The Fabulous Phasmatrope and the day a circle was made to be a square by law

| February 5, 2013

There is a lot to being the first to do something.

On this date today, In Philadelphia on February 5th in the year 1870, a theater audience saw the very first motion picture projection.

moonmanstuckineyeThis was what some people allowed the inventor to claim.

1870 was quite a long time before George Melies made his movie about a trip to the moon. But it was the beginning to the technology to do so.

It was far from what projected motion pictures and movies were to become in the 20th century.

Yet it was quite a milestone.

Many times in that era of the printed word where news traveled very slowly, it was often that important inventions and events would take years to be spread around the nations and indeed the world.

A great example would be the first flight of the Wright Brothers in which a full two years later in Scientific American Magazine there would be an article written by a scientific expert about how heavier than air flight could never work.

Henry_Renno_HeylBut the first projection of motion pictures in 1870 wowed the audience who didn’t care about the nitty-gritty of how it was being made – just that it was being made.

So then Henry Renno Heyl went down in history along with his Phasmatrope.

His Phasmatrope did use persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is how the brain keeps an image “stuck to the brain” for a brief moment, making still images to smear together and give the illusion of motion.

Finally in 1898 Popular Science Monthly as well as the Franklin Institute Journal published an account of the event back in 1870 from a writer to was there:

“Among the earliest public exhibitions of photographs taken from living subjects in motion projected by the lantern upon a screen was that given at an entertainment held in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, on the evening of February 5, 1870, and a repetition of the exhibition was made before the Franklin Institute at its next following monthly meeting, on March 16th, by the writer [Heyl]. The printed programme of this event contains the following allusion to this feature of the entertainment:

“This is a recent invention, designed to give various objects and figures upon the screen the most graceful and lifelike movements. The effects are similar to those produced in the familiar toy called the Zoetrope, where men are seen walking, running, and performing various feats in most perfect imitation of real life. This instrument is destined to become a most valuable auxiliary to the appliances for illustration, and we have the pleasure of having the first opportunity of presenting its merits to an audience.

The subjects exhibited embraced waltzing figures and acrobats, shown upon the screen in life size, while the photographic images were easily three fourths of an inch in height. At that day flexible films were not known in photography, nor had the art of rapid succession picture-making been developed; therefore, it was necessary to limit the views of subjects to those that could be taken by time exposure upon wet plates, which photos were afterward reproduced as positives on very thin glass plates, in order that they might be light in weight. The waltzing figures, taken in six positions, corresponding to the six steps to complete a turn, were duplicated as often as necessary to fill the eighteen picture spaces of the instrument which was used in connection with the lantern to project the images upon the screen.

The piece of mechanism, then named the ‘phasmatrope,’ consisted of a skeleton wheel having nine radial divisions, into which could be inserted the picture, in such relative position that, as the wheel was intermittently revolved, each picture would register exactly with the position just left by the preceding one. The intermittent movement of the wheel was controlled by a ratchet and pawl mechanism operated by a reciprocating bar moved up and down by the hand. It will be apparent that the figures could be moved in rapid succession or quite slowly, or the wheel could be stopped at any point to complete the evolution.

In the exhibition at the Academy of Music above alluded to, the movement of the figures was made to correspond to the time of the waltz played by an orchestra, and when the acrobat performers were shown, a more rapid motion was given, Phasmatropeand a full stop made when a somersault was completed. A shutter was then a necessary part of the apparatus to cut off the light rays during the time the pictures were changing places.

This was accomplished by a vibrating shutter placed back of the picture wheel, that was operated by the same draw-bar that moved the wheel, only the shutter movement was so timed that it moved first and covered the picture before the latter moved, and completed the movement after the next picture was in place. This movement reduced to great extent the flickering, and gave very natural and lifelike representations of the moving figures.”

We as a civilization would never be as we are without the magic of cinema.

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bureaucracy_birds
On a stranger note:

Also on this day in history is a fine example of Government Intervention …

A perfect example of how politicians and government bureaucracy sticks its nose into places it has no business being in – usually resulting in disaster.

In 1897, the Indiana State House legislature passes Bill 246 which assigned
Pi the exact value of 3.2

YEP – you got it …

piPoliticians voted that PI = 3.2

Basically they voted that a circle is now a square.

In the bill, it states in part that “the ratio of the diameter and circumference [pi] is as five-fourths to four.”

The bill was introduced by Representative Taylor I. Record, who was a farmer and a lumber merchant, on behalf of a math hobbyist, Dr. Edwin J. Goodwin, M.D.

The politicians didn’t understand that the bill is mathematically incorrect.

How many times do politicians, appointed government planners and other “do-gooders” attempt to force a ridiculous value or ridiculous methodology onto the very people who know better in the first place?

And – why did there need to be a law that specifies PI when it is already defined by science and mathematics?
Clarence_Waldo
Someone was going to get something out of it to want to use the law against logic, reason, honesty, common sense and truth.

Thank God for Clarence A. Waldo, a mathematics professor at Purdue University, who challenged the Indiana Senators – and won.

The idiotic bill was ‘indefinitely postponed’ on February 12, 1897. Which means they let it fall into a crack rather than bring it back up for a vote essentially acknowledging they were at fault to think you can make a circle into a square.

Thank God and Good Sense !!!

Who would have ever imagined that a government body would make a law that forces us – and especially those who know real mathematics – to be wrong ?

bureaucracy-cartoon

Category: Tony Rollo Blog

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