As Seen Through a Telescope (AKA: The Professor and His Field Glass) is a 1900

1900 in film

The year 1900 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Reulos, Goudeau & Co. invent Mirographe, a 21 mm amateur format.* The Lumiere Brothers premiere their new Lumiere Wide format for the 1900 World Fair...

 British short

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

  silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

, directed by George Albert Smith

George Albert Smith (inventor)

George Albert Smith was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer, inventor, and one of the pioneers of British cinema, who is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short-films from 1897-1903 which pioneered film...

, featuring an eldrly gentleman getting a glimpse of a woman's ankle through a telescope. The three-shot comedy, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandma's Reading Glass

Grandma's Reading Glass

Grandma's Reading Glass is a 1900 British short silent drama film, directed by George Albert Smith, featuring a young Willy who borrows a huge magnifying glass to focus on various objects, which was shot to demonstrate the new technique of close-up...

(1900)," and although, "the editing is unsophisticated, the film does at least show a very early example of how to make use of point-of-view close-ups in the context of a coherent narrative (which is this film's main advance on Grandma's Reading Glass)." "Smith's experiments with editing," Brooke concludes, "were ahead of most contemporary film-makers, and in retrospect it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as we now understand it."
The film was shot in Furze Hill, Hove, England outside the entrance to St. Ann's Well Gardens

St. Ann's Well Gardens, Hove

St. Ann's Well Gardens is a park in Hove, East Sussex about half a mile from the shore. The park is renowned for its chalybeate spring, which is now named St. Ann's Well....

, where Smith had his studio.
An old gentleman is shown on a village street, looking for something through a field glass.