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WIDE FILM DEVELOPMENT
Paul Allen, A. S. C.
ONE of the outstanding developments of the past year in the motion picture industry has been the introduction of wide film. Even the advent of sound created no greater flurry of excitement than has the wide film problem. And now, even though the public has been permitted to view one of the results, no one seems to have any definite idea as to what the future will bring forth in the way of a standard size film. One thing seems certain — that we will have a standard film wider than the present standard of 35 millimeters. What the width will be is a problem.
Advocates of the 70 millimeter, Fox Grandeur, are proclaiming that width as the perfect one. But there has been a considerable swing to the idea that 65 millimeters will be the perfect width for the new standard. However, there is quite a move on foot at this writing to bring about a compromise on a standard width of 68 millimeters.
Perhaps it would be proper at this point to briefly sketch the early history of wide film, because, while the majority of people think wide film is something new, it is, in reality, a revival of what took place far in the past. This is a natural conclusion to draw, however, because the standard width of film, 35 millimeters, has become so widely accepted that one often hears of it as the onh' standard of measure which is common to all nations.
Today the producers are surrounded by a veritable chaos, as far as film width standard is concerned. And so it was back in the nineties. Today the producers realize that a larger film must come in the not distant future, and naturally, there is an effort being made to find a width which will be fixed as a standard. In the nineties the same situation existed, and film was being used which ranged in width all the way from one-half inch to 70 millimeters.
Perhaps the best idea of what was happening then may be found in an excerpt from Carl Louis Gregory's article on the early history of wide film, which he read before the S. M. P. E., which reads in part :
"An advertisement in Hopwood's 'Living Pictures' edition of 1899 offers the 'Prestwich' specialties for animated photography — 'nine different models of cameras and projectors in three sizes for Yi -inch, 1 3/s -inch and 23/s -inch width of film.' Half a dozen other advertisers in the same book offer 'cinematographs' for sale and while the illustrations show machines for films obviously of narrow or wide gauge no mention is made of the size of the film.
"During 1899 there were in England and on the Continent Mutograph films 2% inches wide; Demeny Chronophotographe 60 mm. wide, Skladowsky film 65 mm. wide, Prestwich wide film 2% inches wide, Birtac films 11/16 inch wide, Junior Prestwich
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