# The Moving Picture World/Volume 1/Number 1/An Excuse and a Defense

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An Excuse and a Defense.
What! Another trade journal? Is there room? Yes; another! and plenty of room! Before making our plans we visited the most prominent of the film photographers and manufacturers of accessories, and were assured of their support for an independent journal not allied with or controlled by any house or person connected with the profession—one that is free to speak the truth without fear or favor, treating all alike, giving due prominence to all that is new in the moving picture world, here and abroad. And with our experience of the wants of the various industries, gained as a practical photographer and slide maker during the past twenty-two years, and through editing our contemporary, the Magic Lantern Journal in London, England, and Views and Films Index, we make our venture, and bid boldly for the patronage of manufacturers and operators of films and slides, fully assuring them that their interests shall be ours and trusting they will make our interest and advancement theirs.
What Are Our Plans and What Do We Propose to Do?
It is our intention to give the best, and only the best, news concerning the film industry, describing briefly each new film as it is produced, taking note of its quality, and giving an unbiased opinion of its merits or demerits. We know there is a lot of rubbish on the market at the present day that ought to go into the junk heap.
We propose to keep in touch with all machine manufacturers, getting their ideas of improvement and every useful device, bringing the same before the notice of our readers, testing them whenever possible befor commenting thereon.
We shall note every fire that occurs through the youth or inexperience of the operators in Nickelodeon or other places, publishing full facts thereof, as we believe that full publicity should be given to these matters, and only skilled electricians should be employed in such responsible positions.
We will endeavor to get in touch with every lecturer of note who uses either slides or films, and give due prominence to the various subjects handled; also every vocalist who uses song slides, and the publishers who issue the same.
We propose to give useful items of information available for amateur or professional slide maker and photographer.
Once a month we will publish a London letter showing the best productions of England.
We hope to give a series of articles useful to the tintype and photo-button man, also to the miniature worker on ivory or other support.
Have we covered sufficient ground? Is there anything we have left out? If so, we will say that every bit of interesting information connected with the taking and projection of pictures and lantern slides will be found in our columns suitable for the tyro or the expert.
The following are a few of the articles we hope to publish for the cinematographists information:
Visits to manufacturers of films, machines, cameras, and lantern slides.
Moving-picture machines—their making, construction and history, and how to use them.
Useful hints to cinematograph operators.
For the lanternist and slide maker: Optical projection, lens construction, light.
How to make lantern slides, wet collodion and dry plate processes, with articles from expert workers.
How to color lantern slides; American, Japanese and ENglish methods; and the preparation of colors.
How to prepare and color wet collodion slides with aniline or oil colors.
How to copy matter for lantern slides, such as pictures, objects, paintings, flowers; and how to arrange models for illustrated songs and recitations.
How to prepare ferrotypes, and useful hints to the tintype man at the seashore and other resorts.
With a hundred and one other items of interest covered by photographic processes.
Edison vs. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
The litigation which has been going on for some years against the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, under the Edison moving picture camera patent, was brought to a close, March 6, by a decision of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The Court, in an exhaustive opinion, finds that the Mutoscope Company's biograph camera, which is the camera principally used by that company in its business and covered by patents owned and controlled by it, is not the "type of apparatus described and shown in the Edison patents involved in this suit and is not an infringement"; but that all other commercial forms of camera now in use embodying the sprocket movement engaging with a perforated film are within the scope of the Edison patent.
The effect of this decision, which is final, leaves the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company undisturbed in its right to use its own form of camera, which is fully protected by its patents and is the only practical form of camera described by the Court to be outside the Edison patent, so that the business of manufacturing moving picture films will, as the result of this litigation, be confined to the American Mutoscope and Biograph and the Edison companies.
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