The international photographer (Jan-Dec 1932)

November, 1932 The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER Twenty-three kind of bottle. Len gurgled a long one — Phew! glycerine. Len left. Joe returned. Saw some one had been there, and next day Joe was shopping for a gun. Said burglars getting fresh. And then it came out. 'Tsa good thing Joe had no gun, and that he didn't come back and see that hand reach for the bottle. Len might be short a hand now. Dick Maedler is also en route to Penang with John Bockhurst. Speaking About Filters Russell Muth (Old Dutch), head of Fox Movietonews in Berlin, is back in New York for a visit. Russ is the guy who made the first air shots of Vesuvius in eruption. So much for news. If your story is not here it's because vou are either too lazy to write in or else you don't give a hang. Let's hear from you. More about filters. When you use glass ones be sure to focus with the glass filter ON your lens, otherwise your stuff will be out of focus. For you fellows who want to use the new faster DuPont super pan remember that it's a stop faster in speed than supersensitive Eastman or DuPont Special pan. A good allaround filter for this one is the Kl%, but remember, the K's are out when using either Eastman Super or DuPont Special pan. If you want more contrast than this Kl% use a 23A as per our filter chart of last month. Some of the boys have been asking about the XI and X2 filters (green). They are not advised except for Dupont's new superpan. Allow a stop and a half for XI and two stops for X2. They make great stuff, contrasty and beautiful, but stick to the two others except for experimental purposes. Very little mail so far. Are you guys interested in this stuff, or not? Let's know, and give us some dope for the sheet. You have all got ideas, so don't be selfish. Let the other fellow benefit, too. And also send stills. A lot of your mugs should adorn this page. Let the gang know you are alive. At least write. Thanks to the Hollywood Camera Exchange, which has all such cameras, fillers and gadgets, I borrowed a Leica to give you birds a few ideas of what prints look like, using the filter chart given you in our last issue. On this I used Eastman Super. Next month we will talk on DuPont super. Tracing History of Silver Grain It Was in 1727 Johann Schulze Discovered Actinic or Light Action on Silver, but It Wasn't Utilized Until 1802 By EARL THEISEN Honorary Curator Motion Picture Collection, Los Angeles Museum IN THE past the ancients laboriously chiseled records in stone and told of themselves in this manner, using pictures and inscriptions. Out of this grew as an improvement paper and printer's ink. Now still another medium has been perfected, and that is celluloid and the silver grain. This new system is a vast improvement over all previous methods because it deals in pictures directly, whereas the others tediously spell out stories letter by letter, creating mental pictures. Some one has said that it requires about five hundred words to describe a scene as vividly as the mental picture resulting from a momentary flash of a picture of the same scene. Throughout history pictures have been international and have expressed themselves in a universal language, but until photography on celluloid was invented they could not narrate and tell stories. Looking back on the history of this new medium we find that Johann Schulze discovered the actinic or light action on silver in 1727, although it was not until 1802 that it was utilized to record pictures photographically by Wedgewood in his "sun pictures." There are many early workers that deserve credit for contributing to the evolution of celluloid, chief among these being Parkes, who invented a substance known as "Parkesine" in 1856 by mixing wood alcohol with the nitro-cotton or gun cotton invented by Bottger and Schoenbein ten years earlier. Another worker was Spill, who invented Xylonite in 1867. Collodion, the twin sister of cellu loid, was discovered in 1847 and was used a year later by Frederick Scott Archer in his famous "wet plate" process that he published in The Chemist in 1851. John Hyatt mixed camphor with collodion and made pvroxylene, which he patented in the United States June 15, 1869, as solid collodion or imitation ivory. This substance was the direct forerunner of the photographic celluloid base, but found its earlier use as billiard balls, ornaments and various imitations of ivory. The first appearance of the word celluloid in the U. S. patent office gazettes is in July, 1872, as The Celluloid Company, asignee of the various Hyatt patents along these lines. Celluloid as Photographic Support John Carbutt started commercially to coat thick sheets of celluloid with a photographic emulsion in 1884. His product was far from perfect, due to methods of manufacture, which left the celluloid discolored, full of airbells, and too inflexible to roll as would be required for motion pictures. In May, 1887, the Rev. Hannibal Goodwin applied for a patent covering a method of making thin sheets which he specified as a "photographic pellicle and a method for preparing same." This famous patent was not granted until September 13, 1898, as No. 610 860 and was only a conceptional patent and not reduced to practice by Goodwin. A successful commercial method was not perfected until Hariy Reichenbach evolved a system of coating a solution of ethyl alcohol, camphor, Photograph of the first order of film shipped from, the Eastman Company to the Edison Laboratories on September 2, 1889. Photo courtesy Leo G. Young. From the Laboratory of Thomas Edison, Orange, N. J., Sept. 2, 1889. Eastman Dry Plate Company. Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find sum of $2.50 P. O.O. due you for one roll Kodak film, for which please accept thanks. I shall try same today and report. It looks splendid — I never succeeded in getting this substance in such straight and long pieces. Sincerely yours, WM. K. L. DICKSON. Can you coat me some rolls with your highest sensitometer? Please answer.