The Bioscope (Nov-Dec 1930)

November 12, 1930 THE BIOSCOPE Technical News and Notes British lighting experts will be interested in this formidable array of lighting units used in the taking of Universal’ s “ East is West." Over a hundred spots and suns can be counted with the unaided eye ; the second hundred need a magnifying glass l Tone Them Down ! Colour seems to be under a cloud for the moment, so far as American production is concerned. There is a notable falling off in the number of colour subjects proposed for the 1931 programmes. The colour output of recent months has come in for a great deal of criticism, and no one, save the colour people themselves, seems to be quite pleased with the results achieved. Commercial production has not kept abreast of laboratory practice and generally the finished product has been Well below those standards set up by earlier black-and-white subjects. Lack of definition has been a general complaint and the balance of colour itself has often been irritating and far from restful. Release prints have also been Well below the standard originally shown to the trade. Altogether it is pretty clear that existing methods are inadequate. These general results are unfortunate, because the public attitude to colour has been prejudiced and any future system will have a lot of extra opposition to break down. My own opinion is that, in the first productions, the colour technicians Went out of their Way to get glaring colour effects on the screen. There was too much brilliance, and at a time when the systems could only render certain parts of the spectrum with brilliance. Moreover, brilliant colour is a relative rarity in Nature ; subdued tints are more commonly met with, and to have every detail blazing in bright colour is both unnatural and optically tiring. If We had seen more tints and soft tones and fewer crude vivid reds and greens we might have Welcomed colour films more amiably. Holophane Note The Holophane Company have recently had complaints that the name Holophane is being used loosely to indicate any threecolour lighting system. In one sense this is complimentary, since it implies that Holophane is becoming almost a generic name in technical circles by reason of its constant association With unusual colour effect lighting. But there is the obvious danger of exhibitors accepting inferior and inefficient three-colour equipment in the belief that because it is three-colour lighting it is genuine Holophane and may be expected to function to Holophane standards. Gillespie Williams is therefore anxious to emphasise that the real Holophane system has several unique features, is the exclusive property of Messrs. Holophane, Ltd., and that the term “Holophane” is used quite illegally unless it refers to equipment manufactured and supplied by the company. Paris Paper Goes " Talkie ” The Well-known nationalistic Paris paper, the Intransigeant, has it own cinema, and has just decided to instal Western Electric talking equipment. The theatre is in the same building as the newspaper, and is known as the Theatre des Miracles, and the box will be fitted with a 3 S-FD-NS set, with manager’s announcing system. The Intransigeant has a circulation of nearly half a million daily, and is owned by Leon Bailby, who also owns Pour Vous, a weekly motion picture magazine. A Miracle Machine There Were several outstanding moments in the tour of the B.T.H. works at Rugby last Week, but one machine Which fascinated technical visitors was the Dumet machine. Years ago, when electric lamps first came out. We Were told that it was necessary to use platinum as leads through the exhausted glass bulb, because that was the only metal which had an expansion coefficient exactly the same as that of glass. Often the scrap value of old lamps was solely that of the platinum used in that way, and in my ignorance I was not aware that platinum had been superseded. Fortunately my companion at the moment, Captain J. W. Barber, Was equally ignorant. The new material is Dumet, and the Dumet machine cuts off lengths of fine copper wire for lamp leads. Welds in a 3-16 in. length of Dumet, Welds on another short length of copper for the inside stay in the bulb, and drops the finished product into a tray at the rate of a hundred a minute ! Everything is so adjusted that the little scrap of Dumet just falls at the precise point Where the lamp leads pass through the neck, and this cutting, electric Welding and rejoining are done by the machine With an uncanny rapidity and precision. Since jobs of this kind can be done by machinery it makes one Wonder Why any human labour is necessary at all. I don’t believe labour will be necessary for manufactures such as this in ten years’ time. The genial C. F. Trippe, of the B.T.H. Sound Department, Who did so much to make the tour a success, has been engaged in electrical Work for a lifetime, and takes these wonders very philosophically. Testing Speakers in Balk When big firms are putting out loudspeakers and head-phones by the hundred thousand the question of testing them individually becomes a very formidable problem indeed. Yet an individual test is obviously essential. Phillips, for instance, and one or two other large firms, insist that' each speaker is fully tested before it leaves the works, and I was interested to discover how this could be done. In answer to my enquiries, Messrs. Phillips say that their speakers, before they are allowed outside the premises, make a complete tour of the electrical and sound departments on conveyor belts. Each speaker comes in turn under the notice of testers for all electrical, mechanical and acoustic defects, and at any point it may be “ sent down.” Those that survive the first test come to the Audition Room for their “ Finals.” This is a sound-proof chamber, where each speaker is tested for tone and volume against a specially selected model of the same type. The speakers enter the room on another conveyor belt, and as