Twentieth Century Inventions Part 10

The use of the digitorium for promoting the mechanical portion of a musical education by the training of the fingers has already, to some slight extent, obviated the evils complained of. But this instrument is, as yet, only in its rudimentary stage of development. The dumb notes of the keyboard ought to be capable of emitting sounds by way of notice to the operator, in order to show when the rules have been broken. Thus, for instance, the impact caused by putting a key down should have the effect of driving a small weight upwards in the direction of a metal bar, the distance of which can be adjusted.

Another bar, at a lower level, is also approached by a second weight, and the perfect degree of evenness in the touch is indicated by the fact that the lower bar should be made to emit a faint sound with every note, but the higher one not at all. The closer the bars the more difficult is the exercise, and remarkable evenness of touch can be acquired by a progressive training with such an instrument.

The organ has been wonderfully improved during the nineteenth century.

Yet the decline of its popularity in comparison with the pianoforte may be accounted for on very rational grounds. While ardent organists still claim that the organ is the "King of Instruments" the public generally entertain a feeling that it is a deposed king. It remains for the organ-builders of the twentieth century to attack the problem of curing its defects by methods going more directly to the root of the difficulty than any hitherto attempted.

As contrasted with the pianoforte, the organ is extremely deficient in that power which the conductor of an orchestra loves to exercise--facility in accentuating and in subduing at will the work of each individual performer. For all practical purposes the ten fingers of a piano-player are the ten players in an orchestra; and, according to the force with which each finger strikes the note, is the prominence given to its effects. An air or a _motif_ may be brought out with emphasis by one set of fingers, while the others are playing an accompaniment with all sorts of delicate gradations of softness and emphasis.

By multiplying the manuals, the organ-builder has endeavoured, with a certain degree of success, to make up for the unfortunate fact that the performer on his instrument possesses no similar facility in making it speak louder when he submits the note to extra pressure. One hand may be playing an air on one manual, while the second is engaged in the accompaniment on another; and the former may be connected with a louder stop, or with one of a more penetrating quality than the latter.

This device, together with an elaborate arrangement of swells and pedal-notes, has greatly enlarged the capacity of the organ for producing those choral effects which mainly depend upon gradations of volume. Yet the whole system, elaborate as it is, offers but a poor subst.i.tute for the marvellous range of individuality that may be expressed on the notes of the piano by instantaneous changes in the values ascribed to single notes. By the same action of his finger the pianist not only makes the note, but also gives its value; while the method of the organist is to neglect the element of finger-pressure and to rely upon other methods for imparting emphasis or softness to his work.

An organ that shall emit a louder or softer note, according to the force with which the key on the manual is depressed, will no doubt be one of the musical instruments of the twentieth century. Whether each key will be fitted with a resisting spring, or whether the lever will be constructed in such a way as to throw a weight to a higher or lower grade of position, according to the force with which it is struck, is a question which will depend upon the results of experiment. But the latter method is more in consonance with the conditions which have given to the piano its wonderful versatility, and it therefore seems the more probable solution of the two. Upon the vigour of the finger's impact will depend the height to which a valve is thrown, and this will determine the speed and volume of the air which is liberated to rush into the pipe and make the note.

The nineteenth century orchestra is a fearfully and wonderfully constructed agglomeration of ancient and modern instruments. Its merits are attested by the fine musical sense of the most experienced conductors, whose aim it has been so to balance the different instruments as to produce a tastefully-blended effect, while at the same time providing for solos and also for the rendering of parts in which a small number of performers may contribute to the unfolding of the composer's ideas. The orchestra cannot therefore be examined or discussed from a mechanical point of view, however much some of the instruments of which it is composed may be thought capable of improvement.

But the position of the conductor himself in the front of an orchestra is, from a purely artistic standpoint, highly anomalous. It is as if the prompter at the performance of a drama were to be seen taking the most conspicuous part and mixing among the actors upon the stage. If an orchestral piece be well played without the visible presence of a conductor, the sense of correct time reaches the audience naturally through the music itself; and any sort of gesticulations intended to mark it are under these conditions regarded as being out of place.

