MOVING PICTURES 



MOVING PICTURES 





He uses as an illustration a lesson about 

 rivers. He suggests that the source of a river 

 in a spring, in the outflow of a lake or in the 

 melting ice of a glacier, may first be shown; 

 next would come pictures illustrating its 

 growth, the inflow of tributaries, then the many 

 sudden changes through which it passes its 

 rapids and falls and shallows, and all the vary- 

 ing force of its current. The pupil can be in- 

 troduced to the use made of this waterway, the 

 craft on its upper reaches and the traffic in 

 which they are engaged, the steam and motor 

 navigation on the lower reaches, when the river 

 has broadened out into a mighty stream, and 

 towns and cities begin to appear on its banks. 

 Such a film would be expensive to produce and 

 would require infinite labor, but its great value 

 for school purposes ought to justify such an 

 expenditure. 



Natural History. The greatest success 

 achieved so far by moving pictures in the 

 field of education has been in connection with 

 natural history. Many wonderful films of 

 plant and animal life have already been made. 

 Every one can study the living things in his 

 immediate environment, but he cannot see all 

 that the camera can see. Pictures of the bot- 

 tom of the ocean with its strange plants and 

 animals, pictures of the haunts and habits of 

 birds and reptiles and other animals, which it 

 has taken weeks and months to complete, are 

 brought to us by the patient camera-man. 

 And, more than this, the camera pictures won- 

 ders which no human eye can see, photographs 

 of plants and insects enlarged under a micro- 

 scope. The activities of a bee colony have been 

 led by the great Frenchman, Henri Fabre, 

 in his Life of the Bee; J. C. B. Mason, an Eng- 

 Ii.-h photographer, whose specialty is the film- 

 ing of insect life, has produced four films de- 

 puting almost as marvelously the activities of 

 th- honeybee. 



A film company in London is making an at- 

 tempt to secure from the most prominent Euro- 

 pean scientific photographers their entire out- 

 put of educational, scientific and natural history 

 subjects ; it is endeavoring to persuade the emi- 

 nent teachers of certain subjects to commit 

 work to celluloid film, and it is encourag- 

 ing also the independent photographer by mak- 

 he production of scientific films profitable 

 Pathe Company in the United 

 States has been roll ting films of this kind for 

 years and probably has the most remarkable 

 library in the world. Practically every film 

 h has a genuine scientific and educational 

 250 



value is included in this library, but the col- 

 lection is not yet available for general use. 



A film used by the Sheffield Scientific School 

 at New Haven, Conn., called The Story of Pig 

 Iron, is a- good example of another sort of edu- 

 cational film. The story of sulphur or of com- 

 mon table salt, or of a hundred other mineral 

 products, might be done in the same way. In- 

 deed, there is scarcely a great industry that does 

 not lend itself to this method of presentation. 

 Lessons in public health and hygiene may also 

 be given in this way. The "swat-the-fly" move- 

 ment has been powerfully assisted by the exhi- 

 bition of films showing flies at work in spread- 

 ing disease. A vast amount of good has been 

 done toward improving health and hygiene 

 through moving pictures. Films have been 

 made ranging all the way from a picture illus- 

 trating how to clean the teeth properly to a pic- 

 ture showing how to combat the spread of 

 rible infectious diseases. Clean milk and clean 

 streets have been secured to many a com- 

 munity through the inspiration of moving pic- 

 tures. 



Scientific Investigations. But it is in connec- 

 tion with scientific investigation that the most 

 wonderful films have been made, notably in 

 France and in Germany. The Marey Institute 

 in Paris, founded by Dr. E. J. Marey, an 

 nent French scientist and a pioneer in moving- 

 picture work, has accomplished seeming mir- 

 acles. The men engaged in the work use 

 cameras which will take more than two thou- 

 sand pictures a minute, and other cameras 

 which take one picture an hour. With tin- 

 very rapid cameras they have studied such 

 movements as the flight of an insect, the beat 

 of a bird's wing; with the slower cameras th y 

 have secured such a picture as the budding and 

 blossoming of a flower. To take such a picture 

 the camera is kept before the object sometimes 

 for weeks. 



The fastest camera in the world is the in- 

 vention of Dr. Cranz of the Berlin Military 

 Academy. This camera and the intricate ap- 

 paratus which operates it have been devoted 

 run rely to the study of the flight of projectiles, 

 pictures produced are of standard site but 

 tin images shown are in silhouette. Five hun- 

 dred consecutive pictures can be taken in one- 

 tmth of a second; tin- j.rn.l <>f rxposure in 

 between one-millionth and one ten-millionth of 

 a second. When thr pictures secured are pro- 

 jected on the screen at the rate of about sixteen 

 pictures a second (the standard rate of projec- 

 tion), the flight of a bullet can easily be fol- 



