The Photoplay | Page 3

to
take snapshot pictures. But this alone would not have allowed the
photographing of a real movement with one camera, as the plates could
not have been exchanged quickly enough to catch the various phases of
a short motion.
Here the work of Muybridge sets in. He had a black horse trot or gallop
or walk before a white wall, passing twenty-four cameras. On the path
of the horse were twenty-four threads which the horse broke one after
another and each one released the spring which opened the shutter of an
instrument. The movement of the horse was thus analyzed into
twenty-four pictures of successive phases; and for the first time the
human eye saw the actual positions of a horse's legs during the gallop
or trot. It is not surprising that these pictures of Muybridge interested
the French painters when he came to Paris, but fascinated still more the
great student of animal movements, the physiologist Marey. He had
contributed to science many an intricate apparatus for the registration
of movement processes. "Marey's tambour" is still the most useful

instrument in every physiological and psychological laboratory,
whenever slight delicate movements are to be recorded. The movement
of a bird's wings interested him especially, and at his suggestion
Muybridge turned to the study of the flight of birds. Flying pigeons
were photographed in different positions, each picture taken in a
five-hundredth part of a second.
But Marey himself improved the method. He made use of an idea
which the astronomer Jannsen had applied to the photographing of
astronomical processes. Jannsen photographed, for instance, the transit
of the planet Venus across the sun in December, 1874, on a circular
sensitized plate which revolved in the camera. The plate moved
forward a few degrees every minute. There was room in this way to
have eighteen pictures of different phases of the transit on the marginal
part of the one plate. Marey constructed the apparatus for the revolving
disk so that the intervals instead of a full minute became only
one-twelfth of a second. On the one revolving disk twenty-five views
of the bird in motion could be taken. This brings us to the time of the
early eighties. Marey remained indefatigable in improving the means
for quick successive snapshots with the same camera. Human beings
were photographed by him in white clothes on a black background.
When ten pictures were taken in a second the subtlest motions in their
jumping or running could be disentangled. The leading aim was still
decidedly a scientific understanding of the motions, and the
combination of the pictures into a unified impression of movement was
not the purpose. Least of all was mere amusement intended.
About that time Anschütz in Germany followed the Muybridge
suggestions with much success and gave to this art of photographing
the movement of animals and men a new turn. He not only
photographed the successive stages, but printed them on a long strip
which was laid around a horizontal wheel. This wheel is in a dark box
and the eye can see the pictures on the paper strip only at the moment
when the light of a Geissler's tube flashes up. The wheel itself has such
electric contacts that the intervals between two flashes correspond to
the time which is necessary to move the wheel from one picture to the
next. However quickly the wheel may be revolved the lights follow one

another with the same rapidity with which the pictures replace one
another. During the movement when one picture moves away and
another approaches the center of vision all is dark. Hence the eye does
not see the changes but gets an impression as if the picture remained at
the same spot, only moving. The bird flaps its wings and the horse trots.
It was really a perfect kinetoscopic instrument. Yet its limitations were
evident. No movements could be presented but simple rhythmical ones,
inasmuch as after one revolution of the wheel the old pictures returned.
The marching men appeared very lifelike; yet they could not do
anything but march on and on, the circumference of the wheel not
allowing more room than was needed for about forty stages of the
moving legs from the beginning to the end of the step.
If the picture of a motion was to go beyond these simplest rhythmical
movements, if persons in action were really to be shown, it would be
necessary to have a much larger number of pictures in instantaneous
illumination. The wheel principle would have to be given up and a long
strip with pictures would be needed. That presupposed a
correspondingly long set of exposures and this demand could not be
realized as long as the pictures were taken on glass plates. But in that
period experiments were undertaken on many sides