Edison's Latest.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 5952, 23 May 1894, Page 4

Edison's Latest.

o Edison's latest is the kinetoscope, and it is really almost as wonderful as the phonograph. It is in principle the same thing as the old toy gyroscope, and it brings to mind very vividly Kingdon Clifford's frequently-enforced doctrine that sight is no' continuous hut consists of a succession of distinct impressions. Edison's machine presents to the eye photographs of different stages of an act, such as a sneeze, or a man getting shaved, or the galloping of a horse, at the rate of about 46 to the second, and the result is that the spectator sees, as he is deceived into thinking, the very flight of motion. Photographs thus made of such a scene as Mr "Gladstone's farewell speech would transmit to the visual sense of posterity not merely the fixed form but also the gestures and action of the modern Demosthenes. The machine will soon be allied to the phonograph, and then future ages will be able to hear and see at the same moment what their remote ancestors said aud how they said it—in short, to be present in very fact at all the most interesting of historical scenes. At present however, the marriage of the two machines has not been perfected, and the attempts made at it have merely led to the linking incongruously together of words several seconds out of time with the act represented—an indescribably ludicrous and bewddering effect. But a perfect union will certainly foon be arrived at, and then the machine will be formally introduced to the public. There is, of course, no prospect of great pecuniary gain in it; but Edison has lavished upon its production some scores of thousands of dollars. Even the phonograph, vast as are its apparent possibilities, has never been financially successful, and the company formed to exploit it is now insolvent. Edison, however, is only incidentally a money-maker, and the vigorous, though not ill-natured criticism upon the practical inventor in one of Tyndall's essays—which everyone knew to be aimed particularly at this one man—was by no means entirely deserved. Still, Edison has in fact amassed a round million of dollars, and as he lives with almost Spartan simplicity, he is not likely to die poor.