Month: August 2019

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Thomas Edison Invents the Movies

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Edison KinetoscopeOn August 31, 1897, Thomas Edison invented the movies. Or at least that was the day he patented the kinetoscope, an early motion picture projector. But as with all inventions, the story is much more complicated than just one man.

In fact, others had already started the process that Edison’s team would move forward. In June 1889, William Friese-Greene had patented a motion picture camera in England. Two months later, Englishman Wordsworth Donisthorpe patented his own version of a motion picture camera. Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, a Frenchman working in England, developed a multiple-lens camera in 1888. Le Prince also filmed two motion picture sequences using a single-lens camera and paper film; the twelve-frame-per-second Roundhay Garden Scene runs for a grand total of 2.11 seconds. In a bizarre twist reminiscent of future action movies, Le Prince and his luggage mysteriously vanished from a moving train just prior to making a trip to the United States to present his invention.

These early inventors did not have the finances to continue development, but Edison did. The first version out of the Edison laboratory was “rather too ambitious,” as it attempted to synchronize the sound of the phonograph with the movement of images. “Thousands of tiny images” were taken with a conventional camera, and one by one they were mounted on a modified phonograph cylinder. A second cylinder played back the sound, ideally in sync with the images. But the machine did not work. The curvature of the cylinder distorted the small images, so it was nearly impossible to view them with any resolution. Increasing the size of the images to 1/4 inch and applying a photographic emulsion to the cylinder failed to resolve the problem, although Edison did produce a series of short films (of a few seconds each) collectively called Monkeyshines. Overall, however, the idea of using cylinders was abandoned.

Another Englishman, Eadweard Muybridge, came to the rescue. Muybridge was a photographer who as far back as the 1870s was producing images in series, which he used mainly to study the motion of animals. In one sequence, Muybridge had taken twelve rapid photos of a horse in full gallop in order to determine if all four legs were off the ground at the same time (they were). He accomplished this by using multiple cameras to record images in rapid succession.

Muybridge had also invented a zoopraxiscope, a rotating glass wheel and a slotted disk that projected a series of pictures in sequence, each slightly ahead of the other. Turning the wheel made the pictures appear to be in motion. With these devices in hand, the now-famous Muybridge paid a visit to Edison during a tour of the United States in February 1888. As with his earlier visit with Wallace, Edison gained considerable insights into his next steps after this meeting. Edison barely acknowledged the visit for months, but in October suddenly submitted his caveat to the patent office for “a system of motion pictures: a device to record the images, a device for viewing them, and an instrument that merged viewing pictures and listening to sound in the same experience.”

Étienne-Jules Marey was another influence on Edison’s thinking about motion pictures. After growing up in the Côte-d’Or region of France, Marey studied medicine and became interested in the science of laboratory photography; he is widely credited with being the Father of Chronophotography, or photographing motion. In 1882 he invented the chronophotographic gun, a menacing-looking instrument capable of capturing images at a rate of twelve frames per second. All twelve sequential still images were recorded on the same strip of film, a disk that rotated as the rapid-fire photos were taken. Marey also designed a camera that captured “sixty images a second on a long continuous strip of film, which was pulled by a cam in a deliberately jerky fashion to stop the film momentarily, so that the light could saturate the film and capture motion.” Edison sought out Marey when he attended the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris.

The World’s Fair’s biggest attraction was the huge iron-latticed tower named after its designer, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, on whose edifice Edison wined and dined with the rich and famous during the exposition. But what really caught Edison’s interest was Marey’s photographic gun. Marey was more focused on the technical developments of his invention and less about the market value, and he gladly showed Edison the mechanics and examples of his work. He also gave Edison a copy of his book providing all the technical details. Armed with new ideas, but still lacking in substantive time to develop them, Edison passed the information to Dickson and left him to make something of it.

The Kinetoscope Emerges

Edison’s patent caveat was filed with Dickson working anonymously in the background. The device they had in mind would not only show pictures in motion, it would do so “in such a form as to be both Cheap[,] practical and convenient. This apparatus I call a Kinetoscope ‘Moving View.’”(The name is derived from the Greek kinesis, meaning motion.) They described it as a silver emulsion-coated phonograph cylinder with 42,000 “pin-point” photographic images each 1/32 inch wide mounted spirally upon it, to be viewed through a binocular eyepiece salvaged from a microscope; the visual cylinder spun to the simultaneous accompaniment of a contiguous phonograph sharing the same shaft and playing the “sound track.” The idea of synchronized cylinders was completely unworkable, but it epitomizes how Edison worked—he built on something he already did, and he hesitated to move away from it.

