Great and small things / by Sir Ray Lankester.

  • Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir, 1847-1929.
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Great and small things / by Sir Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/288 (page 16)
    CHAPTER II SCIENCE AND THE FILM IT is only equitable that the great industry of cinema- film production should give valuable help to the investigation of nature—since it owes its own existence to the persevering inquiries of scientific men seeking to ascertain exactly the movements of the legs of the horse when engaged in that rapid action which is called the “ gallop.” About forty years ago, photography was advanced to a new position of power by two discoveries—that of the dry plate or film and that of the means of rendering instantaneous exposure effective in place of the long exposure previously necessary. Not only was the venerable science of astronomy rejuvenated by these discoveries, which enabled the astronomer to print the photographic records of hundreds of thousands of stars invisible to the human eye, even when fortified by the most powerful telescopes, but the study of movement of all kinds—from that of the waves of the sea, to that of the limbs of the swiftest animals, including the most fleeting expressions of the human face and the flickering of the “ cilia ” of the minutest animalcules scarcely visible with the highest powers of the microscope— entered upon a totally new path. It became not only possible but easy to obtain by instantaneous photo-