GET A CLUE!

September 21, 2010

"Mystery Night in the Library" was a success. Each student in attendance qualified by reading a mystery book. We played Clue, ate 18 giant pizzas, 5 gallons of popcorn and a bushel of apples. We watched a power point presentation on The Invention of Hugo Cabret and learned all about the world of automata. We had 75 students and parents participate.

What do the Lumiers Brothers, George Meilles, Maillardet, clocks, trains, magic and automata have to do with the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret? Read it and find out.

The Lumiere Brothers were pioneers in the movie making industry. They didn't believe that it would ever become popular.

The first motion picture camera

This picture is from a movie made by the Lumiere Brothers. People in the audience were so shocked at seeing a train coming toward them that they screamed and ran from the theatre.

George Melies, the father of special effects in movies.

From the movie, A Trip to the Moon

People were amazed by this movie

Maillardet used his knowledge of precision watch making to produce some of the first automata

An automaton

These are pictures produced by the rebuilt automaton at the Franklin Institute.

This is Brian Selznick, author and illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. His beautiful artwork, done with a charcoal pencil, won him the Caldecott Award for the best picture book in 2007

This is the automaton that was given to the Franklin Institute in Philidelphia in 1928. It had been in a fire and was delivered in pieces. They carefully reconstructed it and to their amazement the automaton could write three letters and draw seven pictures. They had no idea who had originally built this machine. Imagine their delight when the automaton solved the mystery for them. At the end of his letter he wrote... " Written by the automaton made by Maillardet."

WATCH the You Tube clip on the right hand side of the page.