Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/569

 Popular Science Monthly

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��screwed home. Bedded thus in soft putty and kept taut by the spring tension, it is impossible for the glass to break, even under the severest strain imposed by snow, ice, rain, or heat.

Inside the torch are fif- teen five-hundred candle- power incandescent lamps connected with a flasher (a flasher is a rotating drum with surface projections which close the lamp cir- cuits every time they hit a stationary piece of metal) to carry out the unsteady flicker and blaze of the burning torch. The torch also contains a lighthouse lens, nine .and one half inches in diameter and fifteen inches deep.

���Super-Daylight for the Motion-Picture Man

ONLY those who have visited a motion- picture studio and have watched the actors rehearsing under a battery of mercury-arcs, can realize the important relation of light to the successful photo- graphing of an indoor stage scene, or, as the motion-picture folk call it, a "set." There is not only lavish, blinding light, but sweltering heat; for the lamps are veritable furnaces.

In one of the New York motion-picture

��There are fifteen of these five- hundred candlepower lamps in- side the torch of the Statue

��studios, which is situated on the top of a glass-covered fireproof building, a gigantic overhead lighting system costing fifty thousand dol- lars was recently installed. The system comprises twenty-five overhead units of mercivry-arcs. These units run on five tracks, with eleven contact spaces to each track, indicated by white paint. By shifting a unit a few inches either way light is obtained for the deepest sets.

The steel tracks sup- porting the overhead lights are nine feet apart and one hundred and seventy feet long. In addition to this overhead system the gen- eral lighting equipment of the studio is supplemented by another battery of floor lights. When all the lights are going at one time, "super-daylight," according to the enthusi- astic and imaginative director, is obtained. When a play is being rehearsed an auto- matic switch enables the director to turn off the big batteries and substitute in their place incandescent bulbs. In the studio in which this vast ligTiting equipment is em- ployed fi\-e directors can photograph as many sets at the same time. The stage is seventy feet wide and one hundred and seventy feet long.

���Close-up view of the portable contact and carrying device. Contact spaces in the trolley feeders are indicated by white paint. There are twenty-five overhead units of mercury-arcs which run on five tracks, with eleven contact spaces allotted to each track

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