The foremost orchestral conductors of the day are evidently impressed with this unfitness of the mechanical marking of time by the wild waving of a stick or swaying of the body; and accordingly, however much they exert themselves at the rehearsal, they purposely subdue their motions during a public performance. The time is not far distant when the object of the conductor will be to guide his band without permitting his promptings to be perceived in any way by the audience.

For this purpose an "electric beat-indicator" will prove useful.

Various proposals for its application have been put forward, and for different purposes several of them are obviously feasible. For instance, in one system the conductor sits in a place hidden from the audience and beats time on an electric contact-maker, which admits of his sending a special message to any particular performer whenever he desires to do so. The signal which marks the time may be given to each performer, either visually by a beater concealed within a small bell-shaped cavity affixed to his desk or to his electric light; or it may be conveyed by the sense of touch through a mechanical beater within a small metal weight placed on the floor and upon which he sets one of his feet.

The electric time-beater in the latter system thus taps the measure gently on the sole of the performer's foot, and special signals, as may be arranged, are sent to him by preconcerted combinations of taps.

The absence of any distraction from the music itself will soon be gratefully felt by audiences, and the playing of a symphony in the twentieth century, in which the whole orchestra moves sympathetically in obedience to the "nerve-waves" of the electric current, will be the highest possible presentment of the musical art.

CHAPTER XIII.

ART AND NEWS.

The production of pictures for the million will be practically the highest achievement of the graphic art in the twentieth century. Many eminent painters do not at all relish the prospect, being strongly of opinion that when every branch of art becomes popular it will be vulgarised. This notion arises from a fallacy which has affected ideas during the nineteenth century in many matters besides art, the mistake of supposing that vulgar people all belong to one grade of society.

Yet every one who knows modern England, for instance, is perfectly aware that the highest standard of taste is only to be found in the elect of all cla.s.ses of society. After the experience of the eighteenth century, surely it ought to have been recognised that the "upper ten thousand," when left to develop vulgarity in its true essence, can attain to a degree of perfection hardly possible in any other social grade. Is there in the whole range of pictorial art anything more irredeemably vulgar than a "State Portrait" by Sir Thomas Lawrence or one of his imitators?

It was under the prompting of a dread of the process of popularising art that so many eminent painters of the nineteenth century protested against the fashion set by Sir J. E. Millais when he sold such pictures as "Cherry Ripe" and "Bubbles," knowing they were intended for reproduction in very large numbers by mechanical means. From a somewhat similar motive a few of the leading artists of the nineteenth century for a time stood aloof from the movement for familiarising the people with at least the form, if not the colouring, of each notable picture of the year. From small and very unpretentious beginnings, the published pictorial notes of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions of the year have risen to most imposing proportions; and already there is some talk of attempting a few of the best from each year's production in colours.

Half-tone zinco and similar processes have brought down the expenses entailed by reproductions in colour-work, so as to render an undertaking of this kind much more feasible than it was in the middle of the last half-century. "Cherry Ripe" cost five thousand pounds to reproduce, by the laborious processes of printing not only each colour, but almost every different shade of each colour from a different surface.

In the "three-colour-zinco" process of reproduction only three printings are required, each colour with all its delicate gradations of shade being fully provided for by a single engraved block. When machines of great precision have been finally perfected for admitting of the successive blocks being printed from on paper run from the reel without any handling, a revolution will be brought about not only in artistic printing, but even in the conditions of studio work upon which the artist depends for success.

First, the pictorial notes of the year will be brought out in colour; and as compet.i.tion for the right of reproduction increases, the artists who have painted the most suitable and most popular pictures will find that they can get more remuneration for copyright than they can for the pictures themselves. This has already been the case in regard to a very limited number of pictures; but the exception of the past will be the rule of the future, at least as regards those pictures which possess any special merits at all.

More thought will therefore be required as the motive or basis of each subject; and historical pictures will come more into favour, the affected simplicity and mental emptiness of the _plein air_ school being discarded in favour of a style which shall speak more directly to the people, and stir more deeply both their mental and their emotional natures.

