Film - 100 years
www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/filmsize.html
Struggle for standardization
One hundred years of cinema is also due to acceptance of one standard gauge. Whereas film equipment has undergone drastic changes in the course of a century it is a little miracle that 35mm has remained the universally accepted film size. If film had followed the same course as video, with its continuing change of systems, the development might have been delayed considerably.
Edison
We owe the format to a great extent to Edison - in fact 35mm was called the Edison size before.
In May 1889 Thomas Edison had ordered a Kodak camera from the Eastman Company and was apparently fascinated by the 70mm roll of film used. Thereupon W.K.L.Dickson of his laboratory ordered a roll of film of 1 3/8"(ca. 35 mm) width from Eastman. This was half the film size used in Eastman Kodak cameras. It was to be used in a new type of Kinetoscope for moving images on a strip of celluloid film, which could be viewed by one person at the time.
Lumière film
The Lumière brothers introduced in March 1895 their Cinématographe for 35mm film, which was also used at their first public show of 28 December of that year. Their strip of film had only one round hole per image, whereas Edison used four rectangular perforations per frame.
Even at that time there was already a variety of widths:
54mm (2 1/8") (Friese-Greene in 1887)
54mm paperfilm (2 1/8") (Le Prince, 1888),
54mm (Skladanowsky, 1895 ), see also Skladanowsky filmclip Skladanowski film
60mm(Prestwich, Demeney, 1893-96)
Demeny Phonoscope 1893
Gaumont-Demeny Chronophotographe, 1896
38mm (Casimir Sivan/E.Dalphin, Geneva, 1896);
Lee & Turner colour film, 1901
63mm (Veriscope, 1897).
65mm (Hughes Moto-Photoscope, 1897)Also for 3" wide film
68mm (Biograph 1897 camera)
70mm unperforated experimental film, Birt Acres 1894
posted by Martin Crosbie @ 8:17 AM
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