page_title: Film stock
section_title: 1900–1919: Toward the standard picture film
hierarchical_section_title: Film stock / History / 1900–1919: Toward the standard picture film
caption_attribution_description: This is a scan showing a double perf black and white reversal home movie, (my dogs at play) which illustrates what a 16mm home movie in the 1930s would have looked like.
context_page_description: Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed,
  edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is too slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically developed into a visible photograph. In addition to visible light, all films are sensitive to X-rays and high-energy particles. Most are at least slightly sensitive to invisible ultraviolet light. Some special-purpose films are sensitive into the infrared region of the spectrum.
context_section_description: As the quantity of film and filmmakers grew, the demand for standardization increased. Between 1900 and 1910, film formats gradually became standardized and film stocks improved. A number of film gauges were made. Eastman increased the length of rolls to 200 feet without major adjustments to the emulsion, retaining a large market share. Lumière reformulated its stock to match the speed of Eastman film, naming it 'Etiquette Violette' (Violet Label). Blair sold his English company to Pathé in 1907 and retired to the US. Pathe began to supplement its operation in 1910 by purchasing film prints, stripping the emulsion from the film base and re-coating it. 35mm film began to become the dominant gauge because of the popularity of Edison's and Lumière's cameras. Consumers usually purchased unperforated film and had to punch it by perforators that were often imprecise, causing difficulty in making prints for the opposite perforation format. In 1908, the perforators began to be made by Bell and Howell. Eastman Kodak used the Bell and Howell's machine to perforate its films. In 1909, Edison's organization of the Motion Picture Patents Trust agreed to what would become the standard: 35 mm gauge, with Edison perforations and a 1.33 aspect ratio.
  Agfa began to produce motion picture film in 1913, but remained a largely local supplier until World War I boycotts of popular French, American and Italian film stocks allowed the UFA film studio to flourish, boosting Agfa's orders. All film stocks were manufactured on a nitrate film base, which is highly flammable. Nitrate film fires were difficult to extinguish. A significant number of fatal accidents occurred in theatrical projection booths, where the heat of the projector lamp made ignition most likely. Amateur filmmaking (home movies) slowly developed during this period. Kodak developed a heat-resistant 'safety base' for home projection.
  In 1909, tests showed cellulose diacetate to be a viable replacement base, and Kodak began selling acetate-base films the following year in 22 mm widths for Edison's work on the Home Kinetoscope, which was commercially released in 1912. Eastman Kodak introduced a non-flammable 35 mm film stock in 1909. The plasticizers used to make the film flexible evaporated quickly, making the film dry and brittle, causing splices to part and perforations to tear. In 1911 the major American film studios returned to using nitrate stock. More amateur formats began to use acetate-based film, and several, including Kodak's own 16 mm format, were designed specifically to be manufactured with safety base. Kodak released Cine Negative Film Type E in 1916 and Type F (later known as Negative Film Par Speed Type 1201) in 1917. As both of these orthochromatic films were no faster than previous offerings, the improvements were in granularity and sharpness.
caption: A silent home movie on 16mm black-and-white reversal double perforation film stock
exif: {}