Reviews for Collins Illustrated Guide to Singapore

The average rating for Collins Illustrated Guide to Singapore based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-19 00:00:00 Jason Jackson I think this book can best be taken as a tribute to an uncredited inventor of motion-picture technology. The mystery of his disappearance on the eve of his trip home to New York to press for a new, updated patent still remains unsolved, tho. I wish I could say that Mr. Rawlence ties up all the loose ends neatly, but I guess that work remains to be attended to by another researcher. There are many threads of the story to relate to the reader. The main one is the work Mr Le Prince did on devising machines to photograph motion and another machine to project the developed film. This work appears to have been doomed to fail because a sturdy celluloid film did not become available until late 1889. But there were many inventors who made progress in solving the technical challenges of motion pictures, and Mr Le Prince deserves his due. The disappearance of Mr Le Prince is another thread that remains unsolved, since the author was unable to track down a body or any remains that might have been our subject. The author did, I feel, successfully impeach the reputation of Thomas Edison, who made such extravagant claims to invent both the telephone and the movie camera. The phone he invented is more correctly seen as the ancestor of the office dictaphone. The movie camera was largely the work of his assistant, William Dickson, for the kinetoscope. And the projector was entirely the work of Armat, as proved by the letter sent by Edison's lawyer pressing Armat to allow Edison to attach his name to the machine. Mr Le Prince could possibly have pressed on with his work if his mother's estate could have been settled in a more timely fashion, but his brother was unable to force it to a conclusion. That thousand pounds would have come in very handy in settling outstanding bills of over 600 pounds to a major underwriter. The author conveys suspicion that the brother could have usurped his inheritance, but does not investigate the brother's financial situation. It could be that the brother did indeed usurp Augustin's share. Or perhaps he felt that Augustin had already borrowed against his share while the parents were still alive. Or perhaps the brother felt that Augustin was a ne'er-do-well who had wasted his time on a pipe dream, instead of applying himself steadily to a flourishing career in the arts. But none of that justifies stiffing him out of his inheritance. Augustin Le Prince's invention and disappearance remain an enigma. As is so often the case in stories about the glitzy world of film, justice and due credit elude those who chase a dream.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-26 00:00:00 Ave Vale It was very poorly written. The story jumped from time period to time period and from author to subject without warning. It was pretty confusing and hard to stick with. There was a lot of information on patent litigations and camera builds but I feel like it wasn't necessary to the story. Unless you are really into the inner workings of cameras or the legal system, I would just read the Wikipedia page on this subject rather than go through this book.