Explore "A-B-C of Motion Pictures" by Robert E. Welsh on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Like practically all other modern mechanical wonders, the motion picture was not the invention of any one man. Rather, the picture as we know it to-day is the cumulative result of the toil and experiments of a score of workers, whose efforts cover over half a century. As far back as 1795 scientists were striving to produce the phenomena of pictures that moved. Succeeding generations all saw experimenters working toward the same object, each contributing his mite of improvement, until, with Thomas A. Edison's invention of the kinetoscope, in 1893, the day of modern motion pictures dawned.
Though all these seekers for knowledge worked constantly with "pictures of objects in motion" as their goal, it is not possible that any saw in the motion picture the possibility of development to its present important place. Dreamers as they necessarily were, there were no imaginations even among picture-men of the last decade that would dare such wide stretches of fancy. No other artistic or industrial development of history will bear comparison with the motion picture's leap from humble beginnings to exalted favor.