The artist and the printer must then confer. They can no longer afford to work in the future with such disregard of each other's ideas and methods as they have done in the past. It was at one time the custom among painters almost to despise the "black-and-white man" who drew for the Press in any shape or form; but that piece of affectation has nearly been destroyed by the general ridicule with which it is now received, and by the knowledge that there are already, at the end of the nineteenth century, just as many men of talent working by methods suitable for reproduction, as there are painters who confine their attention to palette, canvas and brush.

The printer will now advance a step further, and will invoke the services of the painter himself, even prescribing certain methods by which the Press may be enabled to reproduce the work of the artist more faithfully than would otherwise be possible.

Transparency painting will no doubt be one of these methods. The artist will paint on a set of sheets of transparent celluloid or gla.s.s, mounted in frames of wood and hinged so that they can, for purposes of observation, be put aside and yet brought back to their original positions quite accurately. Each different transparent sheet will be intended for one pure colour, the only pigments used being of the most transparent description obtainable.

The picture may thus be built up by successive additions and alterations, not all put upon one surface, but const.i.tuting a number of "monochromes," superimposed one upon the other. When finished, each of these one-colour transparencies can then be reproduced by photo-mechanical means for multi-colour printing in the press.

By what are known as the photographic "interruption" processes, a kind of converse method has achieved a certain degree of success. A landscape or a picture is photographed several times from exactly the same position, but on each occasion it is taken through a screen of a different coloured gla.s.s, which is intended for the purpose of intercepting all the rays of light, except those of one particular tint. Coloured prints in transparent gelatine or other suitable medium are then made from the various negatives, each in its appropriate tint; and when all are placed together and viewed through transmitted light, the effect of the picture, with all its colours combined, is fairly well produced. More serviceable from the artistic point of view will be the method according to which the artist makes his picture by transmitted light, but the finished printed product is seen on paper, because this latter lends itself to the finest work of the artistic printer.

The princ.i.p.al branch of the work of the photographer must continue to be portraiture. He cannot greatly reduce the cost of getting a really good negative, because so much hand-labour is required for the task of "retouching"; but he can give, perhaps, a hundred prints for the price which he now charges for a dozen, and make money by the enterprise. It has already been proved that there is no necessity for using expensive salts of gold, silver or platinum in order to secure the most artistic prints; and, as a matter of fact, some of the finest art work in the photography of the past quarter of a century has been accomplished with the cheapest of materials, such as gelatine, glue and lampblack.

Pigmented gelatine is, without doubt, the coming medium for photographic prints, and the methods of making them must approximate more and more closely to those of the typographic printer. By producing a "photo-relief" in gelatine--sensitised with bichromate of potash, and afterwards exposed first to the sun and then to the action of water--an impression in plastic material can be secured, from which, with the use of warm, thin, pigmented gelatine, a hundred copies or more can be printed off in a few minutes.

The very general introduction of such a process has naturally been delayed owing to the extra trouble involved in the first methods which were suggested for applying it, and also, no doubt, on account of the recent fashion for platinotype and bromide of silver prints. But as soon as more convenient details for the making of pigmented gelatine prints have been elaborated, the cheapness of the material and the wonderful variety of the art shades and tints in which photographs can be executed will give the gelatine processes an advantage in the compet.i.tion which it will be hopeless for other methods to challenge.

The daily newspapers of a few years hence will be vividly ill.u.s.trated with photographic pictures of the personages and the events of the day. The gelatine photo-relief, already alluded to, will no doubt afford the basis of the princ.i.p.al processes by which this will be effected. Hitherto the chief drawback has been the difficulty of imparting a suitable grain to the printing blocks made from these reliefs; but this has been practically overcome by the use of sheets of metallic foil previously impressed with the form of a finely-engraved tint-block. The actual printing surface, of course, consists of an electrotype or stereotype taken from this metallic-grained photographic face.

For "high-art" printing on fine paper with the more expensive kinds of ink, the half-tone zinco processes will doubtless maintain their supremacy and gradually diminish the area within which lithographic printing is required. In the case of newspaper work, however, where haste in getting ready for the press is necessarily the prime consideration, the flat and very slightly-indented surface of the zinco block is found to be unsuited to the requirements. Flat blocks, which require careful "overlaying" on the machine, waste too much time for daily news work. Without going into technical details it may be surmised in general terms that in the near future almost every newspaper will contain, each day, one or more photo-ill.u.s.trations of events of the previous day or of the news which has come to hand from a distance.

