Safer and Better Motion Pictures 



By Robert G. Skerrett 



HEREAFTER, according to a recent 

 invention, it will be possible to 

 show moving pictures in broad daylight, 

 and there will be no further need to 

 darken the places in which "movie" en- 

 tertainments are given. The spectators 

 will be able to sit in a brightly illumi- 

 nated room or out-of-doors, and there 

 .will be no necessity for that gloom which 

 has proved itself in the past a cloak for 

 a variety of questionable ends. 



The new invention certainly promises 

 to revolutionize the art in more ways 

 than one, and its most striking feature 

 is extreme simplicity. At present, an 

 opaque screen or kindred white surface 

 forms the reflector by which the illu- 

 mined image is cast back into the eyes 

 of the spectators. The picture is pro- 

 jected against the screen from some 

 point in the midst of the audience; the 

 reflecting surface absorbs a considerable 

 percentage of the light; and what is left 

 is made seemingly bright by darkening 

 the surrounding space. It is a contrast 

 that would not exist if the place were 

 otherwise illuminated. But this is not 

 the only handicap to successful motion 

 pictures under present conditions. 



If the. patron of such a theater has 

 been unfortunate enough to get a seat 

 well off to one side he sees the screen 

 at an acute angle, and all of the images 

 are unpleasantly foreshortened. Only 

 the spectators in the middle of the the- 

 ater, and these, of necessity, are com- 

 paratively few, escape this distortion. 

 Again, the contrast between the shim- 

 mering pictures and the enveloping 

 gloom hurts the eyes. Mr. John F. R. 

 Troeger has disposed of these difficul- 

 ties by means of a translucent screen 

 of novel construction, and at the same 

 time he has provided other betterments 

 through its use. 



To-day there are at least 19,000 mov- 

 ing picture theaters in the United States, 

 and the attendance numbers every 

 twenty-four hours something like 17,- 

 000,000 persons. Every once in a while 



we hear of a fire or a panic in a show 

 of this sort, and the peril is directly 

 due to the presence of the machine and 

 its inflammable reels right in the body 

 of the house and among the audience. 

 The reflecting screen is at the bottom 

 of the menace. It was to overcome this 

 danger that Mr. Troeger spent a long 

 time in hunting for a suitable material 

 for a translucent screen, for he wanted 

 to make it possible to place the picture 

 apparatus in a fireproof annex at the rear 

 of the theater, back of the stage, from 

 which the images could be thrown 

 through a small hole in the intervening 

 wall. 



As he says, "It will thus be clear that 

 I have provided a screen which may be 

 disposed between the projecting machine 

 and the spectators, upon which the pic- 

 ture may be cast so that the rays of 

 light pass directly from the machine to 

 the audience, thus increasing the inten- 

 sity of the light and making the image 

 visible day or night. By reason of the 

 novel formation of the screen, the pic- 

 ture stands out in relief and is much 

 more lifelike than kindred images here- 

 tofore exhibited/' How is this? 



The translucent screen is ribbed ver- 

 tically on its front face, and these cor- 

 rugations are virtually prisms, so that 

 the refracted beams are bent well to the 

 right and left, as well as projected 

 directly ahead. The first effect of this 

 is that there is very little of the distor- 

 tion due to foreshortening which is so 

 noticeable with the ordinary screen the 

 spectator well off to either side has sub- 

 stantially as perfect a picture as his fel- 

 low sitting in the middle of the hall. But 

 this does not explain the feature of im- 

 proved relief now not possible with the 

 usual apparatus and the commonly-em- 

 ployed reflecting surface. 



A photograph is flat because it re- 

 produces the picture impressed upon a 

 single objective. The sense of depth 

 which we get in looking at objects is 

 due to the employment of two eyes and 



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