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MOTION PICTURE CAMERAS
CARL LOUIS GREGORY, F. R. P. S.
The rapid growth of the motion picture industry has made it a difficult problem for manufacturers of motion picture apparatus to keep pace with the growing demands of the industry. The manufacturing problems have paralleled in many respects those of the automobile industry, but have by no means kept pace with them. It was only with the standardization of parts, and with the adoption of a standard method of measurements and specifications, that the automobile industry was able to reach the development that it has today. The American Society of Automobile Engineers was probably the largest factor in bringing about the standards in use in the automobile industry. It has, every year since its formation, helped in the elimination of freak designs and in rendering obsolete the unnecessary duplication of parts in odd sizes. The old idea of a manufacturer who would compel a customer to replace every part of a car from parts manufactured in that particular factory by making as many of the parts as possible of a different size from that of any other manufacturer is one which has never met with the approval of the consumer. If a car owner wished to use a different spark plug or piston ring than that supplied by the manufacturer of his car it didn't improve his state of mind to find that no other make of spark plug or piston ring would fit. No manufacturer ever benefited by this selfish attitude, for as soon as he had turned out enough of his odd sizes to make a market every other accessories maker turned to and made an odd size to fit it. This duplication of parts entailed more machinery, higher costs and, consequently, bigger prices for the consumer to pay.
Although it would seem at first inspection that the fact that the size of the film is practically an international standard and would, therefore, militate against an undue multiplication of parts in the film business, still we find on closer inspection that affairs are as bad or worse than they were at one time in the manufacture of gasoline vehicles. It is to be hoped that the Society of Motion Picture Engineers may do the same service for the motion picture industry that the American Society of Automobile Engineers is doing for the automobile industry.
One of the first things to put in order out of the chaos of filmdom is a comprehensive and comprehensible list of specifications by which a camera may be described. No manufacturer of automobiles would think of issuing a catalogue describing his car without including a full and detailed list of specifications. Yet none of the camera manufacturers have seemed to think this necessary in the catalogues describing their cameras. They often elaborate to great extent on some one feature or another, but slide gracefully out