All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

336 All About Inventions the seal upon its future popularity. Probably no topical film has ever created such a furore as did this particular subject. Other annual events were treated in a similar manner, while simultaneously the miming of plays—dramas, farces, comedies, and tragedies in- discriminately—was taken in hand, and the appear- ance of them proved still more powerful magnets for the crowds. The public realised that the man with the moving-picture camera was able to treat his sub- jects far more comprehensively, and was able to maintain the illusion far more effectively, than his colleague of the theatre. The limitations of the latter craft are very narrow and sharply defined. But with the moving-picture art there are no such trammels to hinder the faithful presentation of the idea in hand. A novel move was made by Mr. Robert Paul, who induced a well-known conjurer to perform his feats of legerdemain before the camera. While this work was in progress the operator suddenly conceived the idea that he could produce far more startling results by incorporating the art of trick photography. If a giant were required he was produced ; if there was a weird manifestation in demand, it was supplied, and that without any great difficulty. To-day any conceivable effect, no matter how weird or wonderful, is obtainable. The impossible was rendered apparently possible, and these achievements exercised a weird fascination upon the public, who were—and still are—ever puzzling their brains as to how it is done. Even to-day a clever trick picture is every whit as magnetising as it was five or ten years ago. It only needs to possess the novelty of freshness, either