Arizona republican., 1913-09-07
The Path of The Picture Play
Taking Motion Pictures on Seabotton
 Planned

Planned
 1 J. Ernest Williamson of Norfolk. ! Va, has been taking submarine mo-
 tiOn pictures near Hampton Roads. 1 He will continue the work on the 1 trip to the tropics which he will un-
 dertake within six months. This will ! be the newest achivement in the pie 1 ture art.
 1 Williamson is a rather slight, fair haired man of thirty-four years, all l though he looks considerably younger He is the son of Capt. J. H. Will f liamson, who invented the flexible submarine tube from which the pho l tographs under the water have been | taken. Three years ago he was a | photographer for a Norfolk daily. A i year ago he was drawing cartoons l for a Philadelphia paper. He has i also been mechanical draughts- | man.
 About two months ago Williamson was looking at some moving pictures one night at home in Norfolk when | he saw bugs shown on the screen taken with the aid of microscope. That started him thinking. Then he started to work on his idea of sub marine photography. The only other man in the world who has done any tnlnS along tnlS llHe, " lIlidIiSOh Sdlu yesterday. is Dr. Francis Ward of England, who has only taken pictures of fish in pond in his own yard. Used Submarine Tube So Williamson worked feverishly at his idea His fathers submarine tube was fixed into a well at the bottom of a barge thirty feet long The well was six feet square. The tube, made of iron sections with a wa terproof cover of rubber and can vas. could be lowered to any depth,
 as much as 800 feet if necessary. At the bottom of the tube was the work chamber, as Williamson calls it, which may be of any size In this Williamson sat with an ordinary camera and looked out through a funnel extension six feet long with glass cover This funnel extension gave an air space between the lens of the camera and the area of the focus.
 Air was pumped into the funnel
 from the chamber to equaIize the pressure with that from the outside to take the strain off the glass.
 Electric lights, tungstens making 1000 candle power, with reflectors,
 were lowered from the outside to
 flash light through the water and
 enable Williamson to snap photos Of
 the fish as they swan past. From a launch with a motor q wire con ducted the power to the barge.
 Thirty-five feet was the lowest Williamson went down in the tube and thirty feet was the lowest depth at which he took any pictures
 He stayed down as long as an hour at a time He doesn't remember how long, for it was as cosy down
 there. he said, as in ones study at home
 A Really New Sensation
 "Going down the tube into the chamber is like climbing down lad der, for rings inside the sections of the tube make a ladder" said Will Hanson yesterday. Tt took my breath away the first time I went down under the water, not because of any shortage of air but because if was a new sensation. It was a month ago when I went down for the first time to take a photograph
 Tt startled me. I was nervous at once, for I got in a hurry to snap pictures of the fish. It's like taking pictures of a crowd. you know You see more persons than you find on your photographs when printed II was fascinating.
 T don't remember how long l re-