Motion Pictures - 3

Motion Pictures - 3

 One of the earliest suggestions of the possibility of utilizing photography for exhibiting

the illusion of actual movement was made by Ducos, who, as early as 1864, obtained a

patent in France, in which he said: "My invention consists in substituting rapidly and

without confusion to the eye not only of an individual, but when so desired of a whole

assemblage, the enlarged images of a great number of pictures when taken

instantaneously and successively at very short intervals.... The observer will believe that

he sees only one image, which changes gradually by reason of the successive changes of

form and position of the objects which occur from one picture to the other. Even

supposing that there be a slight interval of time during which the same object was not

shown, the persistence of the luminous impression upon the eye will fill this gap. There

will be as it were a living representation of nature and . . . the same scene will be

reproduced upon the screen with the same degree of animation.... By means of my

apparatus I am enabled especially to reproduce the passing of a procession, a review of

military manoeuvres, the movements of a battle, a public fete, a theatrical scene, the

evolution or the dances of one or of several persons, the changing expression of

countenance, or, if one desires, the grimaces of a human face; a marine view, the motion

of waves, the passage of clouds in a stormy sky, particularly in a mountainous country,

the eruption of a volcano," etc.

Other dreamers, contemporaries of Ducos, made similar suggestions; they recognized the

scientific possibility of the problem, but they were irretrievably handicapped by the

shortcomings of photography. Even when substantially instantaneous photographs were

evolved at a somewhat later date they were limited to the use of wet plates, which have to

be prepared by the photographer and used immediately, and were therefore quite out of

the question for any practical commercial scheme. Besides this, the use of plates would

have been impracticable, because the limitations of their weight and size would have

prevented the taking of a large number of pictures at a high rate of speed, even if the

sensitized surface had been sufficiently rapid.

Nothing ever came of Ducos' suggestions and those of the early dreamers in this

essentially practical and commercial art, and their ideas have made no greater impress

upon the final result than Jules Verne's Nautilus of our boyhood days has developed the

modern submarine. From time to time further suggestions were made, some in patents,

and others in photographic and scientific publications, all dealing with the fascinating

thought of preserving and representing actual scenes and events. The first serious attempt

to secure an illusion of motion by photography was made in 1878 by Eadward Muybridge

as a result of a wager with the late Senator Leland Stanford, the California pioneer and

horse-lover, who had asserted, contrary to the usual belief, that a trotting- horse at one

point in its gait left the ground entirely. At this time wet plates of very great rapidity were

known, and by arranging a series of cameras along the line of a track and causing the

horse in trotting past them, by striking wires or strings attached to the shutters, to actuate

the cameras at the right instant, a series of very clear instantaneous photographs was

obtained. From these negatives, when developed, positive prints were made, which were

later mounted on a modified form of Zoetrope and projected upon a screen.