PREFACE. 
5 
of an audience, visible actions and audible words. At 
that time the phonograph had not been adapted to reach 
the ears of a large audience, so the scheme was temporarily 
abandoned. 
Five years after this interview, or twelve years after 
the zoopraxiscope had been exhibited at a large number 
of scientific and artistic institutions in Europe and America, 
the first improvement thereof, for the purpose of realizing 
the same effects, appeared in the instrument called by its 
ingenious constructor the “ kinetoscope.” This improve¬ 
ment was made possible by the invention of the celluloid 
ribbon, by the use of which a larger number of successive 
phases of motion could be obtained in the making of 
the original negatives than on glass plates, and in the 
synthetic exhibition of the positives thereof, than was 
possible on a glass disc, however large, or however close 
together the successive phases could be spirally arranged. 
A great many claimants have arisen for this improve¬ 
ment on the zoopraxiscope. To Marey must be attributed 
the first obtainment, with a single lens, on a strip of 
sensitized material, of a succession of moving figures, which 
he accomplished in 1882 ; and to Edison the first appli¬ 
cation of a strip or ribbon containing a number of such 
figures in a straight line (instead of being arranged on 
a large glass disc), for lantern projection; this, after much 
patient attention, he succeeded in doing in 1893. 
The combination of such an instrument with the 
phonograph has not, at the time of writing, been satis¬ 
factorily accomplished ; there can, however, be but little 
doubt that in the — perhaps not far distant — future 
instruments will be constructed that will not only repro¬ 
duce visible actions simultaneously with audible words, 
but an entire opera, with the gestures, facial expressions, 
and songs of the performers, with all the accompanying 
music, will be recorded and reproduced by an apparatus, 
combining the principles of the zoopraxiscope and the 
phonograph, for the instruction or entertainment of an 
audience long after the original participants shall have 
passed away ; and if the photographs should have been 
made stereoscopically, and projections from each series 
be independently and synchronously projected on a 
screen, a perfectly realistic imitation of the original 
performance will be seen, in the apparent “ round,” by 
the use of properly constructed binocular glasses. 
With the exception of a series of phases of a solar 
eclipse, made in january, 1880, the Palo Alto researches 
were concluded in 1879 ; they resulted in the publication 
of a volume containing about two hundred sheets of 
photographs, the greater number of which illustrated from 
twelve to twenty-four consecutive phases of some act of 
movement by a man, a horse, or some other animal. A 
few photographs were made of birds on the wing, others 
of groups of horses on the gallop, and many represented 
phases synchronously photographed from five different 
points of view. 
A number of these subjects were, a few years after¬ 
wards, copied, and republished in a book bearing the same 
title as that originally used by their author, without the 
formality of placing his name on the title-page. 
Although these preliminary labours had completely 
