Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-07-18

Washington. d. c., July 15.-How
q big shell crawls into the armor place
of a battleship. and how a golf club
hits a ball are two long standing mys-
teries that are mysterious no longer.
The newest ultra-rapid Gamers an
alyzes the high speed motion of the
shell as though it were moving at a
snail's pace. To the eve the shell,
travelling at perhaps $500 feet a sec
ond. seems to crash into the target
almost simultaneously after il is fired.
The high speed Gamers shows it creep
ing with a rotary motion down TO the
armor plate, ~wriggling it's way into the
steel. and sending bits of wreckage
floating slowly into the air.
The golf club shaft is shown by the
camera actually to bend forward as it
strikes the ball. That the stick did
this was suspected by some players,
but there was no way of proving the
point. The Gamers shows that as the
club is brought down to the ball the
force of the drive bends the shaft for
ward. The head of the club Tags be-
hind from the force of the stroke. But
at the instant the clubhead contacts
with the ball the bend in the shaft is
reversed. The greater the power back
of the stroke the greater the bend in
the shaft.
Motions as rapid as these have
hitherto been hidden even from the
quick eyes Of the usual high speed mo-
ton picture cameras. With these,
catching 10000 pictures a minute, the
shell would burst more slowly than
normally, but not slowly enough TO
show its exact action.
The new camera is the Invention Of
G. Francis jenkins of this city. His
machine takes 100000 pictures a min
ute. This is 100 times the speed of a
normal speed motion picture camera.
A motion which is performed in one
second can. by jenkins invention, be
spread out over 100 seconds when
turned into film and shown on a screen.
The race horse that You occasionally
see floating around a track in the
movie ~pictorials can be made to 20 at
one-tenth that speed by Mr.. jenkins.
The cameras in commercial use. how
ever. are swift enough for this sort
of thing. he says. His machine goes
after more elusive subjects, with faster
or more complicated action.
Invented 80 Years Ago
The principle Of this camera was in
vented by Mr.. Jenkins 80 years ago,
DuL II was cull ldSI year liHt ne ne
veloped it to take high speed movies.
Since then he has made a number of
pictures for the army and navy. None
has been publicly shown.
Besides wanting an answer to the
question of how a shell strikes a bat
tleship. the navy asked Mr.. Jenkins to
grind out an analysis of a seaplane
taking off through the water. The in.
ventor had to film this four or five
times before camera and plane got into
action together. The whole scene had
to be filmed in four seconds. This
was more than sufficient time since
400 feet of film could be recorded in
four seconds. 1t even allowed n mar
gin of 100 feet of film each side OF
the action because the rush of the
plane would fill only 200 feet. The
only problem was to start the camera
so that the plane would dash ont with
in the length of the film. 1t was a diff
ficult assignment. but Mr.. Jenkins
filled it.
High speed pictures of airplane
flights showed that no one had ever
been able to sce-the bending and
warping Of the propeller under great
powers Of the engine. This has been
shown in detail by the films and study