Thomas A. Edison, in an interview given to Mr. Hugh Weir and recently published in _McClure’s Magazine_, enlightens us regarding Mr. Talbot’s proposition. Asked what first suggested to him the idea of the motion-picture camera, Mr. Edison said: The phonograph. I had been working for several years on experiments for recording and reproducing sound, and the thought occurred to me that it should be possible to devise an apparatus to do for the eye what the phonograph was designed to do for the ear. It was in 1887 that I began my investigations, and photography, compared with what it is to-day, was in a decidedly crude state of development. Pictures were made by “wet” plates, operated by involved mechanism. The modern dry films were unheard of. I had only one fact to guide me at all. This was the principle of optics, technically called “the persistence of vision,” which proves that the sensation of light lingers in the brain for anywhere from one-tenth to one-twentieth part of a second after the light has disappeared from the sight of the eye. In other words, the fact that the human eye is a photographic camera possessing memory may eventually save civilization from the cataclysm of which contemporary prophets warn us, _in that it has made possible a medium of communication for the race at large denied to us by the tongue_. Posterity will owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas A. Edison for various revolutionary inventions but it begins to be apparent to optimistic observers that perhaps his chief claim to the thanks of mankind will be due to the initial impetus he gave to the motion picture, vouchsafing to a bewildered race the universal language of the eye, by which, possibly, the brotherhood of man may eventually function to overcome the evils that have darkened our past. Says Edison: “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 these possibilities are only beginning to be touched.” Will it not repay us, then, to examine the “possibilities” to which Mr. Edison refers, to the end that we may take the screen more seriously than heretofore, may regard motion picture theatres more attentively and hopefully as being, perhaps, civilization’s one best bet? Unless, however, we get a somewhat comprehensive view of the variegated past of the movies “the permanent good to humanity” that they can accomplish will not be apparent to us. Let us, therefore, get on with our story.