taking dozens of pictures a
second, recording even the strained, anxious expression on the face of
the driver. The pole of the hose-wagon struck the camera-box squarely
and knocked it into fragments, and the wheels passed quickly over the
pieces, the photographer meanwhile escaping somehow. By some lucky
chance the box holding the coiled exposed film came through the wreck
unscathed.

When that series was shown on the screen in a theatre the audience saw
the engine and hook-and-ladder in turn come nearer and nearer and then
rush by, then the line of running men with the old engine, and then--and
their flesh crept when they saw it--a team of plunging horses coming
straight toward them at frightful speed. The driver's face could be seen
between the horses' heads, distorted with effort and fear. Straight on
the horses came, their nostrils distended, their great muscles
straining, their fore hoofs striking out almost, it seemed, in the faces
of the people in the front row of seats. People shrank back, some women
shrieked, and when the plunging horses seemed almost on them, at the
very climax of excitement, the screen was darkened and the picture
blotted out. The camera taking the pictures had continued to work to the
very instant it was struck and hurled to destruction.

In addition to the stereopticon and its attendant mechanism, which is
only suitable when the pictures are to be shown to an audience, a
machine has been invented for the use of an individual or a small group
of people. In the mutoscope the positives or prints are made on long
strips of heavy bromide paper, instead of films, and are generally
enlarged; the strip is cut up after development and mounted on a
cylinder, so they radiate like the spokes of a wheel, and are set in the
same consecutive order in which they were taken. The thousands of cards
bearing the pictures at the outer ends are placed in a box, so that when
the wheel of pictures is turned, by means of a crank attached to the
axle, a projection holds each card in turn before the lens through which
the observer looks. The projection in the top of the box acts like the
thumb turning the pages of a book. Each of the pictures is presented in
such rapid succession that the object appears to move, just as the
scenes thrown on the screen by a lantern show action.

The mutoscope widens the use of motion-photography infinitely. The
United States Government will use it to illustrate the workings of many