But move away he did. Dickson searched for a way to take and display the thousands of pictures that would need to be strung together for any length of viewing time. The usual way of making photographs was to produce them on glass negatives, which clearly was not an option for moving pictures. One option that seemed viable was celluloid, a plastic material made out of cellulose nitrate that English photographer John Carbutt successfully used. Another promising option was rolls of paper that George Eastman had managed to coat with photographic film and fused into a cheap Kodak camera.

Dickson experimented with celluloid and paper, and after Edison’s visit with Marey filed a new patent caveat, this one describing a “sensitive film” that would “pass from one reel to another.” Then, like the phonograph before it, the kinetoscope project was dropped—this time for only a year—while Edison kept Dickson busy with his ore milling business. When Dickson was finally allowed to return to the kinetoscope, Edison assigned William Heise to give him a hand.

Heise had expertise stemming from his prior work with printing telegraphs, which he now used to design the mechanical movement of film through the camera. Dickson focused on the optical components of the camera itself, along with the chemical and physical characteristics of the film. Together they developed the two parts that would make it possible to film, and then display, motion pictures.

By the spring of 1891, the two men had designed a camera, which they called a kinetograph, to film moving pictures. The kinetograph’s horizontal-feed exposed images on strips of perforated film 3/4 inch wide. A “shutter and escapement mechanism” allowed the camera to stop the film “for a fraction of a second,” just long enough to expose the film before advancing to the next exposure. Dickson and Heise advanced the technology with amazing rapidity: “forty-six impressions are taken each second, which is 2,760 a minute and 165,600 an hour.” Several short experimental films were produced, “including a lab worker smoking a pipe and another swinging a set of Indian clubs.”

After developing a suitable camera to create motion pictures, they needed to develop a way to watch them. The answer was a wooden box, much like those housing phonographs, which they called a kinetoscope. The box stood about four feet high and was twenty inches square. Inside the box was “an electric lamp, a battery-powered motor, and a fifty-foot ribbon of positive celluloid film arranged on a series of rollers and pulleys.” The film viewer would bend over the box, stare through an eyepiece, and watch as the film whizzed through view at forty-six frames per second.

And whiz it did. The first films were over in twenty seconds or less; basic scenes such as Dickson tipping his hat or a blacksmith banging his hammer. Still, it was a start, and Dickson continued to work on perfecting both the kinetograph camera and the kinetoscope player. Edison, on the other hand, was not sure there was much of a market: “This invention will not have any particular commercial value. It will be rather of a sentimental worth,” something of a novelty. At the same time he seemed to recognize the future attraction to the new medium, which could reproduce on the walls of their homes actors and scenes they currently had to go out to the theater to experience. Despite his hesitations, Edison arranged for a kinetoscope exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair. It was a couple of years in the future, so he had plenty of time to perfect the device. Or so he thought. He assigned James Egan, one of his machinists, to build twenty-five kinetoscopes.

Enter the Black Maria. Edison became a movie mogul.

[Adapted from Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln Explains to Conkling Why the Emancipation Proclamation Was Necessary

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Emancipation ProclamationOn August 26, 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to James C. Conkling, his friend and political colleague in Springfield, explaining why the Emancipation Proclamation was necessary. In it he reveals the thought processes he went through to reach his decision. It was a much longer process than most people understood.

In fact, by the early spring of 1862, Lincoln had privately decided to issue an emancipation order. He kept this decision to himself for many months while secretly drafting his arguments. Meanwhile, he publicly voiced apprehension about such a decision, suggesting that turning the rationale of the war from maintaining the Union to freeing the slaves would cause significant loss of northern support, in addition to creating potentially disastrous implications in the border states.

In April 1862, at Lincoln’s urging, Congress emancipated slaves in the District of Columbia and compensated their owners. That June, Lincoln signed a bill prohibiting slavery in all current and future U.S. territories. Most of these steps went largely unnoticed to anyone not directly affected, but they helped move public sentiment toward freedom. Unbeknownst to anyone, Lincoln was preparing a draft of the now-famous document as he shuttled between the Soldier’s Home where he spent his summers and the telegraph office of the War Department. After some surreptitious lobbying of public opinion over the summer, Lincoln finally released his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Written in dry, legal language, the proclamation stipulates that on:

…the first day of January [1863], all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…

The initial reaction was as Lincoln expected. Many of the more radical Republicans were ecstatic, while Democrats and other “peace at all costs” proponents saw it as an unnecessarily extreme act. Many voters agreed; Republicans lost twenty-eight seats in the House of Representatives that November. As Lincoln feared, many northerners were vehemently opposed to a civil war to free the slaves as opposed to preserve the Union. Despite these losses, Lincoln stood by his decision and signed the final Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

Nearly a year later there was still grumbling in the North about the emancipation order. In August 1863, James Conkling invited Lincoln out to Illinois to explain to supporters why he proclaimed slaves free, some questioning whether it was right to do so. Many were worried that the public would not support the idea of fighting for “negro freedom.”

