THE FIRST STAGES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 55 (Supplement)

THE FIRST STAGES

Sidelights on Kinematography

An American writer traces a dim beginning of the motion picture to Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452. The great aim of this famous painter was to obtain the most realistic results possible on his canvas.

It is said that in his search for realism he stood by execution yards, to observe and sketch the expressions and gestures of wretched creatures on the way to death. “He took life apart in search of secrets that should make his canvas live.”

Among his experiments was the investigation of the laws of perspective, by placing a glass plate between the eye and the object, and noting thereon where the lines of sight cut the plane of glass. Leonardo da Vinci was centuries ahead of his time. He was groping in the direction of the camera of to-day.

Nearly two centuries later another forward' step upon the long road to success was taken by a Jesuit priest, l Athanasius Kircher, who made a magic lantern which had a lamp, reflector and lens just as the magic lantern of to-day has. His slides were crudely painted pictures of devils, demons and skeletons, but they filled the audience of ignorant nobles and wealthy Romans with wonder and delight, as they watched the shadows upon the wall.

Peter Mark Roget, nearly two centuries later than Kircher and Jiis lantern show, saw, through the slitted apertures of a Venetian blind, a baker’s cart go by. He saw that it was proceeding by jerks, and that through each slit it appeared in a different phase of motion. The moving pictureidea was born and scientists now took up the idea, and in 1832, a Belgian and an Austrian doctor produced devices for screening pictures in simulated motion.

In 1853, Lieut. Baron Franz von Uchatius, of the Austrian army, combined this later discovery with the lantern of Kircher, and the pictures were projected on the wall. The moving picture, remained at this stage until the art of photography became perfected. •