Popular Science Monthly 



889 



the dash. There was enough accuracy in 

 his arithmetic to get the crossing but 

 he left part of the rear mudgard aboard 

 the cowcatcher. The engineer, who was 

 the only extemporaneous actor in the 

 event, took a week off at the picture com- 

 pany's expense to recover from the shock. 

 Not so long ago Anita King, in "The 

 Race" went off the end of a broken 

 bridge and twenty feet out into the 

 water, while an officer was waiting in the 

 Hollywood studio 

 to serve an injunc- 

 tion upon her to 

 restrain her from 

 carrying out the 

 performance. Some 

 one 'who had re- 

 ceived a tip of what 

 was to happen and 

 who feared for the 

 actress's safety had 

 made a strenuous 

 effort to prevent 



the hazardous leap. 

 Elmer Thompson 



has just jumped 



his car across a 



twenty-seven-foot 



gap in a bridge out 



in Camarillo, Cali- 

 fornia, in the taking 



of a scene for "The 



Secret Submarine." 



The car lighted on 



the forward wheels 



with the rear ones 



elevated like the 



hind legs of a 



bucking broncho. 



It was touch and 



go whether the 



machine would 



somersault or right 



itself. It happened 



to do the latter. 

 In "The Trail of 



Gibson is swung by 



Danger," Helen 

 the derrick of a 

 rapidly moving wrecking train, from the 

 saddle of a horse, to the deck of one of 

 the cars. 



This combination of cameraman, cut- 

 ter and realistic actor is responsible for 

 more thrills on the screen than can be 

 found in any three-ring circus, outside 

 of the posters. The life of a moving- 

 picture actor is a series of thrills. 



A Camera Which Can Be Tilted 

 At Any Angle 



IN photographing natural history ob- 

 jects such as skulls, mounted fossils, 

 etc., it is often necessary to take a view 

 of the specimen as seen from above. In 

 most cases the object can be taken off 

 its stand and placed against a vertical 

 screen with the side to be photographed 

 toward the camera. Sometimes, how- 

 ever, the object is so delicate that one 

 dare not turn it 

 from its upright 

 position, or it is 

 too valuable to risk 

 handling, or it may 

 be altogether too 

 large to do so, as 

 for instance in the 

 case of a dinosaur 

 skull weighing a 

 quarter of a ton or 

 a completely 

 mounted fossil 

 animal. 



For such cases, 

 there is in use by 

 Mr.'A. E.Anderson, 

 photographer to 

 the Department of 

 Vertebrate Paleon- 

 tology of the 

 American Museum 

 of Natural History 

 in New York, a 

 camera of his own 

 design, which can 

 be tilted at any 

 angle, or, in fact, 

 turned upside 

 down, as shown in 

 the illustration. 

 The camera has a 

 ground glass eleven 

 by fourteen inches 

 and is provided 

 long bellows. The 



Sometimes a fossil skull weighs a quar- 

 ter of a ton; it cannot be lifted to be 

 photographed. That is one reason 

 why this camera was invented 



ith 



an unus 



ualh' 



stand supporting it is so constructed 

 that the camera when turned upside 

 down can project a considerable distance 

 beyond the vertical axis on which it 

 ortlinarily rests. 



With the aid of this camera, Mr. An- 

 derson has found it possible to photograph 

 anything which presented itself, whether 

 it was too heavy to be lifted or too deli- 

 cate to be moved. 



