The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-07-18
New Fast Action Camera
BY FREDERIC ). HAsklN

WASHINGTON, D. c., July IS. =
How a big shell crawls into the ar
NOR plate of battleship, and how
a golf club hits ball are two long
standing mysteries that are mysteri-
es no longer.
The newest ultra-rapid camera an
alyzes the high speed motion of the
she'll as though it were moving at n
snails pace. To the eye the shell,
travelling at perhaps $500 feet a sec
ond, seems to crash into the target
almost instantaneously after it is
fired. The high speed camera shows
it creeping with rotary motion down
to the armor plate. wriggling its 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 play.
ers, but there was no way Of proving
the point. The camera shows that as
the club is brought down to the ball
the force of the drive bends the shaft
forward. The head of the club lags
behind from the force Of the stroke
facts with the ball the bend in the
power back of the stroke the greater
the bend in the shaft.
Motions as rapid as these have hith-
erto been hidden even from the quick
: eyes of the usual high speed motion
picture cameras. With these, catch
ing 10000 pictures a minute, the shell
! ,~r% 81
mally but not slowly enough to show
| its exact action.
The new camera is the invention of
! c. 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 occasion
ally see floating around track in
the movie pictorials can be made to
go at one-tenth that speed by Mr..
Jenkins. The cameras in commercial
use, however. are swift enough for
! this sort of things, he says. His ma
chine goes after more elusive sub
jects. with faster or more complicated
action.
Invented Thirty Years Ago
| The principle of this camera was
/ invented by Mr. Jenkins 80 years ago.
but it was only last year that he de
veloped it to take high speed movies
Since then he has made 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 bat
tleship, the Navy asked Mr. jenkins
| to grind out an analysis of seaplane
taking off through the water. The
| inventor had to film this four or five
times before camera and plane go,
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 mar
gin of 100 feet of film each side Of
the action because the rush of the
plane would fill only 200 The only
problem was to start the camera Sc
that the plane would dash out withir
the length of the film. 1t was a diff
ficult assignment, but Mr.. jenkins
i filled it.
/ High speed pictures of airplant
flights showed that no one had evel
been able to see-the bending anC
warping of the propeller under grea
, powers of the engine. This has beer
shown in detail by the films and stud.
of the condition will probably Leaf
to the production of stronger, stiffe
: blades.
. The Navy also had pictures mad
of several pigeons being released from
basket at the start Of race. Tn
point in question was whether tn,
/ int ono