Page 10 - CinemaRecord #11R.pdf

From "Ker<?-Diascope" to "Kinematograph" By Denzil Howson

I wonder how many of our readers can recall the first movie film they ever saw?

My first recollection of seeing moving pictures on a screen takes me back to the Castlemaine Town Hall, where
"silents" were still being shown. It was there as a very small child that I saw the great Emil Jan.nings in "The
Last Command". Before that I had been well exposed to images on a screen. No! Not lantern slides, but
opaque photographs projected rather dimly by a primitive device called an 'EP.I.DIASCOPE".

Several years later, as a school boy, I constructed one of these devices myself. As the main component of my
version was a kerosene tin, I christened it a "KERO-DIASCOPE". But why was I so familiar with 'EPIDIASCOPE"
showings? As part of my character building as a child I attended a Methodist Sunday School in Mont Albert.

The Superintendent seemed to have a collection of missionary friends who would materialise from time to time
with photos which they had taken in New Guinea, Fiji or Samoa. These showed beaming local inhabitants
decently, if somewhat quaintly adorned in a variety of "western" style clothing, and grinning their enjoyment at
being converted to Christianity. Whenever one of these missionaries arrived, the Sunday School would be
treated to an illustrated lecture using the Church Epidiascope.

Format and focus of the visuals seemed to matter little. Some were horizontal, some were vertical, some were
diagonal and some were very indistinct- but all emphasised the same theme, viz. that the photo opportunities
for a missionary in New Guinea, Samoa or Fiji were endless, if somewhat repetitive. It was the memory of
these showings that induced me to construct my "KERO-DIASCOPE" - not to project images of converted
Kanakas, but to show snaps of our travels to Warrandyte, and places ever further afield which my Mum had
taken on her folding Kodak.
A diagram of the "KERO-DIASCOPE" shows the main components - an empty kerosene tin, still more or less
intact, two short pieces of galvanised iron down piping, one piece being a sliding fit into the other, a ventilator
with a hood, also constructed from down-piping, a magnifying glass lens which could be attached to one end of
the piece of down-pipe, two A. C. batten holders, two 100 watt globes, a length of cord and a power plug. There
also needed to be a hole cut into the kerosene tin on the side opposite the lens, where the photos could be
positioned for projection. For a successful showing you also needed a very dark room with no trace of ambient
light, as the light out-put from any sort of Epidiascope is less than low - it borders on the non-existent!
I am not sure what the current "in" phrase "state of the art" means, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when
it was built, my KERO-DIASCOPE would have qualified for that appellation. The title of this article is 'FROM
KERO-DIASCOPE TO KINEMATOGRAPH". So to the KINEMATOGRAPH.
As a young man, my father had subscribed to a technical journal called "English Practical Mechanics", (not the
somewhat "light-weight" Popular Mechanics of later years). As a school-boy, thumbing through some very early
copies of the Magazine one day, in an edition dated approximately 1902, I discovered detailed and complete
instructions on how to made a KINEMATOGRAPH, as movie projectors were known in those days. None of
your pip-squeak 16mm stuff! When the article was published, 16mm gauge had not been invented. This was
fully fledged 35mm projector. My Dad was an engineer with a well-equipped work-shop, so with my vocal
encouragement we - or rather "he" - set about building our own Kinematograph.
We constructed virtually every component. Gate, Sprockets, Maltese Cross and Cam, Lamp House, Spool
Arms (even Spools), cast our own bearings. We cheated a little when it came to gearing and chain drive for the
upper and lower sprockets. Mr. Meccano helped us out there. We discovered a small electric motor in a junk
shop, and of course our expertise did not run to making a projector lamp. But the machine worked and worked
well. One minor problem - the steel driving pin on the cam had a tendency to fracture. We tried hardening it,
we tried not hardening it, but we never fully conquered the problem. However, we managed probably fifty or
sixty hours showing before the pine would snap off.
Apart from a small collection of 35mm silent films I had acquired, we hired films from a small film exchange in,
I think, Curral Street, Elstemwick. It was known as Milne's Films - run by a Mr. Milne. He had sound features as
well, but we were interested only in the silents, all of them on nitrate stock. I think everyone who has used
nitrate films has had at least one conflagration. ·

Ours occurred in the hallway of our house, when one day, I stopped the projector to examine a suspect splice
and forgot to switch off the lamp. Fortunately, the damage was slight.