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The celluloid base provided fl exibility for the image
carrying emulsion, while its transparency allowed the
development of a viewing apparatus using transmitted
light, where the image carrier moved between the light
source and the viewer. The technical considerations in
the evolution of 35mm fi lm included making the image
area as large as possible for comfortable viewing, while
keeping it small enough to produce a compact appara-
tus, and making the fi lm tough enough to withstand the
mechanical stresses of running at 30 to 40 frames per
second across the viewing aperture while simultaneously
keeping it light enough to have the fl exibility to wind
through the machine. The changes Edison and Dickson
made to the design of their Kinetoscope viewer and
Kinetograph camera were direct responses to these con-
straints: the sheet celluloid fi lm from Carbutt wrapped
around a cylinder had images that were too small; the
celluloid plates on a revolving disk copied from the
Anschütz Schnellseher provided too limited a viewing
time; half-inch and three-quarter-inch fi lm perforated
along only one side was not robust enough to with-
stand the stresses applied by the machinery; one-inch
fi lm perforated on both sides left too little room for the
image. During this period of experiment and evolution
between 1888 and 1894 at the Edison laboratory, East-
man also had technical issues to solve, even though his
company was the world’s most experienced in manu-
facturing fl exible rolls of photosensitised fi lm. Roll fi lm
had been introduced by Eastman with an opaque paper
backing in 1884, and his Kodak roll fi lm system was an
instant success from 1887, so much so that a substitute
for its original opaque backing was urgently sought,
since the elaborate process of handling this “stripping
fi lm” overwhelmed Eastman’s developing and printing
service. Celluloid nitrate, despite its fl ammability, was
the solution to Eastman’s dilemma, but until well into
the 20th century every time the photographic emulsion
was chemically changed to improve its sensitivity or
decrease the grain size and provide better sharpness,
previously overcome problems of adhesion between
the emulsion and the celluloid base reappeared, often
in conjunction with thin cobwebs of exposed emulsion
caused by static electricity in the manufacturing process,
or other imponderable problems.
The resolution that Edison and Dickson fi nally made
used 35mm wide strips of celluloid-backed emulsion
that was slightly thicker than Eastman’s still camera
fi lm, and was produced and cut—as it was later for other
early moving picture companies—to special order by
Eastman at a premium price. With the Kinetoscope in
use in public from 1894, Edison used this fi lm princi-
pally for camera negatives made by the Kinetograph,
since was a very clear stock manufactured by pouring
out on long glass tables. For positive prints in the Kineto-
scope viewer, fi lm from the Blair Camera Company wasused since it was slightly translucent and therefore better
dispersed the light across the image for the viewer; Blair
used a different manufacturing process of continuous
casting on a large heated rotating drum.
Although it is often overlooked in studies by fi lm
historians, like its predecessor moving picture apparatus,
the Schnellseher of Ottomar Anschütz, and like many
subsequent moving picture machines such as those
of the Lumière brothers, Robert W. Paul, Birt Acres,
George W. de Bedts and other pioneers, when the Edison
Kinetoscope and Kinetograph system fi rst appeared it
was considered revelatory apparatus for the making
and exhibition of photographs, and was conceptualised
wholly within the enormous technical advances being
made by photography in the last quarter of the 19th
century. Reviews of the Kinetoscope commonly referred
to the astonishing fact that 46 individual pictures were
taken in a single second, or that a Kinetoscope view
was made up, on average, of over 1200 photographs.
Pratitioners in the fast-moving realm of photography,
whether manufacturers, suppliers or end-users, had been
remarkably agile in responding to new technological
developments, including the public fashion for stere-
oscopy in the 1860s, the expansion of photographic
lantern lectures in the 1870s and the introduction of the
Kodak system and roll fi lm in the 1880s, but the moving
pictures introduced at the end of the 19th century proved
to be a step too far for the already prosperous industry,
and moving picture work quickly evolved to become a
separate realm that would dominate public discourse in
the 20th century.
Deac RossellBiography
Born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, in 1847, the
young Thomas Edison was expelled from school as
“retarded” and educated at home by his mother. He
went to work at the age of 12, selling candy and his own
on-board newspaper to railroad passengers travelling
between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, where the
family had moved. He trained himself as a telegraph
operator, took a job with Western Union in Boston, and
soon was repairing telegraph apparatus. He executed
his fi rst patent, for an electrical vote recorder, in 1868
and the next year became a full-time inventor, moving
from Boston to New York City and concentrating on
telegraphy. By 1874 his work had created a new duplex
telegraph, which allowed a single wire to carry two
messages simultaneously, and then a quadruplex system
which allowed four concurrent messages, signifi cantly
improving both the effi ciency and the capital costs of
telegraph communications. Now working for some of
America’s largest corporations, he constructed his own
independent research laboratory at Menlo Park, NewEDISON, THOMAS ALVA
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