1942: Photography

War Photography.

The war effort dominated the photography of the year. Combatants and non-combatants used photographs and motion pictures in thousands of ways to speed up the production program, to aid the training of the great armies and navies, and to make a faithful record of important events. Photographs in the daily newspapers and the picture weeklies conveyed the war stories in graphic form to the public. Sound newsreels brought the war's realism home with great force. Details of remote battles by sea or land were transmitted around the globe by means of telephotography, to be reproduced as much as military secrecy would permit within the short time of a few days for the people on the 'home front.'

Photographic manufacturers converted much of their equipment to the production of parts and instruments needed by the Government. Items such as rangefinders, heightfinders, and optical and mechanical parts for airplanes, guns, and ships were produced in great quantities to meet ever-growing quota demands. As production needs grew during the year, more and more of the sensitized materials and equipment were allocated for use by the armed forces, and a corresponding reduction was noted for civilian purposes. Guards were established around photographic plants and identification badges bearing the wearer's picture were required for every employee.

Specific instruction in first aid, fire fighting, air raid protection, defense against gas attack, police duties, and many other new responsibilities was given to more than a million civilians by means of photographs, lantern slides and motion pictures.

The central point of contact between the motion-picture industry, the general public, and the departments of the Government was the Bureau of Motion Pictures of the United States Office of War Information. Through this office, information on the progress of production was distributed to help build up public morale. Films released for showing included such subjects as 'Ring of Steel,' 'Power for Defense,' and 'Building a Tank.'

Workers were trained with the aid of films for special skills in thousands of industrial plants throughout the nation. One firm released nearly fifty sound instructional films which dealt with lathe operation, milling machines, drills, shapers, welding, and other related subjects. Much valuable time was saved in the training of the workers with the aid of such films. One firm which manufactured shell cases had all their operations from the milling of the steel to the final inspection explained in a color motion picture. Film strips and film slides were used to train individuals in such fields as industrial safety, health, supervisory relations, aircraft assembly, and other special tasks.

The major part of the photography of the armed forces of the United States was done by the Signal Corps, the Air Force, and the Navy. All three used motion pictures and still photographs; the latter two branches were responsible for aerial photography.

The General Staff of the U. S. Army in 1928 designated the Signal Corps as the agency charged with the production of training films and other visual aids. A program of specialized training in the fundamentals of sound motion-picture production and projection was arranged for selected officers at the motion-picture studios on the west coast. The Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences cooperated closely with the Signal Corps in planning this training program. Actual production centers of the Signal Corps were located at Washington, D. C., Fort Monmouth, N. J., Hollywood, Calif., and Astoria, L. I. The old Paramount studio at Astoria was rebuilt partially during the early part of the year and renamed the Signal Corps Photographic Center.

Almost every phase of army training was covered by one or more of the approximately 450 training films that were reported to be in use at the close of the year. All of the films were made in black and white, but the use of color films was said to be under consideration for certain subjects. In every army camp throughout the country, these films were being used to expedite the training of several million soldiers. One estimate stated that a 40 per cent saving was effected in the total training time usually required to educate men in the use of complex mechanical weapons. It was predicted by authorities that this great program of mass education would have a tremendous effect on civilian education methods after the war.

Besides the motion-picture program, instruction was being given to men in the Signal Corps to train them as still and motion-picture photographers to accompany American troops wherever they were to go in the world. Special field processing equipment was designed for use by these units to permit them to develop and print their films under any conditions that might face them in the arctic or the tropics.

According to a published report of the Motion Picture Branch, Materiel Division, of the U. S. Army Air Forces, motion pictures were being used to study all tests that were too fast, too complicated, or too remote for accurate visual observation. A few examples of the subjects investigated were stresses and strains on parts of an airplane during flight maneuvers, analysis of the performance of experimental parachutes, studies of smoke screen laying from airplanes, and pathological records of pilots during power dives.

Special methods of heating cameras were worked out to insure smooth running of aerial camera mechanisms under the extremely cold conditions encountered at high altitudes. Electrically heated blankets, utilization of warm air from the engine, and thin electrically heated wires across the camera lens represented some of the precautions taken to keep the camera working. The handling of long lengths of aero films, as much as 100 feet, required the use of special equipment for developing and printing, particularly under adverse conditions of cold and heat. Tents, trailers, and prefabricated buildings were in use by photographic units of the Air Forces.

