THF LATEST DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 278, 23 April 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

THF LATEST DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

A MARVELLOUS ILLUSION. Tub latest developemont of photography is found in a contrivance called the mutoscopo, at a private view of which a few member.-! of the House of Commons gathered on February 2-lch. It is an improvement and extension of the kinetoscope, say 3 Mr H. W. Lucy, in his letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. In appearance tho instrument is like a very large stereoscope. You look through a j>lass in the same way ; turn a handle : the interior is illumined by a flash of light, and thero presents itself a marvellous scene of life. One episode is tho alarm given at a fire brigade station. You see the horses harnessed, aud the equipage galloping along the road at the top of the speed of four horses. On either pavement is the living crowd standing looking on or moving as their business calls them. The perfection of the representatation is sho.vn in the flowing mane of one of the horses, which rises and falls in feathery streams as the mad gallop increases iu intensity. Another scone of a different character, sure to be highly popular, opens in a child's nursery. When the lights are on there are revealed two little cots side by side. In a moment a white-night-gowned child rises fiom one bed, takes up a pillow and throws it at the occupant of another cot. She, nothing loth, takes up the challenge, and soon the two standing up in their cots are banging away at each other. Presently, from an unseen corner of the room, comes another mite in chenise and drawers, who joins iu the delirious delight of battle. The marvellous illusion is the result of an apparently uncountable series of photographs set in due order on a shift. The observer peering through the glass turns a handle on the right of the machine, which by some subtle mechanism sets the photographs revolving, aud the living picture is all agog. It is proposed to reproduce a fieries of pictures of the topical events of the day, so that the Derby, the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, football and cricket maches, may be played over again in the mutoscope within a few clays of their occurence. All this to be enjoyed on condition of dropping a penny in the slot. The intention is to plant the machines in railway stations and other places of resort.