WHY 35MM?

How come 35mm film? Why not 36mm, or 1 inch, or even 57 like Heinz?

Well, believe it or not, for an answer, we have to go back to Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and a national icon of the 20th century. Edison, as many scientists and other learned individuals since the 18th century, knew about the physiological phenomenon known as the persistence of vision, i.e., the ability of human vision to retain for an instant the image of an object or scene looked upon. After inventing the repeating telegraph, the incandescent light, and the talking machine, Edison is reported to have declared, “I will do for the eye, what I have done for the ear”! Since he had at his disposal an invention factory, he assigned the task of creating a moving picture machine to the laboratory mechanic and amateur photographer, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, recently arrived from England. Edison of course knew about the sequential image photography of the trotting horse by Eadweard Muybridge, the Englishman. He also was aware of the sequential imaging of bird flight by the Etienne Jules Marey in France. These pre-existing procedures among other such developments in England, Germany and America are probably what led the US Supreme Court to issue a statement in 1916 that the Edison claim of inventing motion pictures was not valid.

Dickson worked diligently but was initially unsuccessful with his design concepts. One of which was the application of tiny photographic images or ‘microdots’ to use a latter day designation, upon the curved surface of the Edison phonograph wax cylinders. Not only did this prove difficult to accomplish coincident to the cylinder grooves, but also its proposed use required a microscopic viewing device to be employed while the phonograph played, let alone the fact that the Edison talking machines then in use at public venues used earphones for each customer.

At about this time an individual in another burgeoning industry was thinking of ways to improve his product. George Eastman after placing on the market his “American Film” in a roll holder adaptable to the then common glass plate camera, had in 1888 brought forth the KODAK. This unique camera reduced the photographic process as far as the amateur was concerned to Eastman’s slogan, “You Press the Button, we do the Rest!” Each camera as purchased, came loaded with a roll of film 70mm wide and long enough for 100 pictures. The owner after taking all the pictures, (the word Kodak soon entered the English vocabulary of the day as a verb, “going kodaking”, “I’ve been kodaked”, even a publication was named “Kodakery“’) returned the KODAK in its leather case back to the factory. The film was developed, producing 2 ½’ circular pictures, each mounted on card stock and together with the KODAK, reloaded with film, were sent back to the customer. Initially the silver gelatin emulsion had a paper base and the images were stripped off the paper during development, preparatory to mounting. But soon Eastman came upon a superior cellulose base and from 1889 with the introduction of the KODAK No, 1 camera, the Eastman film, which was similar to today’s roll films for black & white photography, became a big seller.

Dickson soon realized that a flexible strip of images, not unlike that which Marey was using in his rifle-like camera for shooting bird flight, could be made to move past a light source and projected on to a viewing surface. He also understood that the new Eastman film with its cellulose base would better sustain the rapid movements necessary for the persistence of vision in a viewing machine. He acquired some film from the Eastman Company, slit the 70mm film in half lengthwise and punching regularly spaced perforations along the edge for traction, devised 35mm wide strips of film some 48 feet long permitting images 18mm X 24mm in size on the film strip.

The rest as they say, is history. The Edison laboratory developed a moving picture viewing machine, a four foot high by about two foot square wood cabinet, named the Kinetoscope and a motion picture camera, the Kinetograph. Kinetoscope parlors proved very popular as a public entertainment venue, although they soon lost favor to the idea of picture projection on to a wall or screen, to which Edison did not choose to invest his inventive talents. Edison also neglected to patent the Kinetoscope outside the United States, which permitted those overseas like the Lumiere Brothers in France to quickly copy the machine and together with other American inventors and entrepreneurs hasten the development of the motion picture industry. Various motion picture film formats were in use during the early days, but by 1906 the Edison 35mm film format was adopted as an industry standard.

This rapidly developing industry soon found that after filming a movie using thousands of feet of film stock, they had unusable short lengths, “short runs” as they were called, of film. Concurrent with these occurrences was the new interest of camera manufacturers to design cameras to use this new “miniature” film format. Beginning about 1904 some 24 different American and foreign cameras for 35mm film were put on the market or patented, but the German Leitz Leica camera placed on the market in 1926 proved to be the most commercially successful. Because of the then graininess of the cine film stock and the preference for a horizontal orientation of picture view, the Leica designer Oscar Barnack, increased the Leica film format from 18mm X 24mm to 24mm X 36mm, although the Leica camera was not the first to do this.

By the 1930s this small camera idea using 35mm film had caught the imagination of photographers, both amateurs and professionals, worldwide. Pre-eminent were the finely wrought German Leica and Zeiss Ikon Contax cameras with their extensive array of interchangeable lenses and numerous accessories. However, their high cost (several hundred dollars in America) prevented the average photographic enthusiast from participating in the “candid camera” idea. In the late 1920’s the Eastman Kodak Company had acquired the German camera firm, the Dr. Nagel Kamerawerk, Stuttgart and in 1934 the firm put on the market a superb small folding 35mm camera, the Kodak Retina. Although without interchangeable lenses or a large group of accessories, it was a precisely crafted camera and excellent picture taker with a price in America of $57.50.

Concurrently with the introduction of the Retina Camera, Eastman Kodak introduced the Daylight Loading Cartridge. This quantum step in generic film containment and supply cassette for 35mm cameras, fostered by the increasing interest of 35mm photography caused low cost 35mm cameras to come forth in increased numbers in the 1930s. In America the International Radio Corporation, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, manufacturers of table radios with plastic cases introduced the Argus Model A Candid Camera in 1936. It had a simple viewfinder, an f: 3.5 lens with a multi-speed shutter housed in a black Bakelite plastic body at $12.50, reduced to $10 within a year. After two years, (now International Research Corporation), they introduced the Argus Model C series of which the Model C3, (1939-66) sometimes referred to in the trade as the ‘brick’ because of its shape and durability, held the American camera sales record at over 3 million sold.

Another radio parts supplier turned camera manufacturer, becoming the Candid Camera Corporation of America in Chicago, introduced the 35mm Perfex “Speed Candid” camera in 1938, the first American standard (full frame) 35mm camera with focal plane shutter.. The Universal Camera Corporation of New York had already entered the ranks of small plastic cameras with its 1933 Univex Model A, at a price of 39 cents, using a special small format roll film. In 1938 they introduced the unique 35mm Univex Mercury camera with cast aluminum alloy body and which used a proprietary 35mm film designated No. 200 made by Gevaert in Belgium. The Mercury camera provided vertical 18mm X 24mm images and its successor Mercury II camera was capable of 65 exposures on a standard 36exposure cartridge of 35mm film. In 1935 Eastman Kodak Company introduced its first American made 35mm camera series, the Kodak 35 Camera, an excellent picture taker but often outsold by the Argus C3 but by 1941 they introduced America’s finest 35mm camera system, the landmark Kodak Ektra and its series of Ektar lenses.

© Kirk Kekatos 2000-2004