(8) [L.J. Pollard] I Identifying Pictures, Chorus David Horx, Bob Horner, Laser Talk
Abstract
William F. Grisham interviews the founder of Ebony Film company, Luther J. Pollard. In the first portion of the interview, Pollard discusses the operations of Ebony Film Corporation, his role as general manager, and his advertising career after Ebony’s closure. The final portion of the interview appears to be a presentation on light equipment at an unnamed event. Some of the speaker(s) - or who speaks at different points - remain unidentified.
Log
Luther J. Pollard: (00:09)
George Lewis. I don't know what that is. Sam Jackson, George Lewis is the waiter.
William Grisham: (00:15)
Is the waiter. Sam Jackson is the man with the—
Luther J. Pollard: (00:24)
Man on the left. You don’t know who he is though.
William Grisham: (00:29)
Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (00:46)
I can't identify—I need a pictures from this. That's Sam Jackson on the end.
William Grisham: (00:58)
On the end, okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:04)
And that would—that was Sam Williams. I may be fogged up as half, but I think that’s Sam. I know his first name is Sam.
William Grisham: (01:30)
Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:40)
Picture the same as the one is as bad.
William Grisham: (01:42)
That's the same as that one.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:43)
Ah?
William Grisham: (01:46)
That’s the same as that one. I don’t know. Yeah. And then I don't know who these people are. Do you have any idea?
Luther J. Pollard: (01:55)
Ahhhh We see. So that’s David [inaudible]? This is a man that came from New York. Charles David left. First left. Heath, director.
William Grisham: (02:00)
Heath?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:02)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (02:05)
He was a director?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:08)
He's a director. He's the man that put the Polish and the pictures. He’s a New York man.
William Grisham: (02:12)
He came in from New York.
Luther J. Pollard (02:16):
I don't know who that— Oh, the third one is Bob. He's my publicity man. Bob Horner
William Grisham (02:30)
H O R N E R. Publicity.
Luther J. Pollard: (02:32)
Bob Horner. Top row. Fetty camera.
William Grisham (02:42)
Fetty?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:43)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (02:44)
How do you spell that?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:46)
F.E.Double T. Y. And the other fellow is Tyler Maker at the top. That's—those are the fellas that made the pictures. Bob Horner.
William Grisham: (03:02)
was publicity. And then it's 10.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:30)
This is Sam Williams.
William Grisham: (03:32)
Sam Williams again. Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:39)
Right here on this one. It looks to me like the Porter's Pritchard from reporter, but I can't tell.
William Grisham: (03:41)
It's Sam Williams now. Okay. That's it.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:43)
Is that all of them?
William Grisham: ()3:45)
Yeah. And these are duplicates, so I guess it goes here.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:51)
You know, I would finish shooting Steelers over that
William Grisham: (03:56)
yeah. Um, tell me who wrote the, um, the scenarios, this script,
Luther J. Pollard: (04:04)
Oh I don't know something. We've got some nice stories. I don't know.
Luther J. Pollard: (04:12):
I forgot that I never had anything to do with this script.
William Grisham (4:20)
Mhm. Now, when you farmed the stock company, did you have to do a lot of— in other words, you'd have to make presentations to different people and so on or not? How was that done?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:31)
Presentations?
William Grisham: (04:33)
By that I mean how did you set up, you know—was it a difficult chore to get the company going? That's what I was trying to figure out, you know?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:43)
What?
William Grisham: (04:45)
Well, let me explain that. Was it a stock? People could buy stock. That's how you got the car?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:53)
I don’t—I wouldn't mention that.
William Grisham: (04:56)
Alright, I won’t.
Luther J. Pollard: (04:57)
Oh No, no. We're just an organization. You know, stock was on the market all around recording.
William Grisham: (05:06)
Yes, I see.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:11)
If I hadn't been so crazy about making those pictures, I’d have quit a very wealthy man. The demand for it! That stuff didn't—Alright. That's not—I don't know what that,
William Grisham: (05:24)
Alright, fine.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:25)
Keep the library little while. And one thing, another, that picture game killed me.
William Grisham: (05:31)
What did you do after Ebony then?
Luther J. Pollard: (05:34)
After Ebony?
William Grisham: (05:34)
Aha.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:36)
Advertising
William Grisham: (05:37)
Went back. Went into advertising.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:40)
Why do you want? I don’t want you to tell a lot of stuff about it.
William Grisham: (05:45)
No, but I just think that's a great career. And did you—
Luther J. Pollard: (05:47)
Listen, let me tell you something. I'm originally an advertising man. And after Ebony, the latest part of advertising, I took up sales. I opened up the Chicago office of the interstate, June 90, newspapers, publishers representatives. And I was there for twenty-five years.
William Grisham: (06:25)
Interstate United Newspapers.
Luther J. Pollard: (06:27)
I opened up my—wait a minute. You got it there. And yeah, and I was there for about twenty-five years and I gave up that office when the company went out of business and came out here and I am still in the advertising business. That's all.
William Grisham: (06:48)
Do you—I understand that you work every day.
Luther J. Pollard (06:51)
Oh, I work. Yes.
William Grisham: (06:54)
That's marvelous.
Luther J. Pollard: (06:55)
I interview. I talk.
William Grisham: (06:59)
Now, let me ask you a question if—[break in tape] That's been missing. Yeah, go ahead. Say that again.
Luther J. Pollard: (07:09)
A man came to Chicago by the name of George [inaudible]. He had a radio show and he couldn't show because you had some rainy days. Selig came to [inaudible] and asked him to let him take his truth. We wanted to make a picture. And he took the whole crew and made a Western picture.
William Grisham: (07:59)
What year do you think that would have been?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:01)
Oh, that was before I was identified with—I don't know. I must have been 1906.
William Grisham: (08:15)
So that was before Bronco Billy.
Luther J. Pollard; (08:17)
Ah? Oh yes.
