Anschütz Automat Schnellseher(1891–c.1898)

[This entry is a continuation of Anschütz Drum Schnellseher.]

Introduced on the Siemens & Halske stand at the Internationaler Elektrotechnischer Ausstellung [International Electrotechnical Exhibition] in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on August 8, 1891 (Tagesanzeiger, 1891), the Automat version of the Anschütz Schnellseher was the apparatus Ottomar Anschütz designed to commercialize his chronophotographs as a public entertainment. 

Some 152 Automat Schnellsehers were manufactured by Siemens & Halske, at their Charlottenburg Works in Berlin, between 1891 and 1893. As they became available, Anschütz quickly began to distribute the new Automat Schnellsehers: with single machines installed at the Berlin Postmuseum; at August Fuhrmann’s Berlin Kaiserpanorama (Praktische Physik, 1891), and in the waiting rooms of Berlin photographic studios (Photographische Korresondenz, 1891). From July 18, 1891 through at least August 31, 1891, four Automats were in public use at the railway arch at Stadtbahnbogen 21, facing the Berlin Exhibition Park, and Anschütz used the figure of its 17,000 visitors to try to persuade Siemens & Halske to begin mass production of the Schnellseher in partnership with him (Anschütz letter of August 28, 1891, Siemens Archive, file LN238). When Siemens declined to begin mass production at their own expense, Anschütz slowly expanded his own exhibitions, with five machines at the Zoological Gardens in Bremen from April 1892 (Anschütz, 1892), four at the Hohenzollern Gallery in Berlin (Berliner Tageblatt, 1892), and a return to the Berlin Exhibition Park with four machines now installed in the main entrance archway (Berliner-Borsen-Zeitung, 1892) from June through October 1892. From June 13, 1892, an Automat Schnellseher was installed at the Crystal Palace in south London (Siemens Archive, file LN238), and two were used from June through September at the Exposition de Photographie held at the Gallerie Knapp on the Champs Mars in Paris (Siemens Archive, files LN238 and 239). From September 1, five machines were installed at the Eden Musee at 55 West 23rd Street in New York City (Zander, 1892), and an additional Schnellseher Automat was installed at Koster & Biall’s Music Hall in New York City from October 10, 1892 (Zander, 1892) where the New York Clipper noted that a special performance in the week of May 27, 1893 included “20 of the subjects shown at this house in the last year.” (New York Clipper, 1893). 

By the end of 1892, Anschütz was ready to consolidate world rights in the apparatus in the Electrical Wonder Company (EWC) in London, managed by Arthur Schwarz and registered on November 12, 1892, to supersede an agreement of November 4, 1892, with Edgar Cohen and Howard Felgate (UK National Archives, file BT31, ref6406). Anschütz reserved exhibition rights in Germany, Austria and Bohemia to himself, but the rest of the world was now the domain of the Electrical Wonder Company. Just four weeks after the formation of the EWC, Siemens & Halske reminded Anschütz that he still owed them for their work on the Automat Schnellseher, and that they would not join with the EWC as a partner in its manufacture, as Anschütz had suggested to them a few days earlier on December 9. (Siemens repeated their refusal on April 29, 1893). 

The EWC opened a Schnellseher parlour with 12 machines at 425 Strand, London, on December 19, 1892, which ran through to at least April 1893, and then opened a second parlour at 91 Brompton Road, London, from March 21. The EWC obtained a concession to exhibit the Schnellseher at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago promptly after Edison withdrew his Kinetoscope and installed seven machines in the German Department of the Electricity Building, as well as others on the Midway Plaisance under the viaducts at Stony Island Avenue, Woodlawn Avenue, and Madison Avenue, where it was seen under the somewhat deceptive name of The Electrical Wonder. Adolph Zukor and Thomas Armat recalled seeing the Schnellseher at the fair, but other accounts of moving pictures that came out of Chicago were mis-labelled as being the Edison Kinetoscope, which did not appear at the fair. 

Underfunded and overextended, the Electrical Wonder Company passed a resolution on November 27, 1893 that the company would be wound up since it could not continue “by reason of its liabilities.” (UK National Archives, file BT31, ref6406) The Automat Schnellseher lingered on at Crystal Palace through 1894, and it was also exhibited at the Swedish Photographic Exhibition in November of the same year and then toured widely in Sweden (Idestam-Almquist, 1959: pp. 73 & 584). Siemens & Halske were left with over 50 Automat Schnellsehers for which they had not been paid, and the company sold off a few to independent exhibitors: Alfred Hirrlinger used his Automat Schnellseher in small towns around Stuttgart in Germany before selling it to the Deutsches Museum in 1905, and Carlos Eisenlohr took his Schnellseher to Portugal at the end of the year (Ferreira, 1986: p. 13) before travelling with it to Cuba, Brazil and other South and Central American countries. 

Using their stock of unpurchased Schnellsehers, Siemens & Halske finally arranged their own exhibitions with 30 machines in Hamburg during an Italian Exhibition, from May 11 to October 17, 1895, and 12 machines in Lübeck, from July 1 to October 12. In Hamburg, the 30 machines, between them, were run 103,120 times during the 158 days of the exhibition, with precise records of daily income preserved at the Siemens Archive, with the corresponding bank deposit tickets. The organizer of the Hamburg exhibition noted that it was changing the pictures that renewed business and audience interest and asked for more of the entertainment discs to replace those of athletes and horses. In Hamburg there was an average of 3,437 runs of each Schnellseher, with just over 4,000 Marks returned to Siemens & Halske (40% of income). But this was the final major exhibition of the Automat Schnellseher. 

At least four examples are known to survive, at the Deutsches Museum, Munich; the Postmuseum, Berlin; the Technical Museum, Vienna; and the Technical Museum, Prague.

[This entry is followed by Anschütz Projecting Schnellseher.]