American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1926)

Eighteen AMERICAN CINE MAT OGRAPHER Julv, 192G Filtered The solution tank holds approximately one quart of the cleaning fluid and is drained off into a filter after every seventh or eighth reel has been cleaned. After the fluid passes through the filter, it can be used as often as it is thoroughly filtered and freed from the oil and dirt that it carries after it has cleaned the seven or eight reels. By actual measurements this filter, from a day's work of one hundred reels of film, has caught fourteen cubic inches of dirt and oil. During these years of research, there have been many machines considered and tested, many wash solutions analyzed, and every system, with which we came in contact, was investigated. Many of them have merit, and almost all of them offer, in some manner, a remedy for dirty film. In most instances, the plants that were investigated were operated by their owners as cleaning plants and their business was altogether confined to cleaning film and not to selling equipment for film cleaning. In such cases it meant the loss of time to transport film to their plant. This research work included a very careful study of various types of machines which were on the market and recommended for exchange use, but which we found, after a very careful analysis, did not accomplish the result we desired. Requirements In analyzing a machine, it is necessary to take into consideration the following pertinent factors : First, the capacity of the machine. In developing capacity, you must constantly bear in mind that the greater speed of the operation, the greater are the possibilities of your damaging the film. We have overcome this by using large aluminum rollers with wide flanges to guide the film. The film is pulled through the machine by two wide rubber rollers, arranged similar to a wringer. A gravity switch controls the motor so that should the film break, the entire plant is stopped immediately. There are no buffs or fast rotating polishers to heat the film, should it become stationary, and there are no sprocket teeth to injure it, or idler rollers to crease or mark it. I have given you here an outline of the operation of our cleaning plant and must apologize for using our own operation as a concrete example, but feel that you would prefer to hear a report on the actual operation of a working plant, rather than having me present theoretical or hypothetical cases. What Is Done These results can be summed up as follows: We are now cleaning films, regardless of the amount of oil and dirt that there is on it, at the rate of one 1000-foot reel in practically five minutes. Every inch of the one thousand foot reel is entirely free from all oil and dirt; there has been no strain on the perforations in any manner; both sides of the film is polished; the silver salts in the emulsion have not been attacked in any manner; the tinting of either the film stock or of the emulsion is totally unaffected and is as safe against future attacks from the acids in the different lubricants the operators use, as it was before cleaning; the film stock is not shrunk or warped in any manner, and above all, every inch of that one thousand foot reel has had a bath in a chemical that will soften it and restore its elasticity. Film that has had this treatment is so entirely free from anything offering any foreign resistance to its smooth passage through a projector, and is so entirely and thoroughly polished and lubricated in every corner and on all the surface of every perforation, that even though the corners of them may be weakened, the film is much less liable to damage than it was before its treatment. Amateur Cinematography (Continued from page to years of political and diplomatic discussion and suggestion. And now, to send films to each other for projections in our homes only costs the postage fee — and the good it can do can't be calculated in millions. . "We've had meetings here in Hartford to consider our own home movie organization here in this locality (including Springfield, New Haven, etc.) and the possibilities of extending it over the world. At these meetings, experts from two of the leading camera manufacturers have come on here to advise us. We have already learned a lot of lessons in our experience with radio. We have learned that such an organization must be absolutely altruistic. There can be no executive offices, no professional interference; an amateur or Ufttt