January io. 1901] 



NATURE 



261 



THE PAN ORAM KODAK. 



"pVER since the year 1845, when Friedrich v. Martens, a 

 copper-plate engraver living in Paris, constructed a camera 

 with a rotating lens and arrangements for a curved plate for 

 taking panoramic views, this method of working has engaged 

 the attention of photographers. Martens's apparatus was de- 

 signed for Daguerreotype plates, but the convenience of flexible 

 films for such work must very soon have been appreciated, for 

 in 1850 we find Fox Talbot taking the trouble to state that one 

 of his sensitive papers was particularly well adapted for the 

 purpose. 



M. Garella, in 1857, employed a flat plate moving tangen- 

 tially to the required curved surface as the camera rotated, and 

 so obviated the necessity for the curving of the sensitive surface. 

 Messrs. J. R. Johnson and J. A. Harrison worked on similar 

 lines when they produced their " pantascopic camera" in 1862, 

 and its subsequent improvements. These and several other 

 inventors suff"ered from the disadvantage of having to use glass 

 plateswhich,whether flat or curved, were awkward to manipulate, 

 and if curved were costly and especially troublesome. Still, 

 very excellent work was done with these apparatuses. 



Modern panoramic cameras date, practically speaking, from 

 the commercial preparation of flexible or film-supported sensitive 

 surfaces. Commandant Moessard, in 1893, employed a curved 

 film supported in a curved celluloid holder, while M. J. 

 Damoizeau (1891), in his " cyclographe," and Colonel R. W. 

 Stewart, R.E. (1893), in his "panoram," employed films in the 

 most compact way possible, drawing the film from one roller 

 to another as the camera rotates. Colonel Stewart's camera is 

 very small for the size of picture that it takes, and will, if re- 

 quired, photograph the whole horizon at one operation. He 

 constructed his apparatus for Eastman's films. 



But all these cameras were, comparatively speaking, costly, 

 heavy and complicated, being actuated by clockwork or the 

 equivalent, and the later examples were designed to be applic- 

 able to photographic surveying. No one appears to have con- 

 sidered it possible to construct a panoramic caiiiera that should 

 be light and simple in construction, and so available for the 

 ordinary tourist, until the enterprising firm of Kodak, Ltd., 

 introduced their " panoram kodak." In this camera they have 

 not only succeeded to this extent, but have provided what is 

 commonly understood as a " kodak " — that is, a camera that 

 may easily be held in the hand during the exposure. Its con- 

 struction is very ingenious in its simplicity. During exposure, 

 the only moving part is the lens, which swings on a vertical axis, 

 and the only motive power is a spring. The spring acts on a 

 lever, and as the arrangement is laterally symmetrical, the ex- 

 posure can be started from the side that the lens happens to 

 be pointing towards. There is no shutter as ordinarily under- 

 stood, the lens revolves through a half circle, and at each end 

 of its journey is accommodated in a little recess that prevents 

 any light passing through it to the inside of the camera. 



The sensitive surface is the roller film, which passes over 

 guides that maintain it at the correct curvature. The picture 

 produced is seven inches long and 7.\ inches high, and the defini- 

 tion is good over its whole length, showing that the difficulty 

 of the correct adjustment of the swinging lens has been quite 

 satisfactorily overcome. As already stated, the apparatus is of 

 the simplest kind. The lens works always at the same aper- 

 ture. It has two rates of movement, the equivalent of two 

 speeds of a shutter, eff^ected simply by putting the full or a 

 partial tension on the spring. But long exposures can be given 

 by just repeating the ordinary exposure as often as necessary, 

 the camera, of course, being firmly supported. We have seen 

 some excellent views of dark wooded scenery taken in this 

 way. 



It may be worth while to remind those who think that they 

 would appreciate the possibility of getting views including a 

 wide horizontal angle, that ihe perspective of the pictures pro- 

 duced by all such apparatus as that referred to is cylindric, 

 and, being diff'erent from the more usual plane perspective of flat 

 plates, requires diff'erent precautions on the part of the photo- 

 grapher to avoid unpleasant results. The chief of these pre- 

 cautions is due to the fact that horizontal lines that lie either 

 above or below the axis of the lens are curved towards the axis. 

