We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Papers Committee be added responsibility of the publication of the Transactions, certainly so after the work now in hand is completed and out of the way.
As I said at the Rochester meeting, I am not a candidate for a third Presidential term. But before relinquishing my opportunity to speak from the chair, I should like to confess to two errors of personal judgment. The first was the effort to prepare at the request of the Federal Government, a camera specification for war work, in conjunction with Don Bell and Carl Gregory. It wasn't wholly a success because these camera authorities couldn't agree. This should have been a warning to me that the request of the Underwriters Laboratories that we adopt an alleged ideal specification for a projecting machine was unlikely of approval by makers of diverse models, which was my second mistake.
It did one thing, however, well worth while. It clarified the atmossphere and made more distinct to me and perhaps to others of us, the objects for which this Society was organized and even more strikingly the things for which it is not organized.
For example, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers is not a judicial body to settle controversies between conflicting interests or to promulgate recommendations which make for class-discrimination. If our Society ever degenerates into a contest between factions each trying to use the Society for personal advantage, then our usefulness is ended and our organization will soon break up as others in the motion picture industry have already done.
What we did organize for was to set our official seal on standards generally recognized as standards; and second, and perhaps best of all, to put into permanent form for world-wide distribution, the specialized knowledge which our members, experts in their particular line, are so unselfishly furnishing for this purpose. And while the official stamping of generally acknowledged standards is a necessary duty, for myself I have found the most interest in our meetings has come from the valuable papers read and printed, and I don't believe the limited time of our meetings can be spent in a more worth-while manner.
And it is by the printed copies of these papers that we shall be remembered, for they will doubtless find their way not only into the hands of our members and others of our own industry but into libraries generally. Perhaps nothing is more to be desired or would add more to our prestige or usefulness.
And there is a wonderful collection of data already collated. Do you want to know the percentage of loss of light by reason of the tinting of films — it is in the Transactions. Do you want to know the distortion error due to angular projection — it is in the book! Do you want to know the source of loss of light at various points in the optical system — it is in your own printed copy. Do you want to know the cause of the stroboscopic effect of shutters — it is in the booklet sent our members. Do you want to know the proper current density for carbon arcs — reach for the bound volume. Do you want to know the advantages and disadvantages of various electric current devices — it is in the unselfish report of that Committee.
Gentlemen, I thank you for hearing me through, I have a fatherly feeling for this Society. ^ Francis Jenkins.