Type-setting by hand is, for newspaper purposes, being so rapidly superseded, that only in the smaller towns and villages can it remain for even a few years longer. But in the machines by which this revolution has been effected, finality has been by no means reached.

Every line of matter which appears in any modern daily newspaper has to pa.s.s through two processes of stereotyping before it makes a beginning to effect its final work of printing upon paper.

First, there is the stereotyping or casting of the line in its position in the type-setting machine after the matrices have been ranged in position by the application of the fingers to the various keys; and, secondly, when all the lines have been placed together to make a page, it is necessary to take an impression of them upon _papier mache_, or what is technically called "flong," and then to dry it and make the full cast from it curved and ready for placing on the cylinder of the printing machine. The delay occasioned by the need for drying the wet flong is such a serious matter--particularly to evening newspapers requiring many editions during the afternoon--that several dry methods have been tried with greater or less success.

But there is really no need for more than one casting process. In the twentieth century machine the matrices will be replaced by permanent type from which, when ranged in the line, an impression will be made by hard pressure on a small bar of soft metal or plastic material. All the impressed bars having been set together in a casting box having the necessary curvature, the final stereo plate for printing from will be taken at once by pouring melted metal on the combined bars.

An appreciable saving, both in time and in money, will also be effected by applying the principle of the perforated strip of paper or cardboard to the purpose of operating the machine by which the necessary letters are caused to range themselves in the required order. Machines similar to typewriters will be employed for perforating the strips of paper and for printing, at the same time, in ordinary letters the matter just as if it were being typewritten.

The corrections can then be made by cutting off those pieces of the strips which are wrong and inserting corrected pieces in their places.

No initial "justification" to the s.p.a.ce required to make a line is needed in this system. The strips, however, are put through the setting machine, and, as they make the reading matter by the impression of bars as already described, they are divided into lines automatically.

Large numbers of newspapers will in future be sold from "penny-in-the-slot" machines. The system to be adopted for this particular purpose will doubtless differ in some important respects from that which has been successful in the vending of small articles such as sweetmeats and cigarettes. The newspapers may be hung on light bars within the machine, these being supported at the end by a carefully-adjusted cross piece, which, on the insertion of a penny in the slot, moves just sufficiently to permit the end of one bar with its newspaper to drop, and to precipitate the latter on to a table forming the front of the machine. When the full complement of newspapers has been exhausted the slot is automatically closed.

Some of the newspapers of the twentieth century will be given away gratis, and will be, for the most part, owned by the princ.i.p.al advertisers. This is the direction in which journalistic property is now tending, and at any juncture steps might be taken, in one or other of the great centres of newspaper enterprise, which would precipitate the ultimate movement. Hardly any one who buys a half-penny paper to-day imagines for a moment that there is any actual profit on the article.

It is understood on all hands that the advertisers keep the newspapers going and that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. Not that either party can dictate to the other in matters outside of its own province. The effect is simply to permit the great public to purchase its news practically for the price of the paper and ink on which it is conveyed; the condition being that the said public will permit its eyes to be greeted with certain announcements placed in juxtaposition to the news and comments.

Sooner or later, therefore, the idea will occur to some of the leading advertisers to form a syndicate and give to the people a small broadsheet containing briefly the daily narrative. The ponderous newspapers of the latter end of the nineteenth century--filled full of enough of linotype matter to occupy more than the whole day of the subscriber in their perusal--will be to a large extent dispensed with; and the new art of journalism will consist in saying things as briefly--not as lengthily--as possible.

CHAPTER XIV.

INVENTION AND COLLECTIVISM.

The ownership of machinery and of all the varied appliances in the evolution of which inventive genius is exercised is a matter which, strictly speaking, does not belong to the domain of this work.

Nevertheless, in endeavouring to forecast the progress of invention during the twentieth century, it is necessary to take count of the risks involved in the inauguration of any public and social economical systems which might tend to stifle freedom of thought and to discourage the efforts of those who have suggestions of industrial improvements to make.