Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/191

 172 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS cry and sing, and imitation dogs that bark, cats that meow, lions that roar, and roosters that crow. It will preserve the voices of our great men, and enable future generations to lis- ten to speeches by a Lincoln or a Gladstone. Lastly, the pho- nograph will perfect the telephone and revolutionize present systems of telegraphy. * * Mr. Edison himself formed a (collection of ^ Voices of the great ' ' which included records of the voices of Gladstone, Bis- marck, Tennyson, Beecher, Browning, and others. The Pho- nograph will certainly always be considered one of the most wonderful inventions of our age. Even more wonderful was the invention of the kinetograph and the kinetoscope, or moving picture machine. Mr. Edison had never given any attention to photography before he be- came interested in the plan of taking pictures of moving ob- jects. He now thoroughly studied the subject of photography in aU its bearings, and by the perfection of its processes was finally able to invent a mechanism which can take a series of photographs as rapidly as forty-nine to the second, so that every movement is at once registered upon a long strip of gelatinous film. The kinetoscope displays the film taken by the kinetograph, bringing the series of photographs so rapidly before the eye that everything moves about as in real life. The speed of the machine may be increased or retarded. The most wonderful results are obtained in this way. Even the growth of a plant or the unfolding of a flower can be shown from hour to hour of its development. The kinetophone combines the principles of the kinetograph and the phonograph, giving thus not only the movements but also the sounds. This machine will enable a man in his own home to see and hear a production of grand opera as produced on a distant stage, witnessing all the movements of the singers in addition to hearing the sound of their voices. This inven- tion is not yet as perfect as desirable, but there are no funda- mental difficulties to hinder its perfection. Mr. Edison was one of the first men in modem times to dis-