William Grisham: (08:22)
That was before Broncho Billy and Seelig. And his name was William. Was it William? Colonel William?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:24)
What I know is Sid Seelig. Selig. That's all I know. He was one of the moving picture patents organizers.
William Grisham: (08:33)
Right.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:34)
And he made the first serial.
William Grisham: (08:37)
The Adventures of Kathleen.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:39)
Huh?
William Grisham: (08:40)
The Adventures of Kathleen.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:42)
Yeah, that one.
William Grisham: (08:44)
Now was the where those adventures—some of them made in Chicago.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:46)
Ah, yes. They’re all made here.
William Grisham: (08:48)
With Kathleen Williams?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:53):
Yes. I don't know. I kept Adventures of Kathleen, and then there’s two of them. See you should make fire pictures, firings, and go into a fire. Those two things.
William Grisham: (09:10)
Now, he also made a picture in Rogers Park in1905, which was a melodrama called Tracked by the Bloodhounds. Did you ever hear anything like that?
Luther J. Pollard: (09:25)
Never heard of it.
William Grisham: (09:27)
That was in 1905. First Story Films.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:27)
I never heard of it. And that time I'd ever paid any attention to pitches. I think the first movie pitch I ever saw was the comedy stuff. You know, cartoons used to wind up [inaudible] houses with it.
William Grisham: (09:50)
They were called chasers.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:55)
Huh?
William Grisham: (09:56)
Chasers.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:58)
Well, the name of it was some kind of a feed. The Rabbit Feed. Yes. That's what that's about. The first one I ever saw. I think it was about 1903 or ‘04.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:13):
But I told you about the Sid Selig in Midwestern. He's a man.
William Grisham: (10:19)
And then later he hired—
Luther J. Pollard (10:22)
And he had them all. He had, you know—the Gloria Swenson is here. You ever hear of her?
William Grisham: (10:28)
Yes, she was—she's here.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:30)
She could tell you a whole lot about Selig, Wallace Berry and all that thing. I think she married Wallace Berry.
William Grisham: (10:39)
She did over—and she worked at Essanay. She worked at Essanay.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:43)
Ah, she worked with Selig first. Essanay comes along after that, after Selig.
William Grisham: (10:48)
Did you ever get over to see the Selig studios?
Luther J. Pollard: (10:52)
No.
William Grisham: (10:53)
I wonder what they were like.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:56)
Listen, I was away from my mechanical end of the business.
William Grisham: (11:00)
You were handling all of the business and—
Luther J. Pollard (11:04)
Well, I was the general manager.
William Grisham: (11:07)
Now you hired David and you, in other words, you saw these people and you hired them, and then you told them—
Luther J. Pollard: (11:15)
I never had anything to do with hiring the casts.
William Grisham: (11:18)
They hired the casts.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:21)
I never had anything to do with them.
William Grisham: (11:25)
But you had hired them to supervise.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:27)
Yes.
William Grisham: (11:30)
Okay, good. Now, did anybody from the east contact you? There was a man who was doing a book.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:32)
A man who?
William Grisham: (11:34)
Who is doing a book. And he wanted to write something about Ebony. Did he contact you at all or not?
Luther J. Pollard: (11:42)
What's his name?
William Grisham: (11:44)
He’s a teacher at one of the colleges, and I'll find it.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:48)
What college?
William Grisham: (11:49)
I don't know. I'll have to look it up. But I'm just wondering—nobody called you. Is that right? All right.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:55)
I’m through—I don't know. I really got to go drive the fog. Tired out.
—————
Speaker 3: (12:04)
And it also comes out on this. So people say, well, that's pretty great. And I know what you're thinking. He went through all this big around. You can go home and you can turn on your thousand watt projector and you're going to be like this big. What's so great about that. True. You can do this and you can take your projector with a thousand watt bulb outside, put a column meter on it, like say a telescope backwards, which was squeezed the light down a little tiny around the spot and send it down to Twain, proceeded to spread out. And maybe you could go down the street, maybe a mile, maybe a mile and a half, maybe even two miles and still see the remnants of that spot. It just grows bigger and bigger and bigger. Our little spot here as a measure out of approximately one milliwatt 1/1000 of a single watt, we could take our little spot, shoot it through a telescope, in other words, collimate it. We can go down the street with our little target, 10, 12, 14, 15 miles, all that out.
And there would be that little spot, just like you see it there because laser light will stay together. The Apollo 11 astronauts place, some mirrors on the moon. Scientist, then shine a laser beam to the moon and return it back to earth. Around the trip of approximately 480,000 miles. And that beam of light when it returned north had spread less than two miles across. So we can say for all practical purposes, then we can culminate our laser light, send it on its way and it will stay there. And the first question we usually get is what's the telephone company doing going around squeezing light. Well, we're not in the business of squeezing light. If you want to put multiple information on a beam, whether it's a or a wave, I should say, whether it's a sound wave, electrical wave, or radio wave, or a light wave, you must have a coherent light.
And the only way we know to generate a coherent beam of light is through our feedback mechanism called a laser. And we can take our little beam of light and we can modulate it. We can put sound on it and we can reflect it and send it to a receiver over there on the side and bring it back to our amplifiers. And you can hear a voice, come out over a little beam of light and we have a little telephone here, like, the kind that’ll certainly I hope that you have in your homes. Gentlemen here, If you don't give us a little long, count one to ten and then reverse.
Okay, thank you very much. Now you're see we can put a voice over our little beam of light. Of course you heard a lot of noise in there too. And the reason being that our little laser being put together, we just drop our mirrors in place. So as a result, it has multiple spots. And of course, when we modulate one, we modulate all and they interfere with one another. They cause noise. we amplify the voice. We amplify the noise. And you hear that noise. So rather than subject you to any more noise, we have to listen to enough of that as it is. We're going to get rid of our little homemade laser, and we're going to change to a commercial laser. That's designed just for the transmission of information. And we're going to send our little beam to a mirror here, to a mirror in the back of the room, right by the door.
