INVENTOR OF MOVIES

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2703, 24 February 1916, Page 7

INVENTOR OF MOVIES

« STORY OF DISCOVERY.

"The kinomatocraph is British in conception and original in construction. I ought to know, because I invented I it!" says Mr. Friese-Grcene, now a photographer at Brighton, England. "It is just 30 years ago that, after a great deal of experimenting, I succeeded ill showing, the first animated picture ever thrown on any screen. It tcok place at 34 (jays Street, Bath, in 1885, being the 'great novelty' of a sort of penny reading hold there one evening. The picture showed a girl moving her eyes from side to side, and so scei>tical of its genuineness was one old lady who was present that she walked up to the sheet on to which the picture was thrown and insisted upon touching tho moving eyes. She thought someone must be bohind the sheet! The picturo was taken by means of a special camera which I had made at the cost of one hundred, and fifty pounds.

"I showed this animated picture at a meeting of the Photographic Society, and it created a fair amount of interest, but the general jecoption. of it was far from being wildly enthusiastic. However, 1 patented my first invention, and went on experimenting—and spending money. I spent fully a thousand pounds, which included two more special camcras at £50 "each, before, in 1889, I succeeded in getting' an animated picture oil anything resembling a modern film. This was a picture of traffic passing Hyde Park Corner, and it 'ran to' about twenty feet of film. You will smile at the idea of 4 moving picturo only twenty feet long,"" but it was a great triumph and created quite a sensation 25 years ago,. I can assure you. At the time I had a studio in Piccadilly, and it was in the window that I first showed the film. I had all of tho window, except a square in the middle, pasted over with brown paper. In the- square in the centre I stuck thin white paper.

"Shown through this white patch l the film caused such interest that the police called upon iqo to stop the exhibition on tho ground that I was responsible for an obstruction of the traffic. Tho Americans and Germans, particularly tile Germans, seized upon my invention, and, working on it for all they were worth, soon left jne with little but the satisfaction of knowing that 1 had discovered something which marked an epoch in the world of science. To patent a tiling in Great Britain is only to safeguard it in this country, you seo. As a matter of fact, I spent £1(1,000 in my e:cpcnro<,otg t ,_m kinematojjraph.y in black and whits and natural colour., gnd I have never made a penny profit from the invention of it. I showed my discovery in the Library one Friday evening at the Royal Institute in 1802, and it is niildlv amusing to recall that the discovery was held to b& of interest, but of no very great commercial promise I