Timeline Analog 1. John Buck

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       "...all was finished when he was able to show a complete and accurately functioning model."

      In 1881, David Houston convinced his older brother, Peter to file a patent (above) for an invention that allowed the user to take:

      “...a number of photographic views successively in a short time.”

      The first roll film holder and roll film camera. Historian Ben Nemenoff notes:

       “Flexible roll film had not yet been invented, but Houston anticipated that one day it would be.”

      The holder consisted of two cylindrical reels, one on each side of the camera between the lens and the back door of the body. The reel on the photographer’s right would be empty; the one on the left would contain a roll of unexposed film.

      Most likely unknown to Houston, someone invented flexible roll film - just a few months later.

      At the Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company in Newark, the long-standing principal chemist made a major discovery. John H. Stevens found that amyl acetate was a suitable solvent for diluting celluloid, which then allowed the stiff material to be made into a clear, flexible film. Stevens called his invention ‘transparent pyroxylin’ but in time it became - motion picture film.

      In the years since patenting celluloid, the Hyatts had created equipment that could slice their firm celluloid blocks into thin sheets for sale. It could have easily sliced strips of celluloid for sale but the Hyatts didn't pursue the production of flexible film.

      Two French photographers recognized the value of flexible film. François Fortier and M David. In June 1882, the British Journal of Photography shared with readers:

       “M David exhibited sheets of celluloid, which he hoped will render service to travelers, and replace the heavy glass they are now obliged to carry about with them when traveling.”

      George Eastman still wanted to create a lightweight camera that was small enough to use without a tripod and capable of creating reliable sharp focus photographs. He knew that to achieve this he needed to replace the typical glass plates with a flexible film.

      The film that Fortier had spoken about, Stevens had stumbled upon, and Houston had envisioned for a roller camera.

      Eastman employed local businessman, William Walker who had previously made a small pocket camera that made single exposures on 2-¾ x 3-¼" dry plates. Eastman worked on the flexible film while Walker worked on the hardware, a roll-holder and machine to apply the emulsion to film stock. After eighteen months of research, they had two products. A 'rollable' paper backed product, American Film (colloquially called 'stripping film' because of the paper backing that was stripped off during processing), and a machine that applied warm gelatin to sheets of paper, enabling the company to mass-produce American Film. Owners of existing cameras could load a strip of American Film, rather than glass plates:

       "...and thus take 50 distinct photographs on one spool of paper film...in an hour!."

      The process of using Eastman's film was not as simple as its advertising led users to believe. In fact, it was onerous. After exposing an image, the individual images had to be cut to size in a darkroom, developed, fixed, washed, squeegeed and then placed onto glass plates to create a negative for printing. The roll-holder and paper film combination was criticized for being a poor substitute for the quality of glass plates.

       “...gray, sickly, looking prints...”

      Eastman's problems escalated soon after.

      David Houston, the holder of the film roll patent, wrote to Eastman's lawyer, and eventually, licensed the film roll patent rights, for $US700, to Walker who agreed to manufacture and market Houston’s camera across the country. Walker instead sold the rights to Eastman.

      As Eastman launched the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company, Walker demonstrated the first Kodak amateur camera at the International Inventions Exhibitions in London.

       "We shall be able to popularize photography to an extent as yet unimagined".

      Without roll-film Eastman's dream product was still not 'as convenient as a pencil', so he employed a young graduate from the University of Rochester, Henry Reichenbach to help him create the roll-film that he needed. Eastman described him as:

      "...an ingenious, quick-witted fellow..."

      Around the same time, the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin had completed his research into a replacement for dry plates. Working from his attic, Goodwin had created a transparent flexible film-like material that photographers could use to record images more easily, and continuously.

      He called it ‘photographic pellicule’ and filed for a patent.

       “The object of this invention, is primarily to provide a transparent sensitive pellicle better adapted for photographic purposes, especially in connection with roller-cameras.”

      Dr Robert Taft summarized the inventive achievement in Photography and the American Scene (1938) :

       "The filing of Goodwin’s patent, which eventually turned out to be the basic patent of the film industry, was therefore an important milestone in photographic history."

      However, Goodwin’s patent claims were too broad and the patent was rejected. In the following decade, Goodwin revised it seven times, based on suggestions from the US Patent Office.

      Meanwhile, Eadweard Muybridge in Surrey, England, Ottomar Anschütz in Berlin, Étienne-Jules Marey in France and Henry Heyl in Philadelphia experimented in the field of projection.

      A concept that ultimately became, cinema.

      Heyl demonstrated the Phasmatrope, a device using 16 photographs arranged around the edge of a revolving disk moved intermittently by a spur gear. Muybridge used his experience in capturing over 100,000 motion photographs to create the Zoogyroscope in 1879.

      Muybridge painted copies of 24 photographs on 16-inch discs and spun them rapidly to create the illusion of movement.

      Author Leslie Wood observes:

       "...the true importance of the pictures of the galloping horse lies in the fact that they were photographs of real and continuous movement and not posed pictures to counterfeit action."

      Ottomar Anschütz spent a decade refining the Schnellseher, which displayed a series of photographs. The images were fixed on a spinning disk and intermittently lit from behind. Anschütz, like Muybridge, toured his device on a lecture circuit across Germany to interested scientific and photographic groups. It included a series of images called Sprechende Porträts, or Speaking Portraits.

      French scientist and physiologist, Étienne-Jules Marey attended a demonstration of Muybridge’s next device, the Zoopraxiscope.

      Marey was acutely interested in a better way to record the motion of people and animals to film. With his assistant Georges Demenÿ, Marey built a camera called the Chronophotographe СКАЧАТЬ