INTERVIEW WITH EDISON.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13454, 27 June 1912, Page 2

INTERVIEW WITH EDISON.

TALKING PICTURES

EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN

In an interview at New York on May 12th, Mr. Edison stated:— "I'm more interested in the application of talking pictures to grand opera. For five cants and ten cents you are going to see the world's greatest operas sung by and acted by the world's greatest artists, and on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously.. There is no scenery save what is projected on the screen and the voices of the singers accompanying the action of tho pictures, are precisely as "if the opera itself was being performed. And all for a nickel or a dime! At last the pleasures of the poor will be considered. Life is>always a real struggle for them, and I never had much use for the rich; they can cater for themselves.

"I am quit© certain that the.whole scheme of infant education, sooner or later, is going to be changed. The eye of the child is the natural medium for instruction, and is the surest and wisest route to the brain.

"I have planned out an eight-year course for the child, beginning with its tenderest years, and have demonstrated by experiments in. this neighbourhood that infant curiosity is aroused and its intelligence stimulated to an astonishing degree.

"After the children have watched the moving pictures they aae asked to write essays on what they have seen.. So far I have never found,one of twelve children unable .to produce an intelligent description. .'.

"Take our historical films. We have projected the surrender of Cornwallis and the Battle of Trafalgar, for instance. The demand for the latter films in England almost equals the. popularity of the former over here. There is not ihe slightest difficulty in constructing them. We hire some coast liner for a few weeks and organise shipwrecks. I have found the United 'States Government quite willing to furnish us with sailors and soldiers to lend actuality to our films. lam sure the British authorities would give corresponding facilities in England."

Mr. Edison says that civilisation is about to realise what an amazing social revolution the simultaneous combination of the photograph and phonograph is going to create. It means an enormous income to him, but I never saw a man so absolutely indifferent to material fortunes stated Mr Edison's interviewer. Ho is fabulously wealthy. He has received patents for 800 inventions, but looks like a poorly-paid mechanic. Ho works all day in a suit which resembles an 'engine-driver's. His appearance suggests that he probably shaves ■once a week, is too absorbed either to wash, eat, or do anything else with conventional regularity. Rut ho thinks out his problems in a palatial office as big as a church, with two galleries stored with scientific, volumes and ir.odels of scientific appliances. Ho is never idle for a moment. His brain is as animated as his own beautiful invention, the kinstoscopo." "I call from six a.m. to midnight," says this amazing sexagenarian genius, "my working day, and the longer 1 work the happier I am."

The sun never sets on the British Empire—neither does it on Martoll'?, IJrandy, for wherever Britishers are there also is Martell's.