BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

HOW, THE CINEMA CAME,

A TRIUMPH FOR ENGLISHMEN,

Dear Boys,— When the men of the Stone Age painted pictures of running horses on the walls of their caves they dcew the legs of the animals in very queer positions. The attitudes of the horses, indeed, seemed so unnatural that when modern explorers found the pictures they laughed at them, but excused the artists with the remark that we could hardly expect savages who lived thosands of years ago to draw galloping horses accurately. But the man of the Stone Age was accurate after all. Horses do run like that, and it was the cinema that proved the ancient artists to be right, for the instantaneous photographs taken for a film show the galloping horse's legs in exactly the same positions as they are drawn by the cave men. Those early artists can indeed call the moving picture maker of the twentieth century as a witness to their accuracy of observation. The cinema cannot be said to be the direct work of one mau> hut is the combined work of many. It seems more of an evolution than an invention, for the soetrope, an instrument which, when revolved, showed a series of dritwingto as one moving image, invented by an Englishman in 1833, was followed by many other devices, which in turn, when the film had been discovered, ledhto the movie picture machine of to-day. When the camera waa made that would successfully take moving pictures, another complication set in, for a satisfactory method of reproduction was not known. In the early hours of one February morning three London policemen dashed into a studio at New Southgate, Middlesex, . attracted by shouts. On entering they found Robert W. Paul and a crowd i °f helpers in a state of great excitement, for they were witnessing the first moving pictures that had ever been projected on a screen. It is rather interesting to note that from that first satisfactory performance, where only I the makers of the picture and three policemen were the crowds "» of admirers have grown till now more than a thousand million seats are f booked yearly for this form of entertainment in theatres throughout the United Kingdom. Of course, there is much fakery in the movie world; here's a couple of examples. A realistic picture of a dog sledge in the Frozen North; actually for the snow fifteen tons of salt were used, and for the ice 800 pounds of paraffin wax. Another notable example was the way in which a sea fight during the Battle of Jutland was represented. Tiny model vessels were the warships, a tank the North Sea, and the fleets were operated by bellows. Thus the cinema has found its way to our hearts, and we are J&rJ proud to know that it is mostly due to the work of Englishman that the movie pictures are what they are to-day.