International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

January, 1934 The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER Twenty-three Greatest Invention Since Radio Men Will See in Dark and Fog; Color Films So "Real" They Startle. Chemist's Discovery in Tiny Laboratory. Kinema Revolution Gives Britain Lead Over Hollywood. Makes Clothes Transparent. [The headlines above and the following article are from "The People, October 1, 1933" — a London paper 52 years old and with 3,000,000 circulation. Efforts are making to authenticate the yarn. — Editor's Note.] Men will don spectacles that will enable them to see as clearly in the dark as they do by day. Captains of ships and pilots of air liners will look through the densest fog and travel at full speed ahead as safely as they do in the brightest sunshine. The films will be revolutionized, pictures will no longer be flat black and white, but will be seen in all the glorious colors of nature with the same "depth" perceptible to the human eye — more real than the finest sterescope. All this will follow the perfection of a brilliant British invention, the greatest since the invention of wireless, which is now in its final stages. At a secret show in a Liverpool kinema a special representative of "The People" was shown the most amazing film ever seen by man, made possible by this wonderful new process. I had been with the inventor and a cameraman to Liverpool's new zoo (he writes), where we took "shots" of parrots and monkeys. We also filmed a dog jumping through a burning hoop. I saw the film developed. I saw it placed in the projector. The Miracle Happened Then the miracle happened. I saw the parrots again in their vivid coloring, not looking like pictures at all. The screen seemed suddenly to have become of three dimensions, with depth, as well as length and breadth. We appeared to be looking out through a window on to the very scenes we had witnessed in the zoo. The monkeys' cages seemed to have been placed before us, and there the animals were swinging to and fro. It was hard to realize that the jumping dog was not actually coming toward us. The invention has one astonishing result. It makes many of the thinner garments worn by women transparent. It will no longer be possible to photograph actresses in thin nightdresses of the kind they now wear, for the flesh tints would show clearly through their clothes. Bedroom scenes, at present passed by the censor, will become taboo for this reason. In Dockside Laboratory The invention, which has been perfected in a little dockside laboratory in Liverpool, is of a chemical nature. A chemical compound extracted from a wild flower and mixed with other chemicals is added to the emulsion on the film. This has the effect of trapping not only light and shade, but also the actual colors, and makes the emulsified surface as susceptible to light and color as the human eye. It will, at one blow, remove the handicap under which the British film industry has labored by reason of the fact that the light in Hollywood is so much more suitable for photography than it is here. With this new invention good films can be taken in a fog. Natural color television is an obvious development of the future. Natural color films which I have seen produced here during my weeks of investigation into the invention and its claims, cost little to produce, show every changing, shimmering light in a shot-silk dress, the colors in a girl's eyes, the play of light on her hair, the changing colors of a sunset's reflections in water and the lights of a bonfire. They are as cheap, as quick to produce and as lasting as black-and-white films. The additional equipment for taking and projecting them costs but a few pounds. While the City Slept Night after night when the crowds filed out of the Regent Cinema, Crosby, which has been loaned for the experiments ; I have stood with the little group of pioneers financing the invention, in the deserted theatre, and I have seen it lighted up with color thrown on to the screen from the same projectors used for the black-and-white films. Arrangements are being made for the program there to be interrupted shortly with a surprise for the audience, who will suddenly see one of the new films spring upon the screen. The invention may sound the death knell of some of Hollywood's stars — just as the talkies were the doom of others. It will set a new standard of beauty on the screen, in which the natural color of the eyes and skin will be of paramount importance. Once the public have tested these color films ordinary black-and-white pictures will seem to them dead and lifeless. A company is in contemplation to keep this invention a British possession. A vast foreign film corporation which knew of the struggles of the inventor offered him a staggering sum for his half finished work. He refused it. Today, Herr Goebbels, the Nazi director of propaganda, is negotiating for German rights to operate the new invention. "»•>;::'* Please mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.