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produced the cinematograph, also termed the kinetograph. Other inventors produced various devices known as the biograph, vitascope, mutoscope and eidoloscope. Great difficulty was experienced in discovering the proper timing of the movement of the film across the illuminated opening of the projecting lantern, and in the timing of the interrupting shutter so as to prevent a flickering, tremulous effect which was very trying to the eyes. This timing was finally approximated at about one-sixteenth of a second.

A number of these early crude devices were installed in the nickelodeons and added to their attraction for the curious. For a time the films were very short and each picture lasted for only a few seconds. Gradually the length of the films and the period of each picture was lengthened so as to permit a continued show of any dramatic action. Means of lighting the pictures were also improved by the introduction of powerful electric lamps. The time was then ripe for the earliest moving picture shows, with the pictures thrown upon a large screen before the gaze of an audience through lenses which magnified the picture on the film about 35,000 times. This enlargement brought out the slightest defect in a film and made it very conspicuous, but expert photography and scientific lens-making have conquered most of the difficulties and done away with these early defects. The drama of the movies as it is exhibited today is a remarkable triumph of human ingenuity.

For a time the early crude productions were shown as the finale of some theatrical or vaudeville performance, depicting the movements of a ballet dancer or an acrobat in action. During the summer of 1896 the first extended picture of large pretensions and requiring several reels of film was shown in the Detroit Opera House on the Campus through an instrument termed the eidoloscope. It was a reproduction of a bullfight in the City of Mexico, which was one of the most difficult of subjects as it was taken at constantly changing distances in natural daylight without artificial lighting. There were intervals of interesting action and others when the bullfighters and their victims were in such a bad light and the atmosphere was

so obscured by dust that much was left to the imagination. The tremulous flickering of the picture was quite distressing. Most of the spectators were relieved when the exhibition was over.

Some time afterward a far more satisfactory picture was shown at the Wonderland, "The Great Train Robbery," which drew a large attendance and gave general satisfaction. Very soon after the beginning of the Twentieth Century the movie theater began to be developed by fitting up vacant stores for that purpose. It is said that the earliest of these movie theaters was opened in Pittsburgh. Its instant success led to the opening of many others in quick succession and a keen rivalry developed both in the production of short picture reels and in the operation of show places.

In 1905 John H. Kunsky and the late A. Arthur Caille opened the first movie theater in Detroit on Monroe Avenue, which was known as the Casino. This was soon followed by the opening of rival houses. Two years later the Theater Royal was opened at the corner of Monroe and Farmer streets on a more pretentious plan and for a time it claimed title as the best of its kind in the country. It was there that the first single picture of several reels was exhibited for a long run. The subject was the "Passion Play," and it drew crowds for Io weeks. Up to that time the standard price of admission had been 5 cents, but for this longer picture a charge of 25 cents was made.

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Success achieved at the Casino and the Theater Royal led Kunsky & Caille to branch out with other theaters in Detroit and elsewhere, and the "movies" became an important business as well as the most popular form of entertainment. For several years they furnished such formidable rivalry to the theaters of the speaking drama that most of the leading actors and actresses were forced to go into the "silent drama." Presently Mr. Kunsky became the leading impresario of Detroit. For several years the drama of the speaking stage suffered such a decline that a number of owners, lessees and operators of strings of theaters about the country sold out and took to the cyclone cellar.

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It was the novelty of the movie theaters which first attracted a large patronage. The character, class and scope of their exhibits steadily improved and the low prices and continuous performances also helped to hold and increase the patronage. Another new departure was the systematic endeavor to carry the theater to the people by establishing neighborhood moving picture theaters in the residential districts. The first of these in Detroit was the Garden Theater. This, too, went on with such success that eventually it was overdone. At one time there were more than 160 such theaters scattered about the city. The number at the present time is probably between 130 and 140. The dramatization of popular and standard novels and the delineation of historical episodes with the most elaborate settings, and the employment not only of high salaried artists but whole armies of supers, attracted larger patronage, sustained public interest and led to the building of larger theaters with lavish expenditure of money to make them attractive.

Investments of motion picture producers in real estate, property and equipment in this country are estimated by Will H. Hays at $500,000,000. They spend $200,000,000 annually in production and about $50,000,000 of this goes for salaries and wages. The annual income of the business in paid admissions is rated at $600,000,000. This country exports more than $6,500,000 worth of films each year. There are about 15,000 regularly operated moving picture houses in the United States and several thousands more of occasionally operated theaters. The tiny nickelodeon of 25 years ago, with its "standing room only" for patrons and its distracting, whangetybang mechanical piano, has developed into vast and gorgeous theaters with mammoth pipe organs and highly paid orchestras of 40 or 50 pieces.

The first film exchange was established in Detroit on Griswold Street with a stock of four or five single reels of 800 to 1,000 feet in length. From this has developed the large business of film exchanges that covers the entire country today. The pioneers in this line of business were A. J. Gillingham, Philip Gleichman, now manager of the Broadway Strand Theater;

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George Weeks, now an executive for the Paramount Pictures Corporation, and several others who later were identified in a big way with the development of the motion picture business in the United States.

Today the large Joseph E. Mack Building is known as the "film" building because it contains the offices of half a hundred or more film exchanges and dealers in equipment, such as seats, projecting machines, rolls of tickets, etc.

The growth of the moving picture business has been phenomenal. In two decades theaters like the Washington, Broadway Strand, Adams, Madison, and the imposing Capitol have been built, besides numerous and expensive neighborhood theaters. Meanwhile the legitimate theater has been and still is struggling along with old and out-of-date houses.

After the building of the Casino Theater, on Monroe Avenue, a store on the east side of Woodward Avenue, between Congress and Larned streets, was converted into a picture theater. Many people thought the proprietors had indulged in a disastrous folly while laboring under the delusion that two moving picture houses could live in Detroit. Soon after, another theater was opened in the same block and both found plenty of patronage.

The theater of the speaking drama has had a slow, steady and continuous development since 2,000 years ago, while the growth of the picture theater has been meteoric. Within a period of less than two decades it has grown from nothing at all to an industry which ranks third among the great money-making enterprises of this country. The future of the moving picture theater is still on the knees of the gods. The promoters declare that it is still in its infancy, which may be true.

CHAPTER CXVII

THE ERA OF BICYCLES AND AUTOMOBILES

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BEGINS

URING the past century human endeavor has been directed with ever increasing intensity to the development of quick communication of messages and rapid transportation of passengers and freight from one place to another. One hundred years ago it took an average of about three weeks to convey a message from Detroit to the Atlantic seaboard. Freight and passenger service was much slower. In June, 1905, a passenger train covered the distance between Chicago and New York in less than 16 hours over a route of 960 miles. A railway speed of 120 miles an hour has been attained for short distances.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Finley Breese Morse sent the first electric telegraph message from Baltimore to the chamber of the Supreme Court in Washington without appreciable loss of time. That message: "What God hath wrought," was appropriately chosen from Holy Writ, the entire sentence from Numbers xxiii:23 being: "Surely there is no enchantment with Jacob; neither is there any divination with Israel: Now it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" It was a fitting recognition of the fact that all scientific discovery is merely the unveiling of the mystery of creation and the handiwork of God and that all human invention is but the intelligent utilization of elements, forces and principles that have always existed.

It was many years later that the discovery was made that instant long distance communication is possible without the use of wires, but already radio communication around the globe has become rather commonplace. During the present year an airplane has crossed this continent in 27 hours and experiments are in progress which are expected to make possible that

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