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the dark-room, of course — and subsequently immersed in the developer in a suitable dish and then rinsed and fixed in the same way. So I made my first film ever, and it was the only film of mine ever to be developed in this primitive manner. For with my usual egotism I enunciated the theory that that static method was not the proper way to process a continuous thing like a fifty-foot film. I said it ought to be passed continuously through troughs of the several chemicals in proper order by mechanical means. Then I proceeded to construct a machine according to this plan, using sprocket-wheels and other parts of two or three Edison 'Kinetoscopes' pulled to pieces for the purpose. When the first machine was finished and tested I showed it to Urban and told him I thought it ought to be patented. He agreed and said that he would like his name associated with mine as co-inventor, and that was done.1 A printer was added in a little while so that the positive stock, in contact with the finished negative, was passed into the machine at one end and came out at the other, finished and ready to be dried. At a much later stage, a drying bank was added and then the process was complete.
Printing and developing machines to this pattern and covered by the same patent were in sole use in my laboratories until the end of my film-life. It was not, however, until the advent of talking films, pointing to the importance of continuous processing to do away with the necessity of making joints, that the film trade woke up to the desirability of printing and developing by machinery, and of course, the patent had expired long before that. I was too early. Sometimes the tortoise is also wiser than the hare.
The machine was fitted up in the dark-room cellar at Warwick Court, and although it spoiled a lot of film by unforeseen faults which came to light from time to time, it did, on the whole, a great deal of good work and earned good money for the firm.
A conspicuous member of the staff was the genial Jew, Joe Rosenthal, who was sent out as special correspondent to South Africa where the storms of war were brewing. He and his sister, Alice, a plump and pleasant lady, and Miss Lena Green, a thin one, were, with Mont and myself, the whole staff below the principals. Between us we developed and printed and listed and sold all the stuff Joe sent home. One way and another there was a lot of work to be done. I nearly always, and Mont very often, stayed on till eleven at night, and Urban and Baucus, being
latent No. 13,315. June 14th, 1898.
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