Coin-operated vending machines will dispense disks w^hich in. turn will operate easyworking turn-stiles according to seat location, eliminating both the box office and the ticket takers. A tiny lamp would light showing for each row that seats were available, the color indicating the number vacant, thus largely replacing the usher. The keynote is the word "automatic." The theatre size will range from the "little theatres" to the huge theatres for master-productions. The little theatres with lower magnifications will be better for highly specialized films requiring perfect definition. Little theatres will also be suitable for innovations which must meet the challenge of popular taste before being assimilated into appreciated art. At the other extreme we may have vast circular theatres with concentric circles of seats facing the center where each sector will be provided w4th its own screen and projector all operating with one film. Many times the present crowds could be served and all the advantages of large-scale production would obtain. Five years ago I was privileged to suggest to you the possible complete control of indoor climate within the theatre. My belief has strengthened that this great step is strictly within the reach of present-day technology, both as to data and mechanism. We cool the air for the dead cattle of the stockyards, why not for the hot and tired thousands in need of refreshment and recreation? We govern humidity for spinning cotton, why not also for making happy lives? We control pressure of air in caissons and altitude chambers for industrial tasks, why not for the highest art, promoting human well-being? Within the theatre we might have the perfect climate, the most exhilarating possible while outside the rain, the heat, the humidity, or the cold might be excessive. This would require conformity to every item of the specification of each type of agreeable climate desired, expressed in units of measure and therefore reproducible. The engineer could control at the optimum value every item such as cooling or heating, drying the air, increasing the air pressure 162