During the
movement when one picture moves away and another approaches the center
of vision all is dark. Hence the eye does not see the changes but gets
an impression as if the picture remained at the same spot, only moving.
The bird flaps its wings and the horse trots. It was really a perfect
kinetoscopic instrument. Yet its limitations were evident. No movements
could be presented but simple rhythmical ones, inasmuch as after one
revolution of the wheel the old pictures returned. The marching men
appeared very lifelike; yet they could not do anything but march on and
on, the circumference of the wheel not allowing more room than was
needed for about forty stages of the moving legs from the beginning to
the end of the step.
If the picture of a motion was to go beyond these simplest rhythmical
movements, if persons in action were really to be shown, it would be
necessary to have a much larger number of pictures in instantaneous
illumination. The wheel principle would have to be given up and a long
strip with pictures would be needed. That presupposed a correspondingly
long set of exposures and this demand could not be realized as long as
the pictures were taken on glass plates. But in that period experiments
were undertaken on many sides to substitute a more flexible transparent
material for the glass.
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