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Stories of Inventors - The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers by Russell Doubleday
page 82 of 140 (58%)
British and the Burghers when they were exposed to the fire of both
armies. On one occasion, in fact, the operator who was turning the
mechanism--he sat on a bicycle frame, the sprocket of which was
connected by a chain with the interior machinery--during a battle, was
knocked from his place by the concussion of a shell that exploded
nearby; nevertheless, the film was saved, and the same man rode on
horseback nearly seventy-five miles across country to the nearest
railroad point so that the precious photographic record might be sent to
London and shown to waiting audiences there.

Pictures were taken by the kinetoscope showing an ascent of Mount Blanc,
the operator of the camera necessarily making the perilous journey also;
different stages of the ascent were taken, some of them far above the
clouds. For this series of pictures a film eight hundred feet long was
required, and 12,800 odd exposures or negatives were made.

Successive pictures have been taken at intervals during an ocean voyage
to show the life aboard ship, the swing of the great seas, and the
rolling and pitching of the steamer. The heave and swing of the steamer
and the mountainous waves have been so realistically shown on the screen
in the theatre that some squeamish spectators have been made almost
seasick. It might be comforting to those who were made unhappy by the
sight of the heaving seas to know that the operator who took one series
of sea pictures, when lashed with his machine in the lookout place on
the foremast of the steamer, suffered terribly from seasickness, and
would have been glad enough to set his foot on solid ground;
nevertheless, he stuck to his post and completed the series.

[Illustration: DEVELOPING MOVING-PICTURE FILMS
The films are wound on the great drums and run through the developer in
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