456 SCIENCE OF HOME AND COMMUNITY 



till pictures have been taken of all the drawings. The 

 pictures made from these exposures are shown rapidly on 

 the screen, so that a series of drawings that are seen by the 

 audience in eight minutes took an artist five weeks to make. 

 In order to procure a half reel (about 500 feet) of animated 

 cartoons about 2000 drawings must be made. Some idea 

 of the number of drawings required may be gained by ex- 

 plaining that in the Mutt and Jeff pictures it takes four 

 drawings to show Mutt withdrawing his hand from his 

 pocket and three drawings to show him winking his eye. 

 In order to make the Mutt and Jeff drawings, sixty assist- 

 ants are employed to help the head artist, who has general 

 charge of the work. 



Talking movies. Finally, we have the talking movies, 

 which consists of a phonograph and a moving-picture machine 

 working in unison. At first thought it might seem a simple 

 thing, to start them both at the same time and let them run, 

 but as a matter of fact it has proved very difficult to keep 

 them exactly together. In recent years this has been worked 

 on by Edison in this country and by Gaumont in France. 



In order to get the best results, it is necessary that the 

 records on the phonograph be taken at the same time that 

 the camera is taking the pictures, and then that these be 

 reproduced together. 



The important part of the talking movies is the mechanism 

 by which the phonograph and moving-picture machine are 

 kept in exact unison. In some of the first machines made, 

 this was controlled by the operator, who managed both 

 machines by hand. A dial with hands, like the face of a 

 clock, was provided for each machine and indicated the 

 speed. The operator watched these dials and tried to operate 

 the two machines so that the hands on the two dials main- 

 tained the same position. This proved a very difficult 

 thing to do. In the later forms the machines are operated 

 by motors. A mechanism is so arranged that the operator 



