22 PICTURING MIRACLES 



arranged so that I could get any speed I wanted 

 transmitted through a belt to a wheel on the camera 

 that replaced the crank. 



Having figured out these requirements, I kept 

 notes on the flowers, when they started to open and 

 how long it took. I realized a scene had to be very 

 dramatic to hold the interest for over thirty seconds, 

 and a film thirty seconds, or thirty feet, long contains 

 480 individual pictures, so if it took a flower four 

 days to open it was only necessary to divide the 5,760 

 minutes in four days by the 480 desired pictures, 

 which gave twelve minute intervals between each 

 picture. Now, since sound on film is almost univer- 

 sal, projection speed has increased to 1,440 pictures 

 (ninety feet per minute) and a new exposing formula 

 developed to give the correct footage required. 



I soon found that flowers if properly handled 

 would live and grow in my laboratory by electric 

 light, just as they do out of doors in their natural 

 habitat; that they opened and closed at their accus- 

 tomed hours. I found I could almost set my watch 

 by their opening, so regular was the accomplish- 

 ment of their processes of survival. 



The mastery of all this phenomena of floral life 

 required a great deal of time and study. My training 

 in mechanical engineering at Stanford taught me to 

 look on each step as an engineering problemto 



