62 



Z'jth January^ ^^97- 



Professor J. D. Everett, f.r.s., d.c.l., in the Chair. 



Mr. William Nicholl delivered a lecture on the 

 " ELECTRIC CINEMATOGRAPH." 



Mr. William Nicholl said the wonderful development which 

 the projection of pictures on the screen had received by the 

 perfecting of the optical lantern, and the adaptation to it of the 

 electric arc lamp had enabled the inventor to construct a 

 mechanical contrivance which would project pictures, and 

 change them at the rate of from twenty to forty per second of 

 time. Those machines had been named by their various 

 makers the cinematograph, the thealograh, the vitagraph, and 

 a variety of other titles, but the principle was always the same, 

 only the mechanical parts varied. To project pictures and 

 exhibit them on a screen they must first take them, and to do 

 so had only been possible for a very limited period. With the 

 old collodion process of photography this was quite impossible. 

 When the extremely rapid gelatine plate was introduced, the 

 pictures could be taken quick enough, but the glass plates 

 could not be changed in the camera, so that it needed not or.ly 

 the quick emulsion but a quick flexible support, and this was 

 supplied by the celluloid ribbon, and it was now possible to 

 take photographs at the rate of some forty per second. Before 

 describing the pictures he proposed to glance at the early 

 attempts to produce the effect of life or motion by means of 

 pictures. A retrospect of some sixty years would cover the 

 time when those attempts had been before the public. Some- 



