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Preface
Within the last two decades the term 16-mm has become something more than the mere designation of a film width ; it is now almost symbolic of all non-theatrical films. With little fanfare, the 16-mm film — which may be loosely called the film of fact — was catapulted into the leading position in the United States as a consumer of raw stock because of its use as a medium of teaching, training, and persuading in the same World War that proved the 35-mm film — the film of fancy — so valuable to the military and civilian populations in the maintenance of morale.
At the turn of the period about two decades ago, the entertainment motion picture industry was in the process of a technological revolution — the introduction of sound. Sound was unfamiliar and costly ; its reception in the industry was mixed. Some firms gambled their all on it : its failure would wipe them out, its success would be their success. Others, seeing the mad rush of the public to their competitor's box office for pictures that talked, embraced it but said publicly that sound was a fad whose disappearance would be as rapid as its rise had been meteoric. Still others felt that sound would never acquire public acceptance ; they installed it only when the signs became all too evident that the earnings future of the silent films stored on their shelves was very dim indeed. Some others just died. It was in such an environment that 16-mm as a vital force was born.
During the first decade, at the time when budgets were minute according to present day standards, and obstacles were seemingly insurmountable, the groundwork of the 16-mm film as it is known today was laid. It was during this period too that 16-mm sound recording equipment and 16-mm sound projectors began to be a factor to be reckoned with in the photographic market, due not so much to their accomplishments, but to their potentialities. Some viewed the growing baby with alarm, and shunned it as a dangerous potential competitor for the public 's time and purse ; a very few felt that it should be watched — much as one might watch the approach of an inevitable tornado that would leave a wide path of destruction in its wake. Others ignored it.