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 Mutoscope Company’s organisation is as perfect as its machinery.
It has representatives in all parts of the world. Wherever stirring
events are taking place, whether in peace or war, a mutograph operator
will soon be on the spot with his heavy apparatus to secure pictures
for world-wide exhibition. It need hardly be said that great
obstacles, human and physical, have often to be overcome before a film
can be exposed; and considerable personal danger encountered. We read
that an operator, despatched to Cuba during the Spanish-American War
was left three days and nights without food or water to guard his
precious instruments, the party that had landed him having suddenly
put to sea on sighting a Spanish cruiser. Another is reported to have
had a narrow escape from being captured at sea by the Spaniards after
a hot chase. It is also on record that a mutograph set up in Atlantic
City to take a procession of fire-engines was charged and shattered by
one of the engines; that the operators were flung into the crowd: and
that nevertheless the box containing the exposed films was uninjured,
and on development yielded a very sensational series of pictures
lasting to the moment of collision.
The Mutoscope Company owns several thousand series of views, none
probably more valuable than those of his Holiness the Pope, who
graciously gave Mr. W. K. Dickson five special sittings, during which
no less than 17,000 negatives were made, each one of great interest to
millions of people throughout the world.
The company spares neither time nor money in its endeavour to supply
the public with what will prove acceptable. A year’s output runs into
a couple of hundred miles of film. As much as 700 feet is sometimes
expended on a single series, which may be worth anything up to £1000.
The energy displayed by the operators is often marvellous. To take
instances. The Derby of 1898 was run at 3.20 P.M. At ten o’clock the
race was run again by Biograph on the great sheet at the Palace
Theatre. On the home-coming of Lord Kitchener from the Soudan
Campaign, a series of photographs was taken at Dover in the afternoon
and exhibited the same evening! Or again, to consider a wider sphere
of action, the Jubilee Procession of 1897 was watched in New York ten
days after the event; two days later in Chicago; and in three more the
films were attracting large audiences in San Francisco, 5000 miles
from the actual scene of the procession!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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