Motion Pictures

That autumn several machines were exported. From these ma chines the English and European development of the motion picture sprang. Edison's invention was not protected by patents abroad. The pictures for the kinetoscope were produced at West Orange in a tiny studio costing $637.67. The invention of the motion picture had now cost Edison $24,118.04. The tar paper studio, dubbed "The Black Maria," revolved to keep the stage in sunlight. The kinetograph, or camera, was almost a ton in weight and all events had to be brought to it. The subjects were neces sarily those restricted in range of action : bits of vaudeville acts, snatches of prize fights and dances.

By the winter of 1894 a demand arose for a machine which should combine the kinetoscope's film record with the magic lan tern so the picture might be liberated from the peep-show and shown to a large audience for greater revenue. Edison had experimented in projection but discouraged the idea, stating that exhibitions to large audiences would too rapidly exhaust the novelty of the pictures. Several other experimenters attacked the problem of projection. On Feb. 22, 1895, Maj. Woodville Latham, of Virginia, a Confederate officer in the Civil War (father of Otway and Grey Latham, kinetoscope exhibitors), gave a New York press exhibition of his pantoptikon, projecting a kinetoscopic film. On May 20 this machine was placed on public exhibition. It was highly imperfect. A second version of this device had a brief international career under the name of the eidoloscope. A more satisfactory machine known as the cinematographe was produced by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, photographic manu facturers at Lyons, France. They took out a French patent on Feb. 13, 1895, and demonstrated their machine March 22, 1895, in Paris, and June 1 o in Lyons. December 28 a public cinemato graph show was opened in the basement of the Café de Paris and prospered.

The Vitascope.

In June 1895 Thomas Armat of Washing ton discovered the principle of the modern projector, differing from the Lumiere and other earlier devices by use of a film move ment which gave each successive image a period of rest and illu mination in excess of the period of movement from image to image. This machine was first shown publicly at the Cotton States exhibition Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 1895. It displayed Edison kinetoscope pictures. It was subsequently known as the vitascope. In Feb. 1896 Robert W. Paul of London, manufacturer of scientific instruments, gave a demonstration of a projection machine called the theatrograph. He had meanwhile manu factured duplicates of the kinetoscope, and had produced films for these machines with a camera of his own devising.

The vast, world commercial career of the motion picture on the screen began with the presentation of the Armat machine as the vitascope at Koster and Bial's music hall, New York, April 23, 1896. A vaudeville career opened before the motion picture and

the capacity of the machine was quickly increased to i,000 ft. of film (sufficient to occupy the typical time of a stage turn), thus establishing the existing standard film unit of one reel.

The Lumiere influence on the art soon became important. The cinematographe was adjustable, making it a camera, a film printing machine and a projector. It was mobile and could record the outdoor world. The Lumieres also reduced the rate of ex posure from Edison's 48 images a second to 16 a second, the theoretical standard of the silent pictures of to-day. The Lumiere photographer-exhibitors were sent touring around the world carry ing the films to far places and recording remote peoples for the screens of Europe and America.

The development of the art was, however, for some time under two important early handicaps. In Europe the screen suffered from the Charity Bazaar fire in Paris, May 4, 1897, in which 180 people perished. The fire was traced to the motion picture ma chine. That autumn Edison launched a legal campaign for the protection of his invention and a violent and involved patent war hampered the industry for over a decade. In that year, 1897, R. G. Hollaman of the Eden Musee on the roof of a New York building, produced the Passion Play in three reels, with a cast and dramatically arranged settings, thus instituting production for the camera. Meanwhile in March of that year, Enoch J. Rector, earlier associated with the Lathams, had pictured the Corbett Fitzsimmons fight at Carson City, Nev., in some i1,000 ft. of film.

The motion picture still continued as an incident of vaudeville. About 1909 George Melies of the Theatre Robert Houdin in Paris, a magician, applied the camera to feats of magic and gave the motion picture new life, incidentally adding fade-outs, dis solves and double exposures, now commonplaces. In 1903, Edwin S. Porter. an Edison cameraman, alarmed at the decline of the industry, sought to give it new impetus by novelty. He com pressed all the known thrills of the screen into a single picture, The Life of an American Fireman. This succeeded so well that he tried again with a cheap novel story entitled The Great Train Robbery. This picture, occupying a whole reel in length, estab lished the "story picture" and founded the art of narration for the motion pictures, and placed them on an independent basis. With this production for its programme the first motion picture theatre, a "nickelodeon," was opened in Pittsburgh, Pa., in Nov.

1905, and started the screen on a new career. (T. RA.)