The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1951-08-02
In The
Background
(By The Associated Presse
Birthday Of The Movies

1t was a very hot day in July
some so years ago that Thomas
A. Edison went through the farnil-
lar routine of getting another pa
tent. Just no hum for young Tom.
But that patent of the 3lst OF
July, 1891 was a ginmick that
has upset the whole worlds way
of living and thinking. 1t was
called the kaleidoscope. We call il
the movies. The rest of the world
calls it the cinema. Hollywood
calls it colossal.
Tom Edison could not see much
of a future in it except as a sort
of amusement gallery peep-show
For years, people tried to talk
him into working on a means OF
projecting the pictures onto a
screen. Edison was a man of un-
precedented vision, but he was
also terribly stubborn.
He liked his little old Kineto-
scope the way it was. He wasn't
interested in projecting it on a
screen. He said if you did that,
too many people would see it at
once, and interest in the thing
would peter out. Even Edison
could be wrong, you see.
So 1t was a man named Armat,
Thomas Armat, who went to
work improving the thing. The
big forward step was the trick
of intermittent motion. Armat
worked out device which would
stop the film momentarily while
each picture was being taken
and likewise stop the film as il
ran through the protector in the
theatre. This gadget is what
makes movies work today.
The first picture ever projected
on the screen, with Edison's and
Armat's inventions, was name
less short subject made by Robert
w. Paul, of London. That was five
years after Edison's patent was
issued. But the patent didn't pro-
tect Edison outside the United
States, an he lost billions for this
little oversight.
X What Edison really did was to
take an idea that had been kick
ing around for so years, and pas
it to work. Several earlier inven-
tors had made gadgetS to make
pictures appear to move. These
ali consisted of various sorts OF
lwheels, with little pictures stuck
around the rim. As the wheel was
turned, a Semblance of a moving
picture appeared if you watch
ed closely. Edison himself made
ene but regarded it as a failure,
1t was, Like most triumphs OF
human inspiration. Edison's idea
was simple. He said to himself
why fool with a wheel? Why
lleRa moving belt or something?'
: He learned that George East.
man had developed transparent
film of celluloid. which he sold
in rolls to the box-camera GUS
toners. For $3.50, Edison got
Eastman to send him the longest
Istrip of film he could make
which was so feet. That was the
length of the tables on which the
film was made, and so feet was
it. Edison's first film ran IS min
utes per second, so the fifty feet
of film didn't make what you'd
call Gone With The Wind" for
length. II ran l3 seconds.
But it was colossal, as it has
been ever since.
Edison was bored TO extinction
with it. One TO his monograph
statesmen finally boxed it up pref.
| ty and sold it to the New York
shooting gallery trade in 1894
Edison spent the next ten years
IN the courts trying to get hi;
dough out of the investment. He
won.
The first movie that could bt
called a movie shown in thi.
country was a short reel run of
at Roster and Bial's music hall il
Herald Square, New York, on thu
night of April %, 1896. The show
was such hit that the produc'
ers rapidly expanded the capaci
ty of the protector 10 take LOOT
fet of film. This is still the stand
lard length of reel. And ineiden-
tally, the width of the film, 81
millimeters, is also just what i
was in that original 50-foot strip
that Edison got from Eastman. A
reel now runs about II minutes
but in those days the time vari
ed. They didn't always run at tht
| same speed, and it was years be
fore cameras and films were per
/ fected to the point of eliminating
! the dreadful flicker which blight
ed early movies.
1 The advent of sound forced ;
lspeed-up of cameras for technical
lreasons, and the early standard
| speed of 10 pictures per second i
now "a. Edison lived to see th'
| flicker eliminated. and to hear
+, the advent of sound, though h
was pathetically deaf in his oil
| age.
| And now the movie is arr