And then we're going to bring it back over here and pick it up on the receiver right here. You can see our little spot coming back. Now we've started our beam out about the size of a quarter. You can't see it—can you—it doesn't come through. That's how we do that. So, you know, when it comes back this way, we tell you, of course it's the same size later. It is, believe me it's just that size one. And we could move that mirror back out there, another quarter of a block, half of block, a mile, wherever he wanted, when it came back, it would still be this size. And then we can take some music and we can put it out. And of course it goes to our laser to our mirror here back to the mirror back there.
Back there. We can cut it off here. When I walked in front of the beam, of course, that ends it. When I come over here and pick it up that ends it too. We can control because we use the entire slack transmit. As you see also when you walk in front of the beam never came out anywhere. We still have our five fingers and our five toes. which tells us that the laser when properly used is very, very safe. Safe to use.
Again, transmitting with the laser beam, putting music out over, it would be great. The children think this was the greatest thing that ever happened, but of course, business people like yourself, wouldn't be too happy with just music going out over a beam of light, we want it to carry all kinds of information. Of course we can put voice on our laser beam too. And again, we'll take our little telephone and we have a little card here. And again, I'm going to ask this gentleman here, if you he'll read to us and we can just sit this down here on the table, if you will read to us a little bit.
Speaker 4: (17:55)
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3: (17:58)
I know he couldn't pronounce that word. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (18:03)
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3: (18:17)
That's very great. Thank you very much. And we're going to give you a little certificate, makes you a member of [Inaudible] Society of Adventure. [Inaudible] who was spoken over a laser beam. And I think he deserves a hand for that. Thank you very, very much.
Speaker 4: (18:30)
Thank you.
Speaker 3: (18:31)
We'll fill that out after. So you see, then we can put music and we can put voice. And of course we can also put teletype in picture form and quantities are quite unbelievable. But before we do that, we would like to show you some of the other uses commercial uses of the laser beam. In this case, we're assuming the laser beam used to operate on diseases of the retinal blood vessels, which by the way, is one of the main causes of blanks. The beam is focused right through the lens of the eye and safely, and almost painlessly destroys the diseased blood vessels before they have a chance to burst. We're invited to watch this operation by the university. The very, very fascinating thing to watch and see a patient feels practically no pain whatsoever. In this case, you're seeing the laser beam used on the road. You've all seen that black rectangle on the side of freight cars with all of the different colored strips. There's a laser beam that's or I should say a laser that's reflecting it's made from a rotating eight sided mirror, it receives back a coded message depending upon the length and the combination of color script. As the cars pass in front of the beam, it receives the coded message and stores the information as the last car passes in the front of the beam, all of the information is automatically transmitted to a master computer.
In this case, you're going to see the laser beam use that in Western electric, the scoring, what we call thin film circuit. We're always looking for a better way to do a job and a cheaper way to do a job. These are filmed. These are circuits, excuse me, that are printed on glass. And we have no way of separating them efficiently until we found the laser beam. You'll notice a very bright light that you see. That is not the beam itself because this beam happens to be invisible. That is the glass of the class for us is at 1800 degrees centigrade. Yet. You'll see that technician pick that piece of glass up with his bare hand, as soon as it makes its last pass. And of course it's not about burning it. And then you can separate the circuits very easily by just snapping them apart. In this case a single laser beam used to gain measurements on the winging control surfaces of the 747 airplane. Because of its tremendous size, they were looking for a fast, efficient way to gain measurements and the laser beam gave them that answer. The laser beam can be guaranteed to have a deviation of less than five eighths of an inch per mile. And that came from the accuracy they had to have when getting measurements on the 747 airplane.
In this case, you're going to see the laser being used as a knife to operate on laboratory animals at the University of Cincinnati. Again we were invited to watch this operation at the University of Illinois. You'll notice I can bend it around the corner by using mirrors as a prism, actually, this is a misnomer. It's not a knife as such. It actually cauterizes as it cuts. So they say, and as I say, actually, that is not a true phrase because it actually burns or destroys, vaporizes the tissue as it moves along. So it's called leadless-bloodless? surgery. And hopefully in the very near future, they will be able to remove parts of kidneys, liver, and so on which they can't do now because of the patient would bleed to death. And hopefully in the very, very near future, they will have it ready on that type of an operation.
It's also been used in dentistry. We felt that we could remove cavities without any problems with the laser beam. Well, true we can, we can remove the cavity and it's totally painless, really found painless dentistry. However, we found that the enamel became quite hard. So somebody said, let's take an entirely different approach. We'll expose a child's teeth to the laser beam. As a child grows to adulthood that child will never know what it is to have a cavity better idea. We also found out that the enamel became so hard that you could snap your fingers and it would shatter. Like a piece of very fine glass or China. We said this in a high school, a couple of old one, six months ago, we said this in a high school group and a little girl sitting right down the front looked quite shook up and it didn't.
I really didn't pay too much attention to that until after the program. I started taking questions. And the first thing she asked was what happened to the child when we tried the experiment. Of course we assured her that there was no child, but of course there is an orangutan that runs around and all he does is gum banana. Now we also have tried the laser beam in the television industry and produced a piece of equipment that produced a very, very large picture on the wall, full of color, very high resolution. It runs somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000. They understand they operate all of an hour, an hour and a half sometimes at the top, along the seven to eight hours without needing a major repair. So at this point in time, of course it hasn't been a very great success, but it's being used in the building industry and in the steel industry and many, many other areas, actually too many for us to mention here today, but getting back to where we, why do we need this after all we're using radio.
