The Latest Scientific Wonder.

Hastings Standard, Issue 84, 3 August 1896, Page 4

The Latest Scientific Wonder.

Edison's vitascope. the latest thing in scientific toys, is a simple contrivance, and yet wondrous in its detail and mechanism. When Edison named the machine a vitascope he did so, he explained, Wcau.se it showed life, and he added that it was the very thing he bat! in mind when he worked so longand so patiently on the kinetoscope, with which he has never been satisfied. By means of the vitascope lifesize figures of men, women, and animals, and scenes from nature are thrown upon a screen, and present to the spectator an animated, moving panorama. The result is intensely interesting and pleasing. Mr Edison wants now to improve the phonograph so that it will record double the amount of sound that it does at present; and he hopes then to bo combine this improved phonograph with the vitascope as to make it possible for an audience to witness a photographic reproduction of an opera or a play—to see the movements of the actors and hear their voices as plainly as though they were witnessing the original production itself. The vitascope proper consists of a small lens such as is used in an ordinary camera. T1 is lens is nearest the screen. UL'ht k hind it is a metal frame about an inch un l a half square, over which thi- piotrn- to be reproduced passes. Behind this is a large lens, and behind thn lens is an arc light of 2,000 candle power. The pictures to be reproduced have been photographed on kinetoscope films and are no bigger than the nail of one's little finger. Each of these films is 50ft. in length, and contains several pictures that go to make up the panorama. The film passes over » SMoeft of wheels at a very rapid rate, £ tod » tt»

picture passes the frame behind the small lens mentioned, the light from the arc lamp, passing through the large lens and being focused upon it, throws the picture through the smaller ' lens upon the screen, magnified sjx hundred times. Thus the animated, minature picture, taken by the kinetoscope, is reproduced life size, in all its detail and definition, on the screen. The first picture Edison produced by means of the vitascope was that of a danseuse, well known on the Vaudeville stage of America. She went to the laboratory in West Orange, N.J., one day, and for live minutes executed a pretty pax 'h *'vt before the kinetoscope. Her every movement was photographed on the kinetoscope film, from her opening bow to the kiss she wasfted to the Wizard when she finished. Edison placed this film in the vitascope, and threw its enlarged counterpart on a screen. He was delighted with the result—it was the pretty dancer, life size, repealing the pas <U x?vh But, in the reproduction, there was an almost total absence of the vibration so noticeable in the kinetoscope, and that circumstance made the picture seem all the more natural. An astonishing feature of the vitascope is that it throws any and all colors on the screen. In the case of the dancer mentioned her gauze skirt was pink, an underskirt was blue, while her bodice was pale green. These colors were reproduced in all their naturalness on the screen. But, it should be said, they were not photographed on the kinetoscope film ; they were painted on it later, and in such a way that they do not rub off as the film passes over the wheels of the vitascope.