Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/201

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ANIMATED PICTURES.
187

moved, there would remain another serious drawback—viz., that such pictures must be viewed by reflected light, and hence can not be projected upon a screen in the usual way.

But there are other methods of obtaining colored pictures which merit careful consideration from our present point of view.[1] One of these methods is so clearly applicable in the production of motion views of the second type that I need offer no apology for the brief account of it given below:

A camera fitted with special apparatus—including three carefully selected color screens—is used in taking the negatives. The arrangements are such that three separate images—red, blue, and green-yellow—of the scene or subject are thrown upon the sensitive (isochromatic) plate. The result is a triple negative, from which a transparency is obtained by the usual procedure. If now this transparency be placed in a lantern provided with a triple objective and with color screens similar to those used in taking the pictures, the three colored images of the transparency may be brought into coincidence upon the screen. And since the tints of the glasses correspond to the three primary color sensations, a picture in natural hues will be thus produced. The process, in its perfected form, is due to Mr. Frederic E. Ives, of Philadelphia, who has in this way been able to reproduce the colors of flowers and of natural scenery with complete success.

Now, there is no reason to doubt that similar results can be secured by using films instead of glass plates; so that Mr. Ives's ingenious system (or some modification thereof) may probably be adapted for use with mechanism similar to that of the cinematograph.

We may thus hope to obtain striking and beautiful representations of plant life, in which not only the forms and movements of leaves, stalks, or flowers, but also their glowing colors, will appear upon the canvas.

The realism of our motion pictures may also be enhanced by imparting to them the quality of relief, as in the stereoscope. We may utilize for this purpose a clever invention known as the lantern stereoscope,[2] whereby stereo views can be shown upon a screen, the pictures being viewed through instruments resembling opera glasses in external appearance. It will be possible in this way to exhibit animated views of every description in distinct stereoscopic relief. Each member of the audience must, of course, be provided with one of the binocular instruments above referred to; and it is almost need-


  1. It is too soon, as yet, to express any definite opinion with respect to the new Dansac process and some other heliochromic methods of recent origin.
  2. The principle of the polarization of light is effectively utilized in this very ingenious contrivance.