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"Beat It"
On the 3rd March 1892, Dr. Georges Demen˙, an assistant of Etienne-Jules Marey, filed a patent for the phonoscope, a device which projected a series of chronophotographic images positioned around the circumference of a 42cm diameter glass disc onto a screen using a Molteni lantern. It was Demen˙’s intention to combine images of himself mouthing the words “Je vous aime” on a series of stills that, when projected onto the screen, would assist deaf people learning to speak. Demen˙ invented the ‘beater mechanism’ for his device, which was adopted for use in many subsequent projectors until the invention of the Maltese Cross system.
Demen˙ successfully demonstrated his invention at that year’s Exposition Internationale de Photographie in Paris later the same year. The spectator would sit in a small room that was draped in black cloth, and look at a circular glass window about 8 cm in diameter to view the film of Demen˙ making his silent declaration of love. Such was the success of Demen˙’s demonstration he urged his boss, Marey, to authorise the manufacture of six cameras, intending to sell them as an ongoing commercial proposition. Marey, however, was reluctant to do so; his experiments with moving pictures – although playing a major role in the birth of the cinema – were purely for the purposes of scientific research, and he had no interest in making commercial gain out of it
Relations between the couple soured as a result of Marey’s reluctance to explore the commercial possibilities of chronophotographic photography, and were damaged irrevocably when Demen˙ formed the Société de Phonoscope in December 1892. [ADD]
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