More Living Pictures.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2294, 12 January 1900, Page 3

More Living Pictures.

From America, the land of wonders, comes the report of a most marvellous new invention. It is a kind of mutossope camera, but is designed especially for a certain kind of picture-making that has never been attempted hitherto. For example, the contrivance is set up in front of a stalk of corn just sprouting and takes a photograph of it every hour for six months. Subsequently the film is put into a magic-lantern and run off at the rate of thirty a second, thus giving to the spectators in five minutes a view on the screen of a corn plant growing out of the earth, putting forth leaves, exhibiting the ripened ears, and finally decaying. It is believed that this idea may be so employed as to have great educational value. There are almost in6nite possibilities, obviously, for the utilisation of the method, and one may easily imagine it applied to the study of the growth of any kind of plant. Place this new camera in an open space ; attach it to an electric wire, and it will make an exposure every two hours from the beginning to the end of the year. The result will be a ribbon of the season, and in five minutes the spectators seated in a theatre will have an opportunity to behold all the succeeding phenomena of the year. One of the most interesting of the photographs made with this novel apparatus represents an apple-tree, which is seen to display its new foliage, put forth buds and blossoms and ripen its fruit. Equally notable is a picture of a sunflower, snapshots of which were taken every minute from sunrise to sunset. When the ribbon is run off one sees the flower turn on its stem steadily, always keeping its face towards the sun. The views do not jump about in the way that is so annoyingly familiar, but are perfectlv stationary, owing to the fact that each "snap" registers perfectly with the ones preceding and following. Now, in the view of experts, this invention is applicable in a great variety of ways not hitherto tried. For example, it is earnestly desired to know something more than is understood at present regarding the flight of insects—not only because such information would have value from a scientific point of view, but for the reason that it might help in solving the problem of human flight. At present comparatively little is known on this subject, simply because insects in general " flap" their wings so rapidly that no observer gets any notion of the mechanical details of the performance. For example, it is altogether out of the question to follow with the eye the movements of the wings of a bee or a dragon fly, which very likely attain 2,000 vibrations or more per minute. However, this new machine records the almost inconceivably rapid beats of these wings, and, reduced by the apparatus to one-twentieth of the normal rate of flaps, they exhibit to the spectator the manner in which the flying apparatus is utilised. Picture notes like these are of immense value to the student of mechanical flight. It Beems so obvious that there must be some means by which man can fly ; and why should not the apparatus of an insect, which accomplishes this kind of work so well, afford valuable suggestions ? Behind the blur of a butterfly's wings, undoubtedly, is concealed a vast fund of information ; but the main difficulty in photographing insects in motion, of course, lies in getting the high speed required for the shutters. As already suggested, the methods of flying adopted by various species of insects differ very much. For an example take the common housefly. It moves its wings at the rate of a hundred flaps a second, when going fast, and this being only about a hundred inches a second, reckoning upward and downward flaps, there would be no great trouble in photographing its flight, were it not for its erratic course and the difficulty in controlling the direction of the latter. If, as suggested, the flight method of a fly is more simple than that of a bird, a study of it ought to throw valuable light upon the problem of human flight. Points on this subject, also, may perhaps be furnished by the hummingbird, whose style of flying nearly resembles that of an insect. It has been estimated that the wings of a hummingbird vibrate ordinarily at the rate of five hundred flaps a minute. Sometimes humming-birds are chased by bumblebees, but readily escape from the comparatively slow-moving insects, leaving them far behind. The actual speed of these feathered creatures is less than the observer might be inclined to suspect. One of the most interesting facts about humming-birds, by the way, is that they were wholly unknown until Columbus discovered America, none of their kind being found anywhere in the Old World. It has been suggested that the new style of mutoscope or kinetoscope here described might be employed to great advantage for certain educational purposes. For example, a film, whose pictures would be transferable to a screen, could be made to show in a brief time the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth or of a tadpole into a frog. Thus lessons in botany, zoology, and even physiology could be made very interesting by mutoscopic views of the actual living subjects.