Agfa motion picture topics (Apr 1937-June 1940)

370 M.P.H.! Photographed by T ruman D. Vencill "Covering" John Cobb's Assault on the World's Speed tteeord By Truman D. Vencill Illustrated by the Author TT leaking the world’s land speed -^record over the famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah furnishes the world’s most gruelling test of car and driver. It also furnishes an equally merciless test of the films and cameras used to make pictures of the event. As an official Photographer for the Contest Board of the American Automobile Association, I can call on personal experience to verify that last statement. I and my cameras have been on duty to picture all of the record tries since Sir Malcom Campbell and his “Bluebird” first pushed the record above the 300 miles per hour mark. Frankly, I can’t think of any location where climatic and lighting conditions give film a harder workout. During the daytime, it is incredibly hot; at night it gets almost equally cold: and the change from extreme cold to extreme heat is amazingly sudden. Most of the runs are made in the early morning or late evening, and the film that pictures those runs has to be right out in the midst of the temperature changes. Often when we get up at dawn, with a run in prospect, the thermometer will be wavering somewhere below the 50° mark: only a short time later, as the sun warms to its day’s work, the mercury will have jumped to better than 110°. Supreme Stands Up What this does to film can easily be imagined. During the several years