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
One may easily weary of a series of single views passed slowly through
a magic-lantern at a lecture or entertainment. But when the Biograph
is flashing its records at lightning speed there is no cause for
dullness. It is impossible to escape from the fascination of
_movement_. A single photograph gives the impression of mere
resemblance to the original; but a series, each reinforcing the
signification of the last, breathes life into the dead image, and
deludes us into the belief that we see, not the representation of a
thing, but the thing itself. The bill of fare provided by the Biograph
Company is varied enough to suit the most fastidious taste. Now it is
the great Naval Review off Spithead, or President Faure shooting
pheasants on his preserves near Paris. A moment’s pause and then the
magnificent Falls of Niagara foam across the sheet; Maxim guns fire
harmlessly; panoramic scenes taken from locomotives running at high
velocity unfold themselves to the delighted spectators, who feel as if
they really were speeding over open country, among towering rocks, or
plunging into the darkness of a tunnel. Here is an express approaching
with all the quiver and fuss of real motion, so faithfully rendered
that it seems as if a catastrophe were imminent; when, snap! we are
transported a hundred miles to watch it glide into a station. The
doors open, passengers step out and shake hands with friends, porters
bustle about after luggage, doors are slammed again, the guard waves
his flag, and the carriages move slowly out of the picture. Then our
attention is switched away to the 10-inch disappearing gun, landing
and firing at Sandy Hook. And next, as though to show that nothing is
beneath the notice of the biograph, we are perhaps introduced to a
family of small pigs feeding from a trough with porcine earnestness
and want of manners.
It must not be thought that the Living Picture caters for mere
entertainment only. It serves some very practical and useful ends. By
its aid the movements of machinery and the human muscles may be
studied in detail, to aid a mechanical or medical education. It
furnishes art schools with all the poses of a living model. Less
serious pursuits, such as dancing, boxing, wrestling and all athletic
sports and exercise, will find a use for it. As an advertising medium
it stands unrivalled, and we shall owe it a deep debt of gratitude if
it ultimately supplants the flaring posters that disfigure our towns
and desecrate our landscapes. Not so long since, the directors of the
Norddeutscher-Lloyd Steamship Company hired the biograph at the
Palace Theatre, London, to demonstrate to anybody who cared to witness
a very interesting exhibition that their line of vessels should always
be used for a journey between England and America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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