Now we transmit it to 36,000 conversations on a single microwave beam. Why do we need the laser light? Well, in the United States today, we handle over 400 million telephone calls per day, and then add to that, all of the data in all of the television and all of the other transmission. And there will come a time in the very, very near future when data will outstrip the amount of telephone conversation. So we're going to have to have a larger highway to carry all of this information. And theoretically, a beam of light, such as we see right here, we could place 900 million conversations on a single laser beam. Let us show you how we can transmit from one side of our little set up here to the other using Teletrac. This is the same transmission as data. However, if we use data, you couldn't see anything. So we're going to use teletype so you can actually see it move from one side to the other. Our transmitters on this side, and the receiver is on this side. It has a little built in computer that tells me that it's ready to receive. If I punch, you'll see the little flag move which tells you, I don't know how to type. So let's go at the rate of about 100 words. [inaudible] And if i turn it up over here you’ll see that the transmitters continue to go
Now [inaudible] the transmitter is at that point in time. Now we can also transmit picture film over our beam of light. We're going to transmit from this instrument on this side. And the camera on this side will register on this screen, the camera on this machine, we're registered on this. And if you'll notice, we're not using any special, bright lights. And I don't see it move over there. When I move this one, you'll see it move over there. I get my hand in a way. Of course we lose it and you'll notice how these cameras are. The gentleman waving back there, which machine. And I can't find it. Well, number one, I think we're a little bit high here. Does that help it over there?
And you'll notice when we break the circuit and we lose it, it'll come back and it’ll adjust to the light in the room. It'll get bright, dark. And then finally it settles down from the light in the room automatically adjusting the camera. So of course then one of the things that everybody says as well say you're all set. The goal we have, or we have a picture phone. We have voice, we have music. What's keeping us from going well, we have a few problems. Number one, we can't send light through the air because any type of interference, smoke, dust, dirt, grain, snow, people, airplanes, birds, anything would interfere with it and break up the transmission. We originally tried to underground and thought about going underground through tubes what we call Gas lens proves very expensive almost well at this point in time, it's economically unfeasible really.
So now we have gone through what we call fiber optics and we can pull a fiber optic approximately the size of a human hair and pass a laser beam through it. And modulate approximately 1 million messages on 1 million conversations at one time on a single piece of glass, approximately the size of the human hair. And we feel we could funnel about 500 of them in a cable about an inch, inch and a half in diameter, 500 multiplied by a million. You've got an awful lot of conversation on a piece of cable, an inch, inch and a half in diameter. But then, what's the problem? Well, okay. You've all seen our construction trucks around the area. We're pulling cable from one place to another. You see these big pieces of cable going through the contract man goes down and what we call, man. I say that anymore. We used to call them manholes and of course the EOC has interfered now.
And we call them, they holes and they lows. And of course we have flying> blind? persons working in them. So a blind person, pulls a piece of cable from a they-hole to a them-hole. And then of course we join them together because we can only make them stay two or 300 feet or maybe a thousand or maybe even 2,000 feet in length. Can you imagine someone sitting down in this, they all are them all with the rain coming in cold and all the rest of it. And he's got two pieces of glass, approximately the size of a human hair and he's in there trying to put them. It can't make it because there can be no dust, no dirt, no bubbles, no nothing. they must be joined together perfectly. And at this point in time, we are working on a machine that will automatically join these two pieces of glass together.
And then of course we have a little problem with modulating and demodulating a million messages on a cable. Well, we are coming very, very close. And when the time comes that we have to have why we won't have with it ready so that there will be no lag and no loss of communication throughout our country or world. Now there's one other little item that we haven't talked about that was really result of the laser beam. And it's a brand new science, which possibly will be one of the most exciting sciences of the 20th century. Ray, would you give me a hand here? We had to set this up over on this side. And so we're going to move it out here now. Set this over here and I'll say it, I think you can see it without any trouble. [inaudible] quite a few years. You'll notice there is a telephone in there. You can look through the magnifying glass and see the keys. You see the magnifying glass. You can see the keys mag- If I look around behind me, behind the magnifying glass and see the keys without magnification. And of course there's no telephone there. Complete three dimensional photography without the use of a lens or camera that recreates an image of an object exactly as it was at any given moment in time, the science of photography.
So then we have shown you how we can put music on our beam of light. [inaudible] Now we can put pictures on there. and now we can talk to you. I want to thank you very much for inviting me, Thank you very much. [inaudible] If you have any questions about our services, about telephone company or a bottle program. I'll be more than happy to answer them. Now. I know we have just a couple of minutes, yes?
Speaker 5: (32:03)
Is this being used at Disney World? [inaudible]
Speaker 3 (32:07)
In most cases, no. I understand there is one holographic setup on. I don't know where it is. I've never seen, I've never been off to Disneyland. My son was trying to explain it. My wife and my son went out there and they were looking at it. And from his description, it's definitely not a hologram There are some, I understand that there's not the big convention when you can see all around. Now that I understand that there's not. Anyone else? Yes, sir.
Speaker 6: (32:40)
Does the modulation vary a lot from radio transmission?
Speaker 3: (32:45)
Yes. Number one, we're dealing with a very, very short, short wave. we have to have an entirely new way of doing it because of the tremendous number of conversation we want to put on a single thing, we would have to go to a pulse code modulation, which we can use with microwave, but it's almost a necessity. Well really at this point in time, it's the only way we know how to do it to get a minute of conversation. And then of course the amplification with picking up and the, and the changing too, and then bringing it back all has to go through light switches. So it makes it it's a whole new ball game. Yes , sir.
Speaker 7: (33:27)
Like frequencies of the spectrum and the non-light that, but a lot less susceptible than the smoke. Uh, and so on.
Speaker 3: (33:37)
Correct. The question was, aren't there other wave lengths that are beyond, above or below the light spectrum, which are less susceptible, to dust and storm and so on. That is true, but some of those are susceptible to nitrogen, oxygen, water, and so on. So each one that you gain something else that's in the air interferes with it. At this point in time, we haven't found a wave that will go through until we get down into the radio, the microwave spectrum and so on. Right, right back from the very, very short, short wave, light wave, we run into trouble. Gentlemen, I know that we run out of time. We'll be here for a while. Happy to answer any questions that you might have. We'll leave this with you can come up and look at it again. Thanks so much for inviting us. Thank you.
