Business screen magazine (1946)

iiOOUND SLIDEFILM is finished! Its ^ through! The joint meeting of the military and industry just decreed that there would be no more sound slidet'ihii," This is the first thought that flashed into my head when Lon Gregory asked me to get together this paper on the future of sound filmstrip (sound slidefilm). Startling! It certainly shook me! When Ott Coelln told me this, he was reporting the conclusions of a joint Washington meeting of the top audio-visual authorities of the military and industry. In 1947. when he said it, they were practically the only users of sound slidefilm, and sound slidefilm was my only source of bread and butter. That was 1947. Now, as every good hindsighter knows, there are hundreds of times more sound filmstrip projectors and thousands more titles. And, since Howard Turner's standards committee switched the name to 'Sound Filmstrip" only us old hands refer to the medium as "Sound Slidefilm" like some old timey pilot referring to "The Aid Corps." So what is the future of sound filmstrip? I PREDICT: As a Libra probing the precession of the equinoxes, I see Battery Liberating Portability. I see Signal Control in conjunction with Programming. I see endless Loop maledicting Rewind. I see AutoPause prcdicatin'j Response. I see SynchLock in juxtaposition with Cart-Lock. Self Training and Automated Selling are in the House of Cartridge Load. All Siens are in phase foreshowing Expansion. Still Pictures and Recorded Sound is in the ascendant. This is the beginning of the Age of Sound Filmstrip .... OK. you skeptics. Back on the ground! From the Celestial to the Mundane. They is them as says you can tell the future by the past. Maybe they got something. Let's take a look. The inventor of animated cartoons. John Brav, invented the filmstrip in 1922 while riding on the 2()th Century Limited. He made a primitive projector to show it. At about the same time Bert Kleerup developed the definitive form of the filmstrip projector. There has been little fundamental change in it since. In 1933 William Wood of Detroit was aranted a patent for a device which combined this filmstrip projector with a radio transcriotion player in a sinsle box for giving an illustrated lecture with recorded sound. Thus was the birth of sound slidefilm. In 1947 the market was industrial and military. Further markets were needed if the medium was going to survive. Between then and now two large markets have been opened. The first was the religious market. In August of 1947 the leaders of religious audio-visual saw their first sound slidefilm and sound slidefilm projector at the International Workshop for Religious Education at Green Lake. Wisconsin. The only films available to show the reverends were industrial or military. The excitement about it was noteworthy for its absence. The users By ROBERT L. SHOEMAKER Avaco, Inc. THE FILMSTRIP FUTURE of church audio-visual and the religious film producers of the time saw no future in it. One man recognized the value and took action. The Rev. Alex Ferguson produced and brought to the 194,S convocation the first religious sound slidefilm. (Always thereinafter called sound filmstrip in the religious field.) A film on Stewardship in the Church entitled Two Dollars. Simple black and white cartoon type drawings, narration without flourishes but entirely effective. The major meeting of the Audio-Visual Leaders in Education is the annual convention of the Department of Audio-Visual Instruction of the National Education Association. At the DAVI Convention in 1955 one exhibitor presented The Studeni Participation Film. This was a series of 90 sound slidcfilms aimed directly for classrot)ni use. Some were color, some black and white. By contrast, at the recent DAVI in Detroit there were 40 exhibitors offering sound filmstrips. They were featuring, in many cases, discussional or participational techniques, enhanced in some cases, by program hold and answer selection devices. There were thousands of titles listed in the catalogues. Riizht after World War II. Jack Mullin invented the 30/50 automatic film advance for sound slidefilm. By 1949 it was competing with four other automatic systems. The need to eliminate the bell advance for the benefit of the operator and the viewer was well recognized. He licensed the largest company in the field and by 1949 it was on the market. It won over the other systems because of its greater ease of operation and higher dependability. In 1962 Leo Coulson and his associates invented the battery operated self contained desk top unit with permanently placed rca ■ screen. This took two more problems out of the user's hands. Providing he was goin-i to use the same film over again, he had nothing to do but turn on the projector. Nothing else at all. It started automatically, kept the picture and sound synchronized automatically, shut off automatically at the end of the program and was ready to do the same thing again immediately any time later. For the first time in the history of the sound filmstrip. the pictures and sound could do the whole job. A variation that the use of tape has made possible is automatic program hold — an automatic pause during the show of a single frame of the filmstrip. The sound stops and the picture remains on the screen until a response is made by the viewer. This greatly enhances the value of the sound filmstrip vshcn used in education, in training or for directing assembly in manufacturing. These six improvements: automatic synchronization, microgroove record, looped tape and film, automatic stop, self contained rear screen, battery operation have together benefitted the user and spread the use of sound filmstrip far beyond the boundaries possible without them. And that brings us to now. Right now the industry is in the final stages of the perfection of the combined filmstrip 'tape cartrid'.'c. Using it, all you need to do to change programs is take one cartridge out of the projector, put in a different one. and push a button. It's that simple. There are four makes of these FS/Tape cartridges now extant. They all have the advantage of easy load. But they differ from each other. And only one of them fits in more than one make projector. This is incompatibility. How will it be resolved? At least three times before we've gone through this problem. Each time everybody said there ought to be agreement between the parties. How are these things solved? Meetings help — but not much. The answer comes out of need and usefulness. The technical method which comes to prevail has afforded the most convenience for the widest spectrum of users and the widest range of usable equipment. With this in mind, let's consider the four FS/Tape cartridges. Not from the technical standpoint but from the view of the user. Cartridge A is the size of a bound book. Its film is the present standard filmstrip wound in a spiral and spliced end to end. The tape is standard i/4 inch lubricated cartridge tape as used in 8 track uatomotive cartridges. The projector in which it is used has a 12 inch, fold out rear screen and, with change of lens, will project on a front screen. This is the only projector in which the cartridge will fit. It is on the market and in use and available from one manufacturer. Cartridge B is about the size of most paperbacks. Its film is 16mni, the format similar to industrial motion picture release print. For new production this is not problem. Present standard filmstrips must be reduced to be used in it. The tape is the same standard '4 inch lubricated cartridge tape as used in Cartridge A. Cartridge B also fits in only one projector. This unit is a small portable desk-top projector with small rear screen. It can be ordered with Continued on next page JUNE, 1970 33