Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion PicturesQuigley, Martin
History
Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures
Quigley, Martin
Lantern projection; Motion pictures -- History
The pictures in Claudet’s machine must have left much to the
imagination but an interesting perfection of this device was shown
in New York in late 1922 and early 1923, under the name of Hammond’s
Teleview. An entire theatre was equipped with a special shutter device
for each spectator. The shutters were synchronized with the shutter
of the motion picture projector and the spectator, looking through
the device, saw motion in three dimensions. The development was not
commercially practicable because the apparatus was expensive, a
nuisance to the spectators and the many little motors operating the
shutters created an annoying hum in the auditorium.
In the United States the Langenheim brothers did much to popularize the
Stereoscope and its various modifications. About 1850 they started to
make and sell stereoscopic views in Philadelphia, by mail and through
agents throughout the country. In those days, with the Gold Rush in
California just subsiding, there was great interest in scenic wonders
and views of remote places. Stereoscopic photos had a great sale and
were eventually found in almost every parlor of the day.
Before the Civil War the Langenheims opened at 188 Chestnut Street the
“Stereoscope Cosmorama Exhibit.” There each spectator sat and could see
one stereoscopic view after another by turning a crank. It may very
well have been this turning crank system which suggested an interesting
motion picture device to the fellow citizen of Langenheims, Coleman
Sellers.
Coleman Sellers (1827–1907) was a skilled engineer. He reproduced
Faraday’s electric experiments in this country; constructed locomotives
in Cincinnati chiefly for the Panama Railroad; he also worked on
the Niagara Falls power development. Even for hobbies he turned to
scientific toys and gadgets. In 1856 he was called to Philadelphia
again to take his place in the family engineering company. Sellers’
family dated from one Samuel Sellers who received a royal grant of land
in Pennsylvania in 1682.
Sellers patented on February 5, 1861 a device which he called the
Kinematoscope, evidently the first use of the word “cinema” if we
exclude the Frenchman who copied Wheatstone’s device under the name of
Quinetoscope.
The Sellers device revolved a series of posed still pictures,
paddle-wheel fashion, before the eye of the observer. A period of
relative rest was achieved through this motion as each picture was
coming towards the observer for a specific time and then out of view as
the next photo came into position. Sellers’ motion photos include his
wife sewing, his two sons, Coleman, Jr. and Horace, playing and rocking
a chair. Sellers tried to combine motion and solid effects. He found
the wet plate photographic process invented by Frederick Scott Archer
(1813–1857) in 1850 quite unsatisfactory for “posed” motion work.
Archer did not trouble to patent the process.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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