He did more than that. He revealed the potential value of the ``cut'' as the basic technique in the art of the film. Cutting, of course, takes place automatically in the creation of a film. The meaning of the word is quite physical, to begin with. The physical film is cut with a knife at the end of one complete sequence, and the cut edge is joined physically, by cement, to the cut edge of the beginning of the next sequence. If, as a home movie maker, you shoot the inevitable footage of your child taking its first steps, you have merely recorded an historical event. If, in preparing that shot for the inevitable showing to your friends, you interrupt the sequence to paste in a few frames of the child's grandmother watching this event, you have begun to be an artist in film; you are employing the basic technique of film; you are cutting.

This is what Porter did. As the robbers leave the looted train, the film suddenly cuts back to the station, where the telegrapher's little daughter arrives with her father's dinner pail only to find him bound on the floor. She dashes around in alarm. The two events are taking place at the same time. Time and space have both become cinematic. We leap from event to event -- including the formation of the posse -- even though the events, in ``reality'' are taking place not in sequence but simultaneously, and not near each other but at a considerable distance.