Celluloid
Photographic Film
As
soon as the 'gelatin dry plate' process of
photography had replaced the 'wet collodion'
process in the 1870s, the search was on for a
lighter and less fragile support than glass.
Methods involving peeling the gelatin emulsion
from paper and other flexible backings were tried
but all proved unreliable.
The first
experiments at using celluloid as a film backing
were by French photographers David and Fortier,
and by Waterhouse in England but the methods were
difficult and the film too uneven and streaky for
photographic use.
John Carbutt, an
English photographer who had emigrated to America,
set up the Keystone Dry Plate Works in 1879 to
manufacture gelatin dry plates. He persuaded the
Celluloid Manufacturing Co. to produce a thin
celluloid film which was sufficiently transparent.
They did this by slicing a thin layer from a
block of celluloid - this was then pressed
between heated polished plates to remove the
slicing marks. Carbutt started to manufacture cut
film using this material sometime before1888, but
it was slow to catch on. Two key events which
would make celluloid film a necessity had yet to
happen - roll film cameras and motion pictures.
Independently, Rev.
Hannibal Goodwin had also devised a process for
making celluloid film and applied for a patent in
1887, but for various reasons the patent was not
granted until 1898. In the meantime, George
Eastman had started production of rollfilm using
his own process. It was eventually ruled that
Kodak had infringed Goodwin's patent which by
then had been sold to Anthony & Scovill (Ansco)
after Goodwin's death as a result of an accident
just as he was starting a company to manufacture
his film.
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