Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/758

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��Popular Science Monthly

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��But th'j most admirable feature of the plan is this: the houses need not be all alike

��a bathroom. The two and three family houses would cost proportionately less. It is estimated that a four-room and bath cottage built under the new method, could hardly be duplicated for less than $1,800 under conventional schemes of construction, using the same materials. The two family dwelling costing less than $1,200, with four rooms and bath and a porch for each user, is especially desirable. The price of lumber is now so high that the erection of wooden houses similar in design to those here described would cost from seventy-five to eighty-five per cent of the sum expended for houses of brick or reinforced concrete. Such costs, how- ever, vary greatly according to localities and the accessibility of supplies. Lead- ing architects agree that after-the-war developments will justify the expense.

��Real Lights for the Automobiles in Motion Pictures

MR. LANGDON McCORMICK of New York thinks that the present motion picture representations of night scenes are not sufficiently realistic, especi- ally in their lighting effects.

It is his belief that representations of light on the screen, such as lamppost, automobile, and locomotive lamps, should be lights in reality, instead of pictorial representations.

As most night scenes projected on the

��screen are photographed in daylight and tinted blue to give the night effect, it is true that there is an absence of glow. But from our knowledge of motion pic- ture projection we fail to see a practical need in Mr. McCormick's invention.

He proposes to arrange a number of tracks behind a translucent screen, upon which actual electric bulbs are to be dragged along by motors. These lights will be caused to move about on the screen to correspond with the ever changing positions of the lights in the picture.

How this corresponding movement will be accomplished we do not know, but we are certain that if it is at all possible it can be accomplished only more or less successfully in a direct side to side or up and down movement which involves no perspective changes.

As regards objects which come forward or recede in the perspective of the picture it is well understood that they change their size during their movement.

No provision is made for this change in size of the traveling lights and if this method were actually applied to a pic- ture of an automobile going away from us into the distance the car would be seen to diminish in size while the tail-light would remain unchanged, and this effect would continue until the machine became much smaller than its tail-light. Literally speaking the automobile would disappear in a blaze of tail-light glory.

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