In his reply letter, Lincoln says his wartime duties precluded travel to Illinois, but explained to Conkling why he believed the Emancipation Proclamation was right. He noted their concerns, but reminded them that many African-Americans, both former slave and freemen, had joined the Union army and navy. He also suggested that Union forces and the public sentiment should continue fight to save the Union irrespective of their views on freeing the enslaved population.

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.

Near the end of his letter he again reminded white Northerners that the emancipation of enslaved people and the saving of the Union were intertwined, that one assured the other. He also reminded them that all men, black and white, had made sacrifices to maintain the Union, as well as have a Union worth maintaining. Victory was in sight.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.

As with his earlier letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln intended and knew that his letter to Conkling would be reprinted in the nation’s newspapers, thus ensure wide distribution of his policy explanation. This was one mechanism by which Lincoln both heeded public sentiment and helped influence it. [He also had John Hay and John Nicolay ghostwriting editorials, but that’s a topic for another post.]

Lincoln wasn’t finished, of course. He understood that the Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure but a more permanent solution was necessary once hostilities ended. Lincoln then set on both winning the war and pushing for what became the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery and making all men and women “thenceforward, and forever free.”

[Adapted in part and expanded from my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Abraham Lincoln’s Introduction to Slavery

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Lincoln and slaveryAbraham Lincoln didn’t see much slavery as a small child growing up in northern Kentucky, or through his formative years in Indiana. But he did get an introduction of sorts.

First, the church that his family belonged to in Kentucky began splitting off into northern (anti-slavery) and southern (pro-slavery) factions. Lincoln’s father Thomas followed the anti-slavery group and then moved into the free state of Indiana. When he was nineteen years old Lincoln made his first of two flatboat trips down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where he encountered his first slave markets and was attacked by escaping slaves. But largely he had little contact with slavery until adulthood.

While still living in New Salem, Lincoln was elected to the first of four terms in the Illinois state legislature. Most of his time was focused on economic issues such as internal improvements but the slavery issue did play one important role. As I wrote in my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. 

Although the Illinois constitution banned slavery, it did have highly restrictive “black laws” that effectively limited the ability of free blacks to live and work in the state. At the same time, abolitionists who wanted a nationwide ban on slavery were gaining strength and influence. This led pro-slavery forces to push for anti-abolition resolutions. While Lincoln abhorred slavery—he later said, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”—he also felt the abolitionists were doing more harm than good. When the Illinois legislature passed an anti-abolitionist resolution, Lincoln was one of only six house members to vote against it. To clarify this seemingly counterintuitive position, he later wrote a protest, co-signed by Dan Stone, one of the Long Nine who was not seeking reelection. In the protest, the two men made clear they believed:

… that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.

And further, he said they believed:

… that the Congress of the United States has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

Lincoln wanted everyone to understand he was anti-slavery, but also felt bound by the Constitutional restrictions on taking action against the “peculiar institution.” These were fairly radical thoughts for a young western legislator, and would set the stage for Lincoln to become a national leader on the issue of slavery.

Lincoln knew that slavery was tacitly acknowledged in the Constitution by its “three-fifths rule” and “fugitive slave clause.” He also knew that the framers of the Constitution had believed slavery would eventually go away. They took steps to help that process by passing the Northwest Ordinance (banning slavery in territories that became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin) and, as soon as possible, banning the international slave trade. For most of his early career, Lincoln also believed that slavery would eventually disappear (“founded on injustice and bad policy”). Unfortunately, the invention of the cotton gin and vast expansion of the U.S. territories through the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican War had the opposite effect. Rather than dying away, slavery was threatening to expand into all the western territories and even the free northern states.

Something had to be done. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, pushed through Congress by Lincoln’s rival Stephen A. Douglas, “aroused him as he never had been before.” It was time for Lincoln to get back into politics.

[Adapted and expanded from my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Nikola Tesla and the Power of the Tides

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Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time “Many a deluded inventor has spent years of his life in endeavoring to harness the tides.” – Nikola Tesla

Anyone who has seen the tidal surge in the Bay of Fundy can envision the potential of harnessing the natural power of tides for electricity generation. And today some people are doing just that.

The basic principle is simple. Depending on where you are on the planet, either once or twice each day there is a rise and fall of ocean water we call tides. For any given location this ebb and flow is highly predictable; tide tables can be printed up years in advance. It is possible to build reservoirs to capture the water in rising tides, then during low tide allow that water to flow downward through power plants to generate electricity.

