Les photographies animées de Birt Acres (St. George's Hall, 29 octobre 1896)
Birt Acres donne une conférence au St. George's Hall sur les projections animées et présente un certain nombre de vues cinématographiques :
ANIMATED PHOTOGRAPHS: A NOTABLE EXHIBITION.
Thanks to the enterprise of the Council of the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association, the members and their friends had an opportunity, on October 29, of hearing Mr. Birt Acres, of London, one of the leading pioneers of the latest departure in instantaneous photography, and of seeing some of his latest achievements. So great was the demand for tickets, although issued only to members of the Association, that it was necessary to engage the smaller St. George's Hall, and even this was barely large enough.
The chair was occupied by the President, (Mr. J. Sirrett Brown), and be was supported by the Secretary and most of the other officers of the Association.
Mr. Acres, in the course of his introductory remarks, paid a handsome tribute to other workers who had contributed to the gradual development of the moving photographic picture from the root idea furnished by the zoetrope of a generation ago. The first of these, Mr. Friese Greene, never quite surmounted the initial difficulties, but Mr. Muybridge did, with the excellent results which are so well known. It was not, however, until the plan of a range of cameras, each taking one picture, was abandoned in favour of one camera with a succession of exposures, that further progress was made. The pictures shown on the sheet were each the result of from 800 to 2000 distinct pictures taken on rolls of sensitised film at the rate of fifty or sixty per second. Among these were some admirable examples of well-selected subjects, including scenes at the marriage of the Princess Maud, the visit of the Prince of Wales to Cardiff, the Prince's Derby, Henley Regatta, railway trains in motion, fishing boats leaving the harbour, human boxers, the boxing kangaroo, Lancers exercising on horseback, children playing, merry-go-rounds at a fair, the German Emperor at a review, and waves breaking on the shore at Dover. The exhibition of these fascinating selections from real life was received with continual applause, and at the close of the proceedings a vote of thanks, felicitously proposed by the President, seconded by Mr. E. Rimbault Dibdin, was carried by acclamation in the heartiest manner.
Speaking after a dinner at which he was entertained earlier in the evening by the Council of the Photographic Association, Mr. Birt Acres made the interesting announcement that he has now practically brought to completion improved mechanism by which perfect steadiness is secured in the exhibition of his series of pictures, a result hitherto found unattainable, and the conquest of which will be of the greatest value.
The Lantern Record (monthly supplement to)The British Journal of Photography, Londres, 6 novembre 1896, p. 87.
