Many years ago your great-grandfather may have made your grandmother laugh by showing her how small pictures on cards appeared to move if he ran the cards past his thumb quickly. Your great-grandfather did not know it, but he was demonstrating an idea that was later to become the basis of one of the largest industries in the world and also one of the most important means of education.

How It Happened. For many hundreds of years, people throughout the world had dreamed of making pictures which would move. Their dream did not come true until the 1890's, when Edison invented the movies. This invention created an industry which spends several hundred million dollars a year.

Home Movies Are Enjoyed by Thousands of American Families.

Home Movies Are Enjoyed By Thousands Of American Families

It is very seldom that one man makes an invention which is absolutely new. Nearly all of our inventions have been the result of a long period of efforts which were sometimes fruitless. Finally some one man, by adding an improvement to a crude device, makes it a success. We then call him the inventor.

Frequently a device will be developed through several decades until it is a partial success. Then its further progress is delayed until someone, perhaps for an entirely different reason, invents a material which, when applied to the device, makes it a great success. For example, it was impossible to make powerful highspeed engines until chemists had devised a way of turning iron into steel by a cheap process. When that was accomplished, steam boilers could be made so strong that they could stand a pressure of hundreds of pounds per square inch. The release of this pressure makes engines of great power and speed possible.

The invention of the movies is another example of a long series of experiments and crude devices. Perhaps we should start with the very first photograph ever taken. About 1830, a French painter by the name of Daguerre discovered how to take photographs upon a metal plate which had been covered with a chemical containing silver. For a generation photographs were always taken upon thin metal plates. They were called daguerreotypes. Old family albums usually contain a number of these faded pictures.

People were not long content with a device which pictures the way an object looks at one instant of time. They wanted a device which would record motion, such as a horse racing or the waves lapping the beach. The reason why they had hopes of accomplishing this seemingly impossible feat was that scientists had noticed that the human eye has a peculiar and very interesting characteristic. When a picture is flashed before our eyes for the merest fraction of a second, we continue to see that picture for a small portion of a second after it has been removed.

This peculiarity of our eyes is illustrated when we drive past a fence in which there are good-sized cracks between the vertical boards. If we drive along at the right speed, it is possible to see anything on the other side of the fence almost as well as if the fence were not there. We could watch a ball game if we drove back and forth along the fence. The momentary image, which we get of the field from each crack, stays in our eyes until it is replaced by the image seen through the next crack.

About 1860 an engineer by the name of Coleman Sellers tried to combine Daguerre's invention of a photograph with this reluctance of the human eye instantly to give up any picture which it sees. He took a series of pictures of some very slow-moving object and pasted them upon the blades of a small paddle wheel. By turning the wheel with sufficient speed, the observer got the sensation of a very crude movie.

Daguerreotype

A Daguerreotype, one of the earliest kinds of photographs. You may be able to find a daguerreotype or two in the family album.

Edison's First Movie Studio Was In This Crude Building

Edison's first movie studio was in this crude building. Compare the humble beginning of the movies with our modern extensive movie industry.

Approximately ten years later, during the 1870's, Henry R. Heyl made a device which was slightly better than the paddle wheel. He placed his pictures on the circumference of a wheel. It was possible to place this wheel in a "magic lantern" or stereopticon and thus project a flickering and quite unsatisfactory movie upon the screen.

Probably the movies never would have been anything more than a curiosity, if it had not been for another invention - the photographic film. George Eastman, who invented the Kodak, wanted to make it possible for people to take many photographs without carrying around a number of heavy glass plates. So he put his silver chemical upon a flexible and semi-transparent film. This film could be made any length and, therefore, could hold a large number of pictures.

The Great Train Robbery

"The Great Train Robbery" was the first motion picture to tell a continuous story.

Eastman's film was made in 1889, and that same year Thomas Edison used it in a moving-picture camera. At first Edison's movie was crude, but the principle was the same as the amazing productions of the present time. When we now see a sound motion picture, we are receiving in our eyes 24 impressions a second; that is, 24 pictures are flashed on the screen every second. Of course we see these pictures as a continuous performance without even a flicker.

It was not until 1896 that a projecting device was made which was sufficiently satisfactory for an exhibit in a theater. Then New York City had its first movie. Now, several thousand exposures can be made per second so that it is possible to make a movie of such things as a rifle bullet breaking a light bulb.

It was Thomas Edison who made the first long movie. This first achievement was "The Great Train Robbery." Edison finally standardized his film at a length of 1,000 feet, which took 14 minutes to pass through the projector. Even today this is the standard length and time.

And so it can be seen that many different persons had a hand in the development of modern motion pictures. The fact that pictures on films were first produced in America, and that the World War stopped production in Europe, helped to make it possible for our country to take the lead in producing movies of all kinds. So large has the motion-picture industry become that today thousands of people are employed in the production of new movies, and many millions of people see these movies each week in the United States alone.

As you know, the center of the motion-picture industry is around Hollywood, California. But not all movie producers are in Hollywood. Not by any means! There are thousands of people throughout the whole length and breadth of the land who produce movies for their own amusement and education. Some of these producers (usually called "amateur movie makers") make high-class movies and enjoy them with their friends.