VANITY MACHINE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 September 1914, Page 8

VANITY MACHINE.

(By GARRETT P. SERVINS.)

A French inventor has contrived an improved means of flattering human vanity, in the form of an au-to-photographic machine, withNN to-photographic machine, with whose aid the sitter can choose nois own pose and arrange his own expression, without the intervention of a third person. All he has to do is to place himself on a stool beside the machine, look into a mirror, fix his hair, and his neck-tie, ami graduate h.s smile to suit his mood ot his fancy, and then drop a coin in a slot, or, if it is a private machine, owned by himself, touch a button, whereupon the mechanism sets to work, takes his photograph, develops it, transfers it to a card, fixes it, and, at the end of three minutes, delivers the finished photograph, in a permanent form, in a box at the bottom of the apparatus. The entire process is effected by means of a system of electro-mag-nets, and nearly all the steps are visible to the sitter, who can amuse himself by remaining in his chair and watching the operation through windows in the enclosing box. The machine also possesses a system of lighting which imitates the effects produced by the photographer's shades and reflecting screens, so that the subject is properly illuminated, and the phograph comes out as delicately modelled with regard to light and shadow as if an expert poser had superintended the operation. Few persons are quite satisfied with the proceedings of a photographer, or are willing to admit that notwithstanding all his experience, he can choose for them the exact pose and lighting which they would prefer, but with this machine all can arrange such things toisplease themselver. One often says to himself when looking into a mirror : "Now, if I could only get that expression and that lighting in a photograph, how much better it would be ! But I can't see how I look when the photographer has posed me, and I don't know how I am going to look until the picture is finished." It is to avoid this kind of disappointment that the invention described has been made. The pictures are mace on the regular platino-bromide' paper and lack nothing bu the photographer's touching up of the negative, which often does as much harm as good.

In its usual form, the machine is intended to be placed in public places, like those that deliver chocolates, but .it can also be used without the device of dropping money in the slot, and then the mechanism can be set in motion by simply pressing a button.

Thus it becomes a urivate photographing apparatus for the home. In such countries as France, where photographs are often demanded on "cards of identification" for many purposes, its usefulness is aoparent. —"London Budget."