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1949 FILM VAULTS 195
someone winding a film too fast or dropping it, on a concrete floor, excess humidity and overheating, short circuits, and other causes of 61m fires. He bets on the average and pays off on the exception. It is lot his responsibility to worry about the exception even though it ivolves an irreplaceable item. Theoretically it is no concern of ither the architect or the underwriter if the custodian wants to store is of both primary and secondary value in one vault as the unit
risk. But it is the custodian's fault if he fails to distinguish between
ich values and demand protection accordingly.
Fortunately such a distinction is being made now as never before and the need for greater protection appears more important by contrast. People are becoming more preservation-conscious. Sharper separations are being made among record materials of different values. The reissue value of some of the old classics is becoming increasingly obvious. Producers realize that the genius portrayed in a particular production may be impossible to recapture; while many of the factual pictures that record situations in time and place that cannot be reassembled, or that depict persons no longer living, have become priceless. The custodian is becoming an archivist.
It appears, therefore, that one of the basic prerequisites of appropriate vault construction and use is an appraisal of the material to be stored in terms of the protection required.
OPEN-RACK STORAGE — TERTIARY PROTECTION
In these terms, let us examine a typical film vault currently in use.
contains 750 cubic feet and has an authorized storage capacity of
),000 pounds of nitrate film. In the 35-mm size, this amounts to >me 2,000,000 feet, 2000 reels, or 200 ten-reel subjects. If all the material so stored represented camera negatives or archival items in any form, it is conceivable that one vault might house irreplaceable property costing 20 or 30 million dollars (or more) to produce, to say nothing of other costs such as human life, in the case of war pictures. This is a dangerous procedure, particularly when it is now a well' known fact that all the film so stored may be lost or seriously damaged .in case of fire. It is obvious that in such a case such a risk is too great. Only when the film stored represents material of tertiary value such as worn and duplicate prints, could such a unit risk be justified.
Let us examine this vault further. It has a vent of one square inch for each 7 pounds of nitrate film or a total of 1400 square inches for the vault. Experiments conducted under high governmental and