The most common mechanism for harnessing tidal energy is the tidal barrage, which looks like a dam or the locks in canals. Incoming tidal water is allowed to move freely upstream. At peak high tide the barriers are closed and the water shunted through turbines. Another modern option would be to set fixed direct drive turbines underwater in areas with large tidal flows. Other more speculative methods include building what in essence is a “tidal reef,” vertical-axis turbines, and even something called “push plates.” The benefit of tidal power, which Tesla would have appreciated, is that once the system is built the energy would be free, predictable, and naturally renewable. On the down side, which Tesla would also appreciate from experience, the initial development and construction is very expensive.

During Tesla’s time there were some engineers who looked at the potential of tidal-generated power with favor. Tesla was not one of them. In fact, he was rather disdainful in his dismissal of the attempts. “Many a deluded inventor has spent years of his life in endeavoring to harness the tides, and some have even proposed to compress air by tide or wave power for supplying energy,” he snorted. With an estimated “little more than one horsepower” possible over an acre of ground, Tesla felt that a “wave or tide motor would have but small chance of competing commercially” with other natural sources of energy. So here Tesla was in agreement with Lord Kelvin, one of the world’s most respected scientists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who had stated that “the tides cannot furnish any power worth speaking of.”

Tesla may have been correct in his assessment. Today, tidal power has been employed only in a small number of locations around the world. The first was located in La Rance, France; the largest is in South Korea. Prospective sites where tidal power would be financially feasible in the United States are few and while countries such as China, France, the UK, Canada and Russia may have greater number of feasible sites, until recently not much has been done to utilize this form of renewable energy.

In the end, Tesla was convinced that only “in exceptional locations can the power of the tides be profitably developed.” He would leave tidal power development for others to pursue. Tesla had other renewable resources on his mind.

[Adapted from my e-book, Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time, available on Amazon]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Abraham Lincoln and the McCormick Reaper

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One of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous cases is one in which he never actually tried. On my second Chasing Abraham Lincoln tour I made an unplanned stop at the McCormick Farm, now part of the Shenandoah Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

As populations grew the need for improved crop yields increased, and the mechanical reaper made that possible. Cyrus McCormick had invented a reaper that became the gold standard and stimulated others to “borrow” his ideas. McCormick sued rival John Manny for patent infringement, accusing him of stealing the McCormick reaper design. Manny’s lawyers called in Lincoln because of his jury skills and his local presence in Illinois, but then the case was transferred to the district court in Cincinnati, Ohio. Lincoln spent considerable time preparing for the case and writing a technical brief, but when he arrived in Cincinnati he was shocked to learn that an esteemed Ohio lawyer, Edwin Stanton, had been hired and his own services were no longer needed. Worse, Stanton treated Lincoln poorly, writing him off as a hick western lawyer of little value. While angry at being tossed out of what he thought was his case, Lincoln turned it into an educational experience, watching the trial and learning a great deal about how more classically educated eastern lawyers worked a case.

The era of farm mechanization had begun, and Lincoln the President later relied on his experience to push for and begin the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enhance the use of science in farming. McCormick’s reaper eventually led to the modern combine harvester; his company eventually merged with others to form International Harvester.

The McCormick Farm is a well preserved set of eight original buildings, including a grist mill, blacksmith shop, slave quarters, carriage house, manor house, smoke house, schoolroom, and housekeeper’s quarters. The original ice house was torn down in the 1960s. Outside the grist mill a wooden water wheel creaked eerily as it continued to turn after all these years. Inside, the mostly wood gear mechanisms showed how the grain was ground into meal. There are two sets of mill apparatuses: one solely for corn, the other for wheat and other grains. Grain is fed from a hopper in the upper level and ground at mid level while the main drive shaft and gears take up most of the lower level.

Another main building had the wood shops in the lower section and a museum in the upper section. Here there were many models of different McCormick reapers, a full-size original reaper, and tons of information about the history of the farm and the inventor. On the wall hung an old scythe and cradle, hand tools used to mow and reap crops before invention of the reaper. While onsite I also checked out the small blacksmith shop and water well.

Before leaving I left my name and website address in the guest book. Shortly after my return home I received an email from Amanda Kirby, an assistant at the Research and Extension Center, thanking me for my visit and providing some additional information and resources for the book I’m researching. All along my Chasing Abraham Lincoln road trip routes I’ve met many hugely interesting and helpful people, from local librarians to small museum curators to volunteers at courthouses. The tours have been a great way to study all things Lincoln.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!