posted 01-03-2005 07:00 PM                       

quote:

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As the story goes, Dickson was working with a new 70MM celluloid-based film stock supplied by photographic entrepreneur George Eastman. Because the 70MM format was considered unnecessarily wasteful by Edison, he asked Dickson to cut it down into smaller strips. When Dickson asked Edison what shape he wanted imaged on these strips, Edison replied, "about like this" and held his fingers apart in the shape of a rectangle with approximately a 4:3 aspect ratio. Over the years there has been quite a bit of conjecture about what Edison had in mind when he dictated this shape ... Whatever the true story may be, Edison's 4:3 aspect ratio was officially adopted in 1917 by the Society Of Motion Picture Engineers as their first engineering standard, and the film industry used it almost exclusively for the next 35 years.

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posted 01-03-2005 07:12 PM                      

quote: Stephen Furley

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It's amasing how many of these disks have managed to survive.

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posted 01-04-2005 05:24 PM                      

quote: Larry Myers

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The 24 fps was selected as a safe point that most of the 50 viewers could not tell the difference in image quality and flicker.

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Interesting: but this result would depend a lot on the screen brightness.

I suspect that flicker was one of the factors that pushed projectionists faster in the early silent days (apart from a hurry to get home ), but I haven't ever seen any discussion of screen brightness in the context of screening speeds in those days.

Randy Starkey says:

quote: Randy Stankey

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As with many things, people just make it up as they go.

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(I meant to add this before):
As you so clearly have done in your own post, Randy

posted 01-06-2005 08:09 PM                       

quote:

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Page 69:
1888-1890
Initial Formulations
Edison wrote a second and third caveat in March and August 1889; the
ideas articulated in these documents tried to solve some of the problems
inherent in his initial formulation. The inventor's fourth and last
motion picture caveat, of November 1889, was heavily indebted to the
serial photographic work of Étienne-Jules Marey, whom Edison met in
Paris while attending the 1889 Paris Exposition. This document outlined
a contrivance that passed a tape-like band of film past a camera lens,
halting and then exposing a single frame of film for a brief fraction of
a second, after which the strip was again moved forward, until the next
frame of film was halted in front of the lens and likewise exposed.
Despite the promising direction of this last formulation, Edison pursued
his cylinder experiments, from the time he opened a kinetoscope account
in February 1889 until sometime in late 1890.

Page 73:
1891
First Films
After the cylinder experiments Dickson and Heise began to explore the
possibilities inherent in the fourth, Marey-inspired caveat, in which a
narrow band of photographic film was passed through the camera. Heise
had been brought onto the project, in part, because he was expert in
devising ways to move tape-like strips of paper (or other materials)
through a machine. The Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental
horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and kinetoscope viewer, which used
3/4 [inch] wide film, were completed in the spring of 1891.

Page 79:
1892
Perfecting the Technology
Although the 3/4 [inch] horizontal feed camera worked in principle,
significant improvements in overall design were necessary before the
invention would be ready for commercial use. Following the successful
presentation of the horizontal-feed system to the press, Edison, Dickson
and Heise constructed a strudier, vertical-feed camera that utilized a 1
and 1/2 [inch] strip of celluloid film. Although the results were
similar to the system that Edison would subsequently commercialize, the
format and camera design had not yet achieved their final form.
According to notes in Edison's legal files, at least one film reflected
this intermediate phase.

Page 80:
During 1892, Dickson and Heise refined the design of their motion
picture camera. They took a number of films with this improved camera
in the late summer and early fall of 1892. Among other things, film
width was adjusted at about this time to 1 and 9/16ths of an inch
(approximately 35mm). If format is considered, these films can be
called the first modern motion pictures--though they were not shot with
commercial use in mind. Selected frames from several of these subjects
were subsequently published in "The Phonogram".

Page 83:
1893
The Laboratory Refigured
In December 1892, with the camera technology in place, the kinetograph
team commenced construction of the world's first specially-designed
motion picture studio, located on the grounds of the Edison Laboratory.
The Dickson-designed studio, completed in early 1893, was affectionately
known as the "Black Maria" after the police paddy wagons it was said to
resemble. Over the course of 1893, Dickson and Heise made at least
three films that were subsequently presented in the kinetoscope. These
were shot on film purchased from the Blair Camera Company, initially at
the cost of $2.20 per roll, 505 [inches] x 1 9/16 [inches]. (Blair
Camera Company to Thomas A. Edison, 29 April 1893, NjWOE.) The subjects
were also the first instances of commercial modern motion picture
production in the world.

Page 84:
On 9 May 1893, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, gave the
first public exhibition of Edison's 1 and 9/16 [inches], vertical-feed,
peep-hole kinetoscope, showing both _Blacksmithing Scene_ and _Horse
Shoeing_.

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posted 01-07-2005 01:23 AM                    

quote:

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1 and 9/16ths of an inch (approximately 35mm).

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posted 01-07-2005 02:52 AM                    

quote: Leo Enticknap

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...plus also the numerous technical manuals written by a James Cameron (no relation of the director, AFAIK!) in the late '20s to early '30s for projectionists dealing with the rollout of synch sound, for a contemporary view of the standardisation process.

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Here is a pict of "The Motion Picture Projector" that James R. Cameron wrote. The blue one was printed in 1943, and the black one was printed in 1922:



Here are some picts within the 1922 edition.

This one is of the Simplex:



This is of a "platter" design for the sake of no-rewinding. A device that replaced the upper magazine with a center feed reel:



..and the booth of the Capitol Theatre in NYC .. the 'battery' of Simplexes with low-intensity arc lamphouses:



Interesting reading material contained within these two books of the art of being a projectionist and what curtails in this trade and skill.

thx-Monte