George Lewis. I don't know what that is. Sam Jackson, George Lewis is the waiter.
William Grisham: (00:15)
Is the waiter. Sam Jackson is the man with the—
Luther J. Pollard: (00:24)
Man on the left. You don’t know who he is though.
William Grisham: (00:29)
Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (00:46)
I can't identify—I need a pictures from this. That's Sam Jackson on the end.
William Grisham: (00:58)
On the end, okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:04)
And that would—that was Sam Williams. I may be fogged up as half, but I think that’s Sam. I know his first name is Sam.
William Grisham: (01:30)
Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:40)
Picture the same as the one is as bad.
William Grisham: (01:42)
That's the same as that one.
Luther J. Pollard: (01:43)
Ah?
William Grisham: (01:46)
That’s the same as that one. I don’t know. Yeah. And then I don't know who these people are. Do you have any idea?
Luther J. Pollard: (01:55)
Ahhhh We see. So that’s David [inaudible]? This is a man that came from New York. Charles David left. First left. Heath, director.
William Grisham: (02:00)
Heath?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:02)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (02:05)
He was a director?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:08)
He's a director. He's the man that put the Polish and the pictures. He’s a New York man.
William Grisham: (02:12)
He came in from New York.
Luther J. Pollard (02:16):
I don't know who that— Oh, the third one is Bob. He's my publicity man. Bob Horner
William Grisham (02:30)
H O R N E R. Publicity.
Luther J. Pollard: (02:32)
Bob Horner. Top row. Fetty camera.
William Grisham (02:42)
Fetty?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:43)
Yeah.
William Grisham: (02:44)
How do you spell that?
Luther J. Pollard: (02:46)
F.E.Double T. Y. And the other fellow is Tyler Maker at the top. That's—those are the fellas that made the pictures. Bob Horner.
William Grisham: (03:02)
was publicity. And then it's 10.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:30)
This is Sam Williams.
William Grisham: (03:32)
Sam Williams again. Okay.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:39)
Right here on this one. It looks to me like the Porter's Pritchard from reporter, but I can't tell.
William Grisham: (03:41)
It's Sam Williams now. Okay. That's it.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:43)
Is that all of them?
William Grisham: ()3:45)
Yeah. And these are duplicates, so I guess it goes here.
Luther J. Pollard: (03:51)
You know, I would finish shooting Steelers over that
William Grisham: (03:56)
yeah. Um, tell me who wrote the, um, the scenarios, this script,
Luther J. Pollard: (04:04)
Oh I don't know something. We've got some nice stories. I don't know.
Luther J. Pollard: (04:12):
I forgot that I never had anything to do with this script.
William Grisham (4:20)
Mhm. Now, when you farmed the stock company, did you have to do a lot of— in other words, you'd have to make presentations to different people and so on or not? How was that done?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:31)
Presentations?
William Grisham: (04:33)
By that I mean how did you set up, you know—was it a difficult chore to get the company going? That's what I was trying to figure out, you know?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:43)
What?
William Grisham: (04:45)
Well, let me explain that. Was it a stock? People could buy stock. That's how you got the car?
Luther J. Pollard: (04:53)
I don’t—I wouldn't mention that.
William Grisham: (04:56)
Alright, I won’t.
Luther J. Pollard: (04:57)
Oh No, no. We're just an organization. You know, stock was on the market all around recording.
William Grisham: (05:06)
Yes, I see.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:11)
If I hadn't been so crazy about making those pictures, I’d have quit a very wealthy man. The demand for it! That stuff didn't—Alright. That's not—I don't know what that,
William Grisham: (05:24)
Alright, fine.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:25)
Keep the library little while. And one thing, another, that picture game killed me.
William Grisham: (05:31)
What did you do after Ebony then?
Luther J. Pollard: (05:34)
After Ebony?
William Grisham: (05:34)
Aha.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:36)
Advertising
William Grisham: (05:37)
Went back. Went into advertising.
Luther J. Pollard: (05:40)
Why do you want? I don’t want you to tell a lot of stuff about it.
William Grisham: (05:45)
No, but I just think that's a great career. And did you—
Luther J. Pollard: (05:47)
Listen, let me tell you something. I'm originally an advertising man. And after Ebony, the latest part of advertising, I took up sales. I opened up the Chicago office of the interstate, June 90, newspapers, publishers representatives. And I was there for twenty-five years.
William Grisham: (06:25)
Interstate United Newspapers.
Luther J. Pollard: (06:27)
I opened up my—wait a minute. You got it there. And yeah, and I was there for about twenty-five years and I gave up that office when the company went out of business and came out here and I am still in the advertising business. That's all.
William Grisham: (06:48)
Do you—I understand that you work every day.
Luther J. Pollard (06:51)
Oh, I work. Yes.
William Grisham: (06:54)
That's marvelous.
Luther J. Pollard: (06:55)
I interview. I talk.
William Grisham: (06:59)
Now, let me ask you a question if—[break in tape] That's been missing. Yeah, go ahead. Say that again.
Luther J. Pollard: (07:09)
A man came to Chicago by the name of George [inaudible]. He had a radio show and he couldn't show because you had some rainy days. Selig came to [inaudible] and asked him to let him take his truth. We wanted to make a picture. And he took the whole crew and made a Western picture.
William Grisham: (07:59)
What year do you think that would have been?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:01)
Oh, that was before I was identified with—I don't know. I must have been 1906.
William Grisham: (08:15)
So that was before Bronco Billy.
Luther J. Pollard; (08:17)
Ah? Oh yes.
William Grisham: (08:22)
That was before Broncho Billy and Seelig. And his name was William. Was it William? Colonel William?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:24)
What I know is Sid Seelig. Selig. That's all I know. He was one of the moving picture patents organizers.
William Grisham: (08:33)
Right.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:34)
And he made the first serial.
William Grisham: (08:37)
The Adventures of Kathleen.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:39)
Huh?
William Grisham: (08:40)
The Adventures of Kathleen.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:42)
Yeah, that one.