 The horizon itself is, of course, never curved on the photograph 

 if the camera is level, and the panoram is provided with a spirit 

 level as a guide for this purpose. Speaking practically, the one 

 kind of view to avoid may be exemplified by a long building 

 photographed from a point approximately opposite to its centre, 



NO. 1628, VOL. 63] 



facing it, say, from the other side of the street. It is impossible 

 by any means to set a satisfactory representation of such an 

 object from such a position, but the temptation to make the 

 attempt is greater with a panoramic camera than with the more 

 usual apparatus. 



Now that a panoramic camera suitable for ordinary purposes 

 has been shown to be possible, we hope that the construction 

 adopted will be applied to the production of other sizes and 

 perhaps other qualities of apparatus. C.J. 



SOME RECENT ADVANCES IN BIOLOGICAL 



SCIENCE} 

 A TIME-HONOURED distinction has been drawn between 

 the so-called observational and the experimental 

 sciences ; and, pledged as we are to the former, we have to deal 

 witti those subjects which, in the hands of the immortal Darwin, 

 have during the last forty years revolutionised all departments 

 of science not wholly mathematical, for be it remembered that 

 the formulation of the periodic law in chemistry is but that of 

 an evolutionary hypothesis. So reactionary has been this 

 influence upon thought and mental conduct, that it has rendered 

 it impossible for us to think as did our forefathers, and has 

 thereby increased our responsibility to our juniors and those 

 who seek our guidance. 



Never was progress more rapid than in these post-Darwinian 

 days. Steady work in the discovery and classification of genera 

 and species has proceeded all along the line, and with extending 

 influence in the far East. Some idea of what is now taking 

 place in our chosen field may be formed from the fact that, 

 since the adoption of western methods by the Japanese, we 

 have not only to record zoological discoveries of first-rate order, 

 due to the fact that they alone possess the material upon which 

 they are based, but to their lasting credit be it said that they 

 have put us right on fundamentals upon which we have for 

 generations imagined we knew all. To wit, a young Japanese, 

 Hirota by name, alas, now dead ! availing himself of the dis- 

 covery by his teacher of a peculiar condition of the egg- 

 membranes in the native tortoises, was led to argue that since 

 these creatures and birds are not so very distantly related, the 

 like might be forthcoming in them ; and turning to the common 

 chick — the bird most ready to hand— he succeeded in proving 

 not only the existence of the condition suspected, but that we in 

 the West, with our boasted methods and resources, by error of 

 orientation, contenting ourselves with the mere examination of 

 parts, instead of the whole object, have gone wrong on an 

 elementary and most important detail. 



One immediate effect of the demonstration of the truth o. 

 evolution, now historically established, has been the substitution 

 for the old-fashioned and merely tabular classifications of 

 animate beings, of linear arrangements and phylogenetic trees. 

 To those of the Hseckelian school, fired by an energy of en- 

 thusiasm, it appeared easy to locate every known creature to 

 its proper place in the series ; but while these persons did " 

 good by the stimulating influence of their work, it is needless 

 to say that the hasty construction of such schemes must be 

 fraught with error. So colossal a task is not to be achieved in 

 a lifetime, and it too soon became evident that these fantastic 

 expressions of supposed facts, like all classificatory formulse, had 

 to give way under the growth of knowledge, until now the time 

 has come when our classifications of animals, which, be it said, 

 are at best but the tentative expression of our ideas, are being 

 based, not on the mere characters of the exterior, or of a single 

 series of parts, but on the sum total of the maximum number 

 of characters observable. Where we once thought we detected 

 relationships, we now know we were often being misled, and 

 the old-time supposition that mere community of structure is 

 necessarily an index of community of origin has gone to the 

 wall. 



The past three decades will be ever memorable in the history 

 of biology as that of what may be termed the embryologicaJ 

 reaction, prompted by the thought that the clue to the origin of 

 an animal in the remote past lies in the study of its development 

 from the egg, believed to recapitulate the history of its race. 

 Great, however, has been the disappointment in this respect, it 

 having been discovered in many cases that the animate being, 



1 Abridged report of the Presidential Address, delivered by Prof. G. B. 

 Howes, F.R.S., before the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies, at ■ 

 their Fifth Annual Congress, held in Brighton. 



