Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1921-04-29
INVENTION Of THE MOVIE
C. Francis Jenkins, Treasury. Clerk
Sold Invention for; $4,000.
SHOCKED HIS LITTLE home TOWN
First Motion Picture Machine Made
Twenty seven Years Aso-Inventor
Was Poor Business Man: 4

Twenty seven Years Aso-Inventor
Was Poor Business Man. d
Homer Croy in the New York Tribune.
There are now sixty eight thousand
persons in the United States engaged
in the motion picture business, many
of whom are not press agents. -
Were you ever one Of those I'M
happy wights who went to a motion
picture bali expecting to dance with: a
h'm favorite? Then you, too, have
suffered. You have gone out; OF a
morning with the world. bright before
you and come back Of an evening and
crawled into bed knowing that all: is
sawdust.
That gang around Babe Twokness
was not an admiring throng,, fighting
for smile and dying for an autograph.
No, indeed. They were merely her
press agents, and instead Of dying they
were making a pretty good living.
She is completely in their power.
They dictate where she shall be: mar
ried and when she shall be arrested Tor
speeding. ~. -
Inventor Has No Press Agent. =
Thus it is for the people of: the
movies. They all have. their press
agents-all except one man; and he is
the man who invented; them. ~,
Almost any day he may be seen,
walking down Pennsylvania avenue,
Washington, and yet nobody knows
him. All the attention people pay Z: to
him is to push him out Of the way.
He has not addressed a mothers cub
in sixteen years. He goes jostling 'on
down the street, but If some movie
queen comes along she blocks traffic.
Thus life runs away. So.
Ten million people a day go to the
movies in the United States; but how
many of them know who: made the first
movie? The Noes" have 1t. The man
who made the first motion picture, S,as
we know it today, is C.Francis Jerik-
ins. Many girls who have not been
"in pictures" month are better known,
C. Francis is too much. given tot hiding
his light under a bushel.' II any:
motion picture actress endeavors kto
hide. her light under any-kipd. of pro-
rection her address at presefft iscit1-
known. Instead, she ,crawls mp 1n top
of the measure and calls for ths FsHot-
light man. If he does not giVei tofher
quick she will kick the four pecks;:t
kingdom come! =, ~
C. Francis Jenkins was clerk In the
life-saving division Of the treasury de-
partment at Washington but he was
not content with putting on his sleeve
protectors Of morning and taking
them off at 1855 o'clock. He did not
want to Spend his life beating the clock
of a morning and of an evening watch
ing to see if the boss had yet gone
home. He was hipped on photography,
and in the yard of his boarding house
made many experiments. He was work
ing with a magic lantern, which was
then considered about the furthest
north Of human ingenuity. Young
jenkins was seized with the extrava-
CANT idea of making pictures move, oy
means Of the lantern, and to work ne
set. In he called vaudeville dancer
named Annabelle,, whose particular Dit
Of entertainment was a. 'so-cal!ed Dut-
teray dance. OF her Jenkins made pic
lures Many, men in the United states
and Europe had been working on tine
idea of animal locomotion, as 1t was
then called, but as glass plates nag 70
be used the result. was not any pc
wldering success. The heavy. oumeer-
some plates could not be progresses n
front of a light source fast enough, TO
make any animal look like anything
but q death struggle. Then the ;cellu-
loid film was announced. 1t was light
and flexible. The inventors were on.
It was race. -
The summer vacation came along
after a while, as it always does, ana
C. Francis asked for an extra week.
He sent a mysterious box by express,
and went home to Richmond, Ind.
sprans a Big Surprise.
To a jewelry store run by his cousin
he took the mysterious box and asked
if the curtains might be drawn down
for a brief bit. Business was never. so
brisk in Richmond that the sacrifice
would be absolutely disastrous. The
only electricity was a trolly wire pass
ing the door, and using pail OF water
as a rheostat, C. Francis made his con-
nections. Invited in were his father
and mother, the editor of the local
paper and few others. :. 80,
Not a word had the young man said
of what they were to see. To them 1t
was just another Of Francis's time
killers. The room was darkened; there
was a sputtering, a grinding and a
groaning of moving machinery, andIout
on the wall before the astonished eyes
of the good citizen stepped young and
more or less beautiful girl. They
gasped-thcre was some trick to 1t, be-
cause there wasn't any trapdoor In the
wall. People were getting so slick with
+bo,,, vy,,dnvrera anywayi lust the