Edison’s Latest Wonder.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2, 10 July 1912, Page 62

Edison’s Latest Wonder.

INTERVIEW WITH THE GREAT WIZARD.

TALKING PICTURES FOR SCHOOL AND PLAY.

How would you like 'to hear and see Caruso or Sarah Bernhardt for sixpence? And what would you say if your small children no longer crept like snails unwillingly to school? A double miracle, no doubt, but the age of miracles is not past, for Thomas A. Edison is still alive. I found the wizard of electricity bubbling with enthusiasm over the prospects of his "talking pictures,” says the New York correspondent of the "Daily News.” "Yes,” he said, “I’ve read of the demonstration before the Royal Institution in London, and am quite aware that the Frenchman Gaumont has been working on a combined einematoseope and gramophone, and if he has really solved the synchronising problem I congratulate him. That has been my chief difficulty, but it is conquered. My apparatus ■is perfect, and all we have got to do is to get more scenarios written, have our actors rehearsed, and turn out the films.

"I'm even more interested,” proceeded Mr. Edison, “in the application of talking pictures to grand opera. For five cents ami ten cents you are going to see the world’s greatest operas sung and acted by the world’s greatest artists, and on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneous! v.

"There is no scenery save what is projected on the screen, and the voices of the singers accompanying the action of the pictures are precisely as if the opera itself was being performed. And all for a nicked 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 ran eater for themselves.” Plenty in the Business. Questioned a« to where he was going to build his theatres, Mr. Edison said there would be no difficulty about that. “Look,’ he said, “at what is happening in New A ork. Even the Academy of Music is now giving ‘movies’—(American ■lang for animated picture*.) There are at

least ten first-elass theatres in that eity alone doing the same thing and coining money. England is slower to act than we are, but she is bound to follow the same tendency.” I asked him to explain what he calls his educational films. They, of course, provide moving, not talking, pictures. “Why,” he exclaimed, “we’ve tried them here in New Jersey, and I am 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.

“Under my system we lay far less emphasis on puzzling the ehild with 26 hieroglyphics and in asking it, ‘Do you see the man’’ or telling it ‘This is a eat,’ ■when you can show it a man or a eat in a moving picture and at once engage its eve.

“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. No Child Suicides.

“I am told that in the past few years there have been scores of child suicides in Germany due to the severity of the studies. My system involves no suicides and the maintenance of no truant officers either. All our films are tested on six boys and six girls. Perhaps they are lessons in hydraulics, or in pottery processes, or in the manufacture of glass. "After the children have watched the moving pictures they are asked to write essays on what they have seen. So far I have never found one of these 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 the 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 sailors to lend actuality to our films. I am sure the British authorities would give corresponding facilities in England.” A Social Revolution.

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 fortune. He is fabulously wealthy. He lias received patents for 800 inventions, but looks like a poorly-paid mechanic. He 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, or eat, or do anything else with conventional regularity. But he thinks out his problems in a palatial office as big as a church, with two galleries stored ■with scientific volumes and models of electric appliances. He is never idle for a single moment. His brain is as animated as bls own beautiful invention, the kinetoseope. “I eall from six a.nr. to midnight,” says this amazing sexagenarian genius, “my working day, and the longer I work the happier I am.”