William Grisham: (08:44)
Now was the where those adventures—some of them made in Chicago.
Luther J. Pollard: (08:46)
Ah, yes. They’re all made here.
William Grisham: (08:48)
With Kathleen Williams?
Luther J. Pollard: (08:53):
Yes. I don't know. I kept Adventures of Kathleen, and then there’s two of them. See you should make fire pictures, firings, and go into a fire. Those two things.
William Grisham: (09:10)
Now, he also made a picture in Rogers Park in1905, which was a melodrama called Tracked by the Bloodhounds. Did you ever hear anything like that?
Luther J. Pollard: (09:25)
Never heard of it.
William Grisham: (09:27)
That was in 1905. First Story Films.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:27)
I never heard of it. And that time I'd ever paid any attention to pitches. I think the first movie pitch I ever saw was the comedy stuff. You know, cartoons used to wind up [inaudible] houses with it.
William Grisham: (09:50)
They were called chasers.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:55)
Huh?
William Grisham: (09:56)
Chasers.
Luther J. Pollard: (09:58)
Well, the name of it was some kind of a feed. The Rabbit Feed. Yes. That's what that's about. The first one I ever saw. I think it was about 1903 or ‘04.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:13):
But I told you about the Sid Selig in Midwestern. He's a man.
William Grisham: (10:19)
And then later he hired—
Luther J. Pollard (10:22)
And he had them all. He had, you know—the Gloria Swenson is here. You ever hear of her?
William Grisham: (10:28)
Yes, she was—she's here.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:30)
She could tell you a whole lot about Selig, Wallace Berry and all that thing. I think she married Wallace Berry.
William Grisham: (10:39)
She did over—and she worked at Essanay. She worked at Essanay.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:43)
Ah, she worked with Selig first. Essanay comes along after that, after Selig.
William Grisham: (10:48)
Did you ever get over to see the Selig studios?
Luther J. Pollard: (10:52)
No.
William Grisham: (10:53)
I wonder what they were like.
Luther J. Pollard: (10:56)
Listen, I was away from my mechanical end of the business.
William Grisham: (11:00)
You were handling all of the business and—
Luther J. Pollard (11:04)
Well, I was the general manager.
William Grisham: (11:07)
Now you hired David and you, in other words, you saw these people and you hired them, and then you told them—
Luther J. Pollard: (11:15)
I never had anything to do with hiring the casts.
William Grisham: (11:18)
They hired the casts.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:21)
I never had anything to do with them.
William Grisham: (11:25)
But you had hired them to supervise.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:27)
Yes.
William Grisham: (11:30)
Okay, good. Now, did anybody from the east contact you? There was a man who was doing a book.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:32)
A man who?
William Grisham: (11:34)
Who is doing a book. And he wanted to write something about Ebony. Did he contact you at all or not?
Luther J. Pollard: (11:42)
What's his name?
William Grisham: (11:44)
He’s a teacher at one of the colleges, and I'll find it.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:48)
What college?
William Grisham: (11:49)
I don't know. I'll have to look it up. But I'm just wondering—nobody called you. Is that right? All right.
Luther J. Pollard: (11:55)
I’m through—I don't know. I really got to go drive the fog. Tired out.
—————
Speaker 3: (12:04)
And it also comes out on this. So people say, well, that's pretty great. And I know what you're thinking. He went through all this big around. You can go home and you can turn on your thousand watt projector and you're going to be like this big. What's so great about that. True. You can do this and you can take your projector with a thousand watt bulb outside, put a column meter on it, like say a telescope backwards, which was squeezed the light down a little tiny around the spot and send it down to Twain, proceeded to spread out. And maybe you could go down the street, maybe a mile, maybe a mile and a half, maybe even two miles and still see the remnants of that spot. It just grows bigger and bigger and bigger. Our little spot here as a measure out of approximately one milliwatt 1/1000 of a single watt, we could take our little spot, shoot it through a telescope, in other words, collimate it. We can go down the street with our little target, 10, 12, 14, 15 miles, all that out.
And there would be that little spot, just like you see it there because laser light will stay together. The Apollo 11 astronauts place, some mirrors on the moon. Scientist, then shine a laser beam to the moon and return it back to earth. Around the trip of approximately 480,000 miles. And that beam of light when it returned north had spread less than two miles across. So we can say for all practical purposes, then we can culminate our laser light, send it on its way and it will stay there. And the first question we usually get is what's the telephone company doing going around squeezing light. Well, we're not in the business of squeezing light. If you want to put multiple information on a beam, whether it's a or a wave, I should say, whether it's a sound wave, electrical wave, or radio wave, or a light wave, you must have a coherent light.
And the only way we know to generate a coherent beam of light is through our feedback mechanism called a laser. And we can take our little beam of light and we can modulate it. We can put sound on it and we can reflect it and send it to a receiver over there on the side and bring it back to our amplifiers. And you can hear a voice, come out over a little beam of light and we have a little telephone here, like, the kind that’ll certainly I hope that you have in your homes. Gentlemen here, If you don't give us a little long, count one to ten and then reverse.
Okay, thank you very much. Now you're see we can put a voice over our little beam of light. Of course you heard a lot of noise in there too. And the reason being that our little laser being put together, we just drop our mirrors in place. So as a result, it has multiple spots. And of course, when we modulate one, we modulate all and they interfere with one another. They cause noise. we amplify the voice. We amplify the noise. And you hear that noise. So rather than subject you to any more noise, we have to listen to enough of that as it is. We're going to get rid of our little homemade laser, and we're going to change to a commercial laser. That's designed just for the transmission of information. And we're going to send our little beam to a mirror here, to a mirror in the back of the room, right by the door.
