began and it is impossible to foresee where it will lead. What invention
marked the beginning? Was it the first device to introduce movement into
the pictures on a screen? Or did the development begin with the first
photographing of various phases of moving objects? Or did it start with
the first presentation of successive pictures at such a speed that the
impression of movement resulted? Or was the birthday of the new art when
the experimenters for the first time succeeded in projecting such
rapidly passing pictures on a wall? If we think of the moving pictures
as a source of entertainment and esthetic enjoyment, we may see the germ
in that camera obscura which allowed one glass slide to pass before
another and thus showed the railway train on one slide moving over the
bridge on the other glass plate. They were popular half a century ago.
On the other hand if the essential feature of the moving pictures is the
combination of various views into one connected impression, we must look
back to the days of the phenakistoscope which had scientific interest
only; it is more than eighty years since it was invented. In America,
which in most recent times has become the classical land of the moving
picture production, the history may be said to begin with the days of
the Chicago Exposition, 1893, when Edison exhibited his kinetoscope. The
visitor dropped his nickel into a slot, the little motor started, and
for half a minute he saw through the magnifying glass a girl dancing or
some street boys fighting. Less than a quarter of a century later twenty
thousand theaters for moving pictures are open daily in the United
States and the millions get for their nickel long hours of enjoyment. In
Edison's small box into which only one at a time could peep through the
hole, nothing but a few trite scenes were exhibited. In those twenty
thousand theaters which grew from it all human passions and emotions
find their stage, and whatever history reports or science demonstrates
or imagination invents comes to life on the screen of the picture
palace.