Moving pictures, how they are made and worked (1912)

CHAPTER VIII DEVELOPING AND PRINTING THE PICTURES The history of the cinematograph impresses upon us at every turn the necessity which experimenters were under of devising special facilities and improved apparatus in all of the numerous fields that impinged upon their work. They were obliged to break ground in every direction. For instance, besides securing the right kind of film, they had also to find the best means of developing it. A thin, narrow ribbon of pictures 40 feet in length is a vastly different thing to handle from a rigid glass plate. Its flexi- bility presented many perplexing obstacles which had to be overcome. Those who used the old roll film with the snap- shot hand-camera of the early days, can relate pathetic and humorous stories of the trials and tribulations they suffered in passing the awkward length of film through the de- veloping and other baths. When it was unwound from the roller preparatory to immersion in the developing solu- tion, it persisted in buckling and twisting into strange contortions. Development was carried out in an uneven or patchwork manner, some parts of the film being fully developed before others had betrayed the slightest sign of yielding the latent image. The plight of the animated photographer was even more unenviable; the handling of sensitised celluloid about as thick as a substantial wooden shaving, was infinitely more exasperating than that used in the ordinary hand camera, for the latter was wider, thicker, and far shorter. The developing methods at first advocated were of the crudest nature possible. Messrs. Lumi^re tried to assist 76