Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1885 — The Instantaneous Photograph. [ARTICLE]

The Instantaneous Photograph.

How is it with the photographic camera and lens, our artificial eye? We will suppose that everything is in readiness, that its retina or sensitive plate is in perfect condition, and that not a ray of light lias yet entered within the darkened chamber. Instead of being “the twinkling of an eye,” we shall arrange so that the time elapsing between the opening and closing of the artificial eyelid shall be less than onetenth of a second, of far less than the time necessary for our eyes to. open and shut. It shall be as nearly “instantaneous” as possible. Everything is ready. Click! It has opened and shut. What has it seen in that little instant of time? If anything is in motion, it has been perceived in that fragment of a second as if motionless. Men walking along the street are pictured with uplifted feet. A trottmg-horse may be caught with all of its four legß in the air, viewed just at the moment when he was clear of the ■ ground. A man leaping a high pole may be pibtured in precisely in the position in which lie appears at the highest altitude.- Motion seems rest. But this is not the most wonderful of its powers. Far beyond the keenness of human vision is its range of. sight If the light is good, this sensi-

tive plate of i glass will have recorded and discerned a thousand uplifted faces as perfectly as tho human eye perceives the'features of a single countenance. Every expression of joy hr sorrow, every peculiarity of dress or attitude, jjfche leaves of a forest or the grass by 4he wayside, will "have been seen and delineated and retained perfectly in far less than tho briefest possible twinkling of a human eyte. —Popular Science Monthly. f