improvements were made. An ingenious Frenchman named Lumiere, came
forward with his Cinematographe which for a few years gave good
satisfaction, producing very creditable results. Success, however, was
due more to the picture ribbons than to the mechanism employed to feed
them.

Of other moving pictures machines we have had the vitascope, vitagraph,
magniscope, mutoscope, panoramagraph, theatograph and scores of others
all derived from the two Greek roots _grapho_ I write and _scopeo_ I
view.

The vitascope is the principal name now in use for moving picture
machines. In all these instruments in order that the film projection
may be visible to an audience it is necessary to have a very intense
light. A source of such light is found in the electric focusing lamp.
At or near the focal point of the projecting lantern condenser the
film is made to travel across the field as in the kinetoscope. A water
cell in front of the condenser absorbs most of the heat and transmits
most of the light from the arc lamp, and the small picture thus highly
illuminated is protected from injury. A projecting lens of rather short
focus throws a large image of each picture on the screen, and the rapid
succession of these completes the illusion of life-like motion.

Hundreds of patents have been made on cameras, projecting lenses and
machines from the days of the kinetoscope to the present time when
clear-cut moving pictures portray life so closely and so well as almost
to deceive the eye. In fact in many cases the counterfeit is taken for
the reality and audiences as much aroused as if they were looking upon
a scene of actual life. We can well believe the story of the Irishman,
who on seeing the stage villain abduct the young lady, made a rush at