And then we're going to bring it back over here and pick it up on the receiver right here. You can see our little spot coming back. Now we've started our beam out about the size of a quarter. You can't see it—can you—it doesn't come through. That's how we do that. So, you know, when it comes back this way, we tell you, of course it's the same size later. It is, believe me it's just that size one. And we could move that mirror back out there, another quarter of a block, half of block, a mile, wherever he wanted, when it came back, it would still be this size. And then we can take some music and we can put it out. And of course it goes to our laser to our mirror here back to the mirror back there.
Back there. We can cut it off here. When I walked in front of the beam, of course, that ends it. When I come over here and pick it up that ends it too. We can control because we use the entire slack transmit. As you see also when you walk in front of the beam never came out anywhere. We still have our five fingers and our five toes. which tells us that the laser when properly used is very, very safe. Safe to use.
Again, transmitting with the laser beam, putting music out over, it would be great. The children think this was the greatest thing that ever happened, but of course, business people like yourself, wouldn't be too happy with just music going out over a beam of light, we want it to carry all kinds of information. Of course we can put voice on our laser beam too. And again, we'll take our little telephone and we have a little card here. And again, I'm going to ask this gentleman here, if you he'll read to us and we can just sit this down here on the table, if you will read to us a little bit.
Speaker 4: (17:55)
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3: (17:58)
I know he couldn't pronounce that word. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (18:03)
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3: (18:17)
That's very great. Thank you very much. And we're going to give you a little certificate, makes you a member of [Inaudible] Society of Adventure. [Inaudible] who was spoken over a laser beam. And I think he deserves a hand for that. Thank you very, very much.
Speaker 4: (18:30)
Thank you.
Speaker 3: (18:31)
We'll fill that out after. So you see, then we can put music and we can put voice. And of course we can also put teletype in picture form and quantities are quite unbelievable. But before we do that, we would like to show you some of the other uses commercial uses of the laser beam. In this case, we're assuming the laser beam used to operate on diseases of the retinal blood vessels, which by the way, is one of the main causes of blanks. The beam is focused right through the lens of the eye and safely, and almost painlessly destroys the diseased blood vessels before they have a chance to burst. We're invited to watch this operation by the university. The very, very fascinating thing to watch and see a patient feels practically no pain whatsoever. In this case, you're seeing the laser beam used on the road. You've all seen that black rectangle on the side of freight cars with all of the different colored strips. There's a laser beam that's or I should say a laser that's reflecting it's made from a rotating eight sided mirror, it receives back a coded message depending upon the length and the combination of color script. As the cars pass in front of the beam, it receives the coded message and stores the information as the last car passes in the front of the beam, all of the information is automatically transmitted to a master computer.
In this case, you're going to see the laser beam use that in Western electric, the scoring, what we call thin film circuit. We're always looking for a better way to do a job and a cheaper way to do a job. These are filmed. These are circuits, excuse me, that are printed on glass. And we have no way of separating them efficiently until we found the laser beam. You'll notice a very bright light that you see. That is not the beam itself because this beam happens to be invisible. That is the glass of the class for us is at 1800 degrees centigrade. Yet. You'll see that technician pick that piece of glass up with his bare hand, as soon as it makes its last pass. And of course it's not about burning it. And then you can separate the circuits very easily by just snapping them apart. In this case a single laser beam used to gain measurements on the winging control surfaces of the 747 airplane. Because of its tremendous size, they were looking for a fast, efficient way to gain measurements and the laser beam gave them that answer. The laser beam can be guaranteed to have a deviation of less than five eighths of an inch per mile. And that came from the accuracy they had to have when getting measurements on the 747 airplane.
In this case, you're going to see the laser being used as a knife to operate on laboratory animals at the University of Cincinnati. Again we were invited to watch this operation at the University of Illinois. You'll notice I can bend it around the corner by using mirrors as a prism, actually, this is a misnomer. It's not a knife as such. It actually cauterizes as it cuts. So they say, and as I say, actually, that is not a true phrase because it actually burns or destroys, vaporizes the tissue as it moves along. So it's called leadless-bloodless? surgery. And hopefully in the very near future, they will be able to remove parts of kidneys, liver, and so on which they can't do now because of the patient would bleed to death. And hopefully in the very, very near future, they will have it ready on that type of an operation.
It's also been used in dentistry. We felt that we could remove cavities without any problems with the laser beam. Well, true we can, we can remove the cavity and it's totally painless, really found painless dentistry. However, we found that the enamel became quite hard. So somebody said, let's take an entirely different approach. We'll expose a child's teeth to the laser beam. As a child grows to adulthood that child will never know what it is to have a cavity better idea. We also found out that the enamel became so hard that you could snap your fingers and it would shatter. Like a piece of very fine glass or China. We said this in a high school, a couple of old one, six months ago, we said this in a high school group and a little girl sitting right down the front looked quite shook up and it didn't.
I really didn't pay too much attention to that until after the program. I started taking questions. And the first thing she asked was what happened to the child when we tried the experiment. Of course we assured her that there was no child, but of course there is an orangutan that runs around and all he does is gum banana. Now we also have tried the laser beam in the television industry and produced a piece of equipment that produced a very, very large picture on the wall, full of color, very high resolution. It runs somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000. They understand they operate all of an hour, an hour and a half sometimes at the top, along the seven to eight hours without needing a major repair. So at this point in time, of course it hasn't been a very great success, but it's being used in the building industry and in the steel industry and many, many other areas, actually too many for us to mention here today, but getting back to where we, why do we need this after all we're using radio.
