AC's book tells the story of how to
build your own X-Ray Motion Picture Camera. But what is more
fascinating today is his thoughts about the possibilities.
"One day I was watching a large caterpillar changing into its pupa. This was not so exciting. It merely shed its skin, its legs and horns and then went to sleep as it were, but it gave me the idea of what a wonderful thing it would be if I could picture what was going on inside its body while it was changing into a great butterfly. I began to think about X-ray motion pictures."
AC worked
out the details on a Pullman on the way to New York. Again an expert
told him his ideas would not work. Again he proved the experts wrong.
"THE
secret of what takes place in the heart of a rose, as it unfolds from
the bud, is revealed for the first time in an amazing moving picture
film recently made by a Berkeley, California., photographer of
botanical subjects, Arthur C. Pillsbury. He employed an X-ray tube of
low voltage, which casts the shadow of delicate objects upon the film,
without destroying them. This tube was designed especially for the work
by Dr. William D. Coolidge, inventor of the “Coolidge tube.”
The camera itself is a lead-lined box with a ruby-glass opening, against which the subject is placed. In taking a succession of X-ray photographs to produce the motion picture, the film, which is unperforated, is gripped between rollers and the mechanism moves it forward As many inches as are required for each individual photograph.
The first picture made with the new apparatus was recorded on 200 feet of special film of unusual width. A small electric motor operates the camera automatically. Governed by clockwork, it turns the X-ray on and off, moves the film, and operates a brake which stops all movement at the proper time. Once started, the camera will run without attention for several days.
In making the film of the development of the unseen parts of the rose, the X-ray was turned on at five-minute intervals over a stretch of seventy-two hours. As it penetrated the petals, leaves, and stem, the
Film recorded the changes that had taken place during each five minute interval.
Tests
are to be made of the ability of the apparatus to record other
delicate, unseen operations, which as the knitting of bones fractured
in the legs of rats, the development of an embryo in a pigeon’s egg,
and similar subjects. Eventually it may be employed to make motion
picture records for the first time, of the operating mechanism of the
human body."
