Arizona republican., 1906-06-18

a result the enterprise was given up by the newspaper men. though MT. Amet began planning at once to get the pictures anyway. About the mid dle of April he began the building Of q lake sixteen feet wide and twenty feet long and eighteen inches deep. The lake afterwards served as the bay of Santiago. Surrounding it was a can- vas curtain thirty feet long and twelve feet high on which was painted the scenery around the bay. so true to the
 pictures that were made by the cam
 era men that those who were familiar with the locality pronounced them
 genuine reproductions. Then he stud jed all the pictures in the illustrated
 papers. read all the technical descrip-
 tons of the ships of both fleets. then anchored on the Cuban coast or in the haTbor, and immediately set to work making little models of these to sail on.
 his miniature bay. The models of the larger vessels were not mere toys but were actually built for business on a small scale. were heavily armed and
 their big guns at the proper time were
 all made to operate by electricity, some of them firing charges of considera ble
 magnitude. One or two of his biggest
 and best boats were blown up acci-
 reconstructed
 The armament and all was made in
 outward appearance. true to technical
 details and the boats were directed in
 their course across the lake by wires
 and clockwOrk machinery. commuta-
 tors. etc, all being operated so that
 the relative speed of each was con-
 trolled. He had the larger vessels in
 each fleet so true to the originals that
 anyone familiar with them could name
 them at a glance. After the battle the
 wrecking of the Spanish ships. the
 sinking of the Viscaya, etc, he studied
 all the pictures available and read with
 great diligence the newspaper accounts
 of just how each ship performed. how
 the big smoke stacks and masts ton
 pied over, how the Viscaya sunk and
 the relative position of each of the
 larger ships during the period of the
 fight he proposed to reproduce Then
 he rigged his smokeStackS and masts
 so they could be destroyed at the prop CT time and in the proper way timed
 hlS big guns and arranged his little ones. together with q goodly supply of
 little firecrackers and other explosives
 for shell work in the water at the right time, started the machinery. the larger vessels dashing the white foam
 Tn their wake. gunpowder bursting and 0iAtlAS illAliIS tue Wdlef. Wnlic smaller boats were circling round. At the same
 time the picture machine was getting In it's work. The angles had all been studied out an dthe entire mechanism
 had been constructed on a correct scale. the machine being theoretically ten miles away. For instance two boats passing within six inches of each other in reality appeared to be perhaps 4 quarter of a mile apart
 So true in detail was the reproduc- ton of the battle that many who wit messed it and who later saw his pie lures marveled at the accuracy and would have been willing to beIiev inc pictures were genuine only they hap- pened to knew it would have been an impossibility. For a long time after that his laboratory was popular place for many of the curious and many who had witnessed the battle, journeyed long distance to see the miniature re- production of it. Only a few days af ter the battle of the fleets. he had his films ready for use in the show halls