Now we transmit it to 36,000 conversations on a single microwave beam. Why do we need the laser light? Well, in the United States today, we handle over 400 million telephone calls per day, and then add to that, all of the data in all of the television and all of the other transmission. And there will come a time in the very, very near future when data will outstrip the amount of telephone conversation. So we're going to have to have a larger highway to carry all of this information. And theoretically, a beam of light, such as we see right here, we could place 900 million conversations on a single laser beam. Let us show you how we can transmit from one side of our little set up here to the other using Teletrac. This is the same transmission as data. However, if we use data, you couldn't see anything. So we're going to use teletype so you can actually see it move from one side to the other. Our transmitters on this side, and the receiver is on this side. It has a little built in computer that tells me that it's ready to receive. If I punch, you'll see the little flag move which tells you, I don't know how to type. So let's go at the rate of about 100 words. [inaudible] And if i turn it up over here you’ll see that the transmitters continue to go
Now [inaudible] the transmitter is at that point in time. Now we can also transmit picture film over our beam of light. We're going to transmit from this instrument on this side. And the camera on this side will register on this screen, the camera on this machine, we're registered on this. And if you'll notice, we're not using any special, bright lights. And I don't see it move over there. When I move this one, you'll see it move over there. I get my hand in a way. Of course we lose it and you'll notice how these cameras are. The gentleman waving back there, which machine. And I can't find it. Well, number one, I think we're a little bit high here. Does that help it over there?
And you'll notice when we break the circuit and we lose it, it'll come back and it’ll adjust to the light in the room. It'll get bright, dark. And then finally it settles down from the light in the room automatically adjusting the camera. So of course then one of the things that everybody says as well say you're all set. The goal we have, or we have a picture phone. We have voice, we have music. What's keeping us from going well, we have a few problems. Number one, we can't send light through the air because any type of interference, smoke, dust, dirt, grain, snow, people, airplanes, birds, anything would interfere with it and break up the transmission. We originally tried to underground and thought about going underground through tubes what we call Gas lens proves very expensive almost well at this point in time, it's economically unfeasible really.
So now we have gone through what we call fiber optics and we can pull a fiber optic approximately the size of a human hair and pass a laser beam through it. And modulate approximately 1 million messages on 1 million conversations at one time on a single piece of glass, approximately the size of the human hair. And we feel we could funnel about 500 of them in a cable about an inch, inch and a half in diameter, 500 multiplied by a million. You've got an awful lot of conversation on a piece of cable, an inch, inch and a half in diameter. But then, what's the problem? Well, okay. You've all seen our construction trucks around the area. We're pulling cable from one place to another. You see these big pieces of cable going through the contract man goes down and what we call, man. I say that anymore. We used to call them manholes and of course the EOC has interfered now.
And we call them, they holes and they lows. And of course we have flying> blind? persons working in them. So a blind person, pulls a piece of cable from a they-hole to a them-hole. And then of course we join them together because we can only make them stay two or 300 feet or maybe a thousand or maybe even 2,000 feet in length. Can you imagine someone sitting down in this, they all are them all with the rain coming in cold and all the rest of it. And he's got two pieces of glass, approximately the size of a human hair and he's in there trying to put them. It can't make it because there can be no dust, no dirt, no bubbles, no nothing. they must be joined together perfectly. And at this point in time, we are working on a machine that will automatically join these two pieces of glass together.
And then of course we have a little problem with modulating and demodulating a million messages on a cable. Well, we are coming very, very close. And when the time comes that we have to have why we won't have with it ready so that there will be no lag and no loss of communication throughout our country or world. Now there's one other little item that we haven't talked about that was really result of the laser beam. And it's a brand new science, which possibly will be one of the most exciting sciences of the 20th century. Ray, would you give me a hand here? We had to set this up over on this side. And so we're going to move it out here now. Set this over here and I'll say it, I think you can see it without any trouble. [inaudible] quite a few years. You'll notice there is a telephone in there. You can look through the magnifying glass and see the keys. You see the magnifying glass. You can see the keys mag- If I look around behind me, behind the magnifying glass and see the keys without magnification. And of course there's no telephone there. Complete three dimensional photography without the use of a lens or camera that recreates an image of an object exactly as it was at any given moment in time, the science of photography.
So then we have shown you how we can put music on our beam of light. [inaudible] Now we can put pictures on there. and now we can talk to you. I want to thank you very much for inviting me, Thank you very much. [inaudible] If you have any questions about our services, about telephone company or a bottle program. I'll be more than happy to answer them. Now. I know we have just a couple of minutes, yes?
Speaker 5: (32:03)
Is this being used at Disney World? [inaudible]
Speaker 3 (32:07)
In most cases, no. I understand there is one holographic setup on. I don't know where it is. I've never seen, I've never been off to Disneyland. My son was trying to explain it. My wife and my son went out there and they were looking at it. And from his description, it's definitely not a hologram There are some, I understand that there's not the big convention when you can see all around. Now that I understand that there's not. Anyone else? Yes, sir.
Speaker 6: (32:40)
Does the modulation vary a lot from radio transmission?
Speaker 3: (32:45)
Yes. Number one, we're dealing with a very, very short, short wave. we have to have an entirely new way of doing it because of the tremendous number of conversation we want to put on a single thing, we would have to go to a pulse code modulation, which we can use with microwave, but it's almost a necessity. Well really at this point in time, it's the only way we know how to do it to get a minute of conversation. And then of course the amplification with picking up and the, and the changing too, and then bringing it back all has to go through light switches. So it makes it it's a whole new ball game. Yes , sir.
Speaker 7: (33:27)
Like frequencies of the spectrum and the non-light that, but a lot less susceptible than the smoke. Uh, and so on.
Speaker 3: (33:37)
Correct. The question was, aren't there other wave lengths that are beyond, above or below the light spectrum, which are less susceptible, to dust and storm and so on. That is true, but some of those are susceptible to nitrogen, oxygen, water, and so on. So each one that you gain something else that's in the air interferes with it. At this point in time, we haven't found a wave that will go through until we get down into the radio, the microwave spectrum and so on. Right, right back from the very, very short, short wave, light wave, we run into trouble. Gentlemen, I know that we run out of time. We'll be here for a while. Happy to answer any questions that you might have. We'll leave this with you can come up and look at it again. Thanks so much for inviting us. Thank you.
Language Of Materials
English
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Format/Extent
Cassette Tape ➜ C120
Genre
Form
Subject
Related Places
Participants And Performers
Grisham, William Franklin (is interviewer)
Pollard, Luther J. (is interviewee)
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