International projectionist (Jan-Dec 1947)

Trade Unions in America By JOHN P. FREY President, Metal Trades Department, A. F. of L. IV PRECEDING installments in this series have presented a brief and sketchy story of the origin of Greek and Roman craft unions. The picture has not been filled in, frankly for lack of sufficient dependable historic material. The writers of antiquity gave us no filled-out story. They paid but passing notice, if any, to the outstanding part being played by the crafts. There is reference, but unfortunately little indeed to prove helpful, to the craft organization during the Golden Age of Greece, as active as the one which developed in Rome. From notes made by Mrs. W. H. Buckler, wife of a prominent American archaeologist, while studying ancient craft unions in Greece, the appended quotation is given. After referring to the law of Solon, Mrs. Buckler wrote: "According to Diodorus, Themistocles pursued the same policy, and in the Golden Age similar " statements are attributed to Thucydides and Plutarch and to Pericles. Thucydides makes Pericles admit that the same men can work after their own interests and that of the State simultaneously, an idea which Plato afterward combated. What Pericles had in mind was that the craft unions could protect their craft interests and that these d'd not run counter to the welfare of the State." It has been possible from an examination of inscriptions and scanty reference by writers of the period to learn some definite facts. In Greece and Rome the workers were free men, they were citizens. The crafts organized not as a result of a plan which theorists had evolved, a blueprint such as has been so frequently presented to workers in recent years by professional and other reformers. They organized because they were thrown together, because of common interests, and without doubt principally because of sheer necessity. They were self-organized. Enduring Policies Evolved The ancient crafts evolved policies and practices afterward applied by the craft guilds of the Middle Ages and by our present trade union movement. This was so because of the natural consequences of creating organizat'ons by workmen, for the workmen. The craft guilds of the Middle Ages, with possibly one exception, the stone cutters and masons, were unaware that they had been preceded by the craft unions of antiquity. Perhaps in the trade union movement of today there may be found members unaware that 2500 years ago there was a vigorous trade union movement whose members (Continued on page 31) TELE, FILMS AND HUMAN EYE (Continued from page 14) noise ratio, for 500 lines and below. A more valid comparison of television and motion pictures, based on signal-tonoise ratios, places the capabilities of a 500-line television picture close to the resolution of present 35-mm motion picture film. Major Problem for Films The evaluation of the graininess of motion pictures has been a major problem in the film industry as evidenced by the many technical papers on this subject throughout the last quarter century. The television art is faced with the same problem in the evaluation of noise in television pictures. Only very recently has there been an appreciation that the complete treatment of this problem requires a knowledge of the properties of the eye as thorough as the knowledge of the properties of the motion picture or television picture. It is of considerable help that the eye appears to be limited by fluctuation phenomena in much the same way as film or television pickup tubes. One might expect, if the eye is limited by fluctuation phenomena, to be able to "see noise" — that is, "visual noise" — similar to the noise in a television picture or graininess in a motion picture. The writer is convinced that such visual noise is readily observable at very low levels of scene brightness, around 1/10,000 foot-lamberts. A white surface then seems to take on a fluctuating grainy appearance. Other conclusions have resulted from the treatment of the eye in the same terms as pickup tubes and film. For example, the large range of dark adaptation (the ability of the eye to re-adjust itself to see scenes 10,000 times below normal brightness levels) can be interpreted as arising from a "gain control" mechanism in series with the retina and brain and not unlike the volume control knob on a television receiver. Further, existing data on the eye suggest that the gain control operates selectively more on blue light than on red light. The accurate comparison of the performance of film and pickup tubes with the performance of the eye cannot but enhance one's admiration for the nicety of design that has gone into the human eye by chance selection. At the same time, one has firm grounds for expecting even to surpass the performance of the eye by deliberate design of pickup devices. FIGURE 2. Essential parts of a television system when a filmed scene is to be transmitted and reproduced. 16 INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST • March 1947