Last winter, a New York theater exhibited something new.

It is a racecourse in the room.
Here is what this ingenious invention
consists of.

A mechanic has put into practice the idea of ​​itinerant ways, with the difference that, instead of aiming to accelerate the progress of the person who uses them, the mechanism, in this particular case, tends to contrary, to annihilate the effect of his efforts to move forward.

This plot was built for a play whose main stage is a galloping race in which horses, perfectly alive, are stimulated by very real shots of spurs and whip, to the great enthusiasm of the spectators.

The turf (by metaphor, turf meaning turf) is hidden under their feet and tends to bring them back; all their velocity serves only to overcome this current and to maintain them in one and the same point; the backdrop of the scenery unfolds itself in the opposite direction of the horse walk, with a speed of 500 meters per minute; the length of this canvas is nearly 30 meters; the foreground that hides only the feet of the horses is driven with a much slower speed; As a result, spectators perceive the impression of a real race on a circular racetrack of which they would occupy the center.

To complete the illusion, a fan drives back the dust raised by the feet of the horses.
The soil, the landscape, the air itself, flee behind them.
In the face of such a spectacle, any good Anglo-Saxon is immediately overexcited and its expansion is manifested by cries and gestures the most varied.

This system is based on a very simple principle.
The floor of the stage is replaced by a number of vast rings or endless chains, formed of slices of compressed paper, stretched over a series of rollers or idle pulleys. These chains are something similar to swimming belts.

Each horse gallops on one of these tracks, which a transmission system allows to increase or slow down the speed, so as to give advance to this or that horse.
The whole thing was operated in the theater in question by two electric motors of three horses; each track weighed about 1,500 kilograms and could support 4,000.

The illusion was such that the spectators rose from their seats, shouting encouragement to the favorite, while the spectators waved handkerchiefs and fans.