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There is unlimited opportunity for advance, both inside and outside the industry as an entertainment. If there had been any question before as to the need for a standardizing body, such as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, it vanished when the Federal Government, unable to find any authoritative standard, appointed me as an individual, to write the specifications for a war service motion picture camera for the Army and Navy in order that official pictures made of this great war would be alike in quality and frame line at least. Specifications were prepared with such assistance from our camera members as could be secured in the forty-eight hours allowed, the credit therefore being given our Society for the added prestige, and to publish the fact that there is now an authoritative body to whom one may apply for information of this very kind.
Our standards, definitions of trade terms, and uniform methods will soon come to be consulted in writing specifications, in trade contracts, in court contests, etc., and I think we should not only be a bit more self-respecting when we remember this, but that we should also feel our responsibility to set standards with due regard for the rights of all. This will tend to give us a more creditable standing everywhere. It is a bit embarrassing to me today to notice the suspicion in which I am held by strangers the moment they find I am talking motion picture business.
Fair treatment of the other fellow is a great business asset of which the motion picture industry hasn't yet taken full advantage. It is a builder of confidence in any industry which returns its cost a hundred fold in dollars and cents. If this spirit permeates the printed Transactions of this Society, as I believe is our intent, it will do our Industry untold good as the copies get wider and wider distribution. When this confidence in our integrity of purpose and accomplishments is entertained by the big men in our industry, they will buy quantities of these printed transactions for distribution among their employees in order that they may be guided by the standards, the working data, and technical information contained therein, and the Industry at large will greatly benefit thereby.
Gentlemen, the time is near when we may take creditable pride in the work we have done, are doing, and plan to do.
Membership in the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, is a signal distinction.
C. Francis Jknkins.