The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.Williams, Archibald
Science
The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.
Williams, Archibald
Inventions
The next apparatus to be specially mentioned is Edison’s Kinetoscope,
which he first exhibited in England in 1894. As early as 1887 Mr.
Edison had tried to produce animated pictures in a manner analogous to
the making of a sound-record on a phonograph (see p. 56). He wrapped
round a cylinder a sheet of sensitized celluloid which was covered,
after numerous exposures, by a spiral line of tiny negatives. The
positives made from these were illuminated in turn by flashes of
electric light. This method was, however, entirely abandoned in the
perfected kinetoscope, an instrument for viewing pictures the size of
a postage stamp, carried on a continuously moving celluloid film
between the eye of the observer and a small electric lamp. The
pictures passed the point of inspection at the rate of forty-six per
second (a rate hitherto never approached), and as each picture was
properly centred a slit in a rapidly revolving shutter made it visible
for a very small fraction of a second. Holes punched at regular
intervals along each side of the film engaged with studs on a wheel,
and insured a regular motion of the pictures. This principle of a
perforated film has been used by nearly all subsequent manufacturers
of animatographs.
To secure forty-six negatives per second Edison invented a special
exposure device. Each negative would have but one-forty-sixth of a
second to itself, and that must include the time during which the
fresh surface of film was being brought into position before the lens.
He therefore introduced an intermittent gearing, which jerked the
film forwards forty-six times per second, but allowed it to remain
stationary for nine-tenths of the period allotted to each picture.
During the time of movement the lens was covered by the shutter. This
principle of exposure has also been largely adopted by other
inventors. By its means weak negatives are avoided, while pictures
projected on to a screen gain greatly in brilliancy and steadiness.
The capabilities of a long flexible film-band having been shown by
Edison, he was not long without imitators. Phantoscopes, Bioscopes,
Photoscopes, and many other instruments followed in quick succession.
In 1895 Messrs. Lumière scored a great success with their
Cinematograph, which they exhibited at Marseilles and Paris; throwing
the living picture as we now know it on to a screen for a large
company to see. This camera-lantern opens the era of commercial
animated-photography. The number of patents taken out since 1895 in
connection with living-picture machines is sufficient proof that
inventors have either found in this particular branch of photography a
peculiar fascination, or have anticipated from it a substantial
profit.
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