ing an ascent of Mount Blanc,
the operator of the camera necessarily making the perilous journey also;
different stages of the ascent were taken, some of them far above the
clouds. For this series of pictures a film eight hundred feet long was
required, and 12,800 odd exposures or negatives were made.

Successive pictures have been taken at intervals during an ocean voyage
to show the life aboard ship, the swing of the great seas, and the
rolling and pitching of the steamer. The heave and swing of the steamer
and the mountainous waves have been so realistically shown on the screen
in the theatre that some squeamish spectators have been made almost
seasick. It might be comforting to those who were made unhappy by the
sight of the heaving seas to know that the operator who took one series
of sea pictures, when lashed with his machine in the lookout place on
the foremast of the steamer, suffered terribly from seasickness, and
would have been glad enough to set his foot on solid ground;
nevertheless, he stuck to his post and completed the series.

[Illustration: DEVELOPING MOVING-PICTURE FILMS
The films are wound on the great drums and run through the developer in
the troughs as the drums are slowly revolved.]

It was a biograph operator that was engaged in taking pictures of a
fire department rushing to a fire. Several pieces of apparatus had
passed--an engine, hook-and-ladder company, and the chief; the operator,
with his (then) bulky apparatus, large camera, storage batteries, etc.,
stood right in the centre of the street, facing the stream of engines,
hose-wagons, and fire-patrol men. In order to show the contrast, an
old-time hand-pump engine, dragged by a dozen men and boys, came along
at full speed down the street, and behind and to one side of them
followed a two-horse hose-wagon, going like mad. The men running with
the old-time engine, not realising how narrow the space was and unaware
of the plunging horses behind, passed the biograph man on one side on
the dead run. The driver of the rapidly approaching team saw that there
was no room for him to pass on the other side of the camera man, and his
horses were going too fast to stop in the space that remained. He had
but an instant to decide between the dozen men and their antiquated
machine and the moving-picture outfit. He chose the latter, and, with a
warning shout to the photographer, bore straight down on the camera,
which continued to do its work faithfully,