Aero cameras were fitted with many unique accessories such as remote manual exposure control, photoelectric lens diaphragm operation, and gyroscopic camera mounts; the latter maintained the camera's position independent of the tilt of the airplane. New films of very high speed and new lenses of wide aperture, notably one of a 12-in. focal length and an aperture of f/2.5, permitted improved results in night reconnaissance photography. An increasing use of color photography by the Air Forces was reported; excellent color photographs were said to have been obtained with new materials at altitudes up to 30,000 feet.

The photographic work of the U. S. Navy was under the direction of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. A rapidly expanding training school was located at Pensacola, Fla., where men were being instructed in the use of many types of cameras for still, aerial, and motion-picture photography. Photographic units were operating in each of the Naval Districts and with the fleet. It was the function of these units to make a complete record of all significant events. Some of the finest photographs and motion pictures of action were made during the battles of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, Midway Island, and the Solomon Islands. The first color motion picture of a major land and sea engagement was made at Midway Island by several Navy cameramen under the direction of Lieut. Comdr. John Ford, U.S.N.R. The men were under fire almost constantly during the battle, and their cameras were blown out of their hands many times. The pictures were made on 16-mm. Kodachrome film and later enlarged with printed-in sound effects on 35-mm. Technicolor film. Remarkable photographs of sinking Japanese freighters and warships were taken by Navy cameramen through the unidirectional periscopes of American submarines.

Signal Corps cameramen under Colonel Daryl F. Zanuck, A.U.S., and Office of Strategic Services cameramen under Commander Ford made a vivid historical record of the landing in North Africa and the initial stages of the occupation, in still and motion pictures. The film, 'At the Front in North Africa,' which climaxes with the dramatic defeat of the Nazi tanks at Tebourba, was taken on 16 mm. Kodachrome film and enlarged with sound effects on 35 mm. Technicolor film.

Reconnaissance photography by an army bomber shortly before the attack of Feb. 24 on Wake Island by a U. S. Navy task force aided greatly in the destruction of Japanese installations on the island. The aerial photographs were developed and printed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, then flown to sea and dropped on the deck of the aircraft carrier which had left on its mission several hours previously.

Some of the finest reconnaissance photography of the war was done by the Royal Air Force. A very detailed account of its photographic methods and equipment was released in September. A modified F-24 Aero camera was used for the major portion of the photography. This camera was designed in the form of six units to make it quickly adaptable to varied requirements. For instance, for very low flying, a mirror was mounted at 45 degrees before the lens to allow the camera to remain in its mount pointing vertically downwards while a picture was taken horizontally of the target that the plane had passed over. The negative size was 5 x 5 in. and lenses ranged in focal length from 3½ to 40 in. Other R.A.F. cameras were the F-8 and the F-52 which had a negative size of 7 x 8½ in. Most of the films were processed in ground laboratories or in trailers staffed by men and women. Occasionally, when information was needed quickly, a camera was used that held the processing unit within the camera magazine. The film was wound through special solutions contained in two tanks, and a negative could be ready for printing while wet on a special paper within 1¼ minutes after exposure. Fast panchromatic films were used extensively; for night photography, with the aid of flash bombs, films of extreme speed were required.

The motion-picture industry with the cooperation of the photographic manufacturers released many hundreds of prints of the best feature pictures, short subjects, and newsreels for use in the entertainment programs in approximately 600 service camp theaters throughout the United States. Material for picture programs was also made available for use on vessels of the Navy and at distant points over the world where American troops were stationed.

Color Photography.

A new process of color photography for the amateur was announced in December 1941, and released commercially in January 1942, under the name Kodacolor. It was furnished in rolls which were exposed in the usual roll-film cameras in the same manner as black-and-white film. The exposed film was returned to the manufacturer for development to a color negative having a dye image in colors complementary to those of the original subject. Thus a green light would be magenta in the negative, blue sky would be yellow, and a red barn would appear as cyan or blue-green. Natural color prints on paper were made from the color negative by the processing laboratory on order from the customer. The negative material and the printing paper were manufactured by coating them with three light-sensitive layers containing tiny suspended particles of an oily material, in which were dissolved the organic compounds known as 'couplers' which formed the appropriate dye in each layer when they reacted with the oxidized developer.

Improvements were effected during the year in the technique used for the enlargement of 35-mm. Kodachrome transparencies which permitted 8 x 11-in. color prints to be made on regular order and still larger prints to an extreme size of 30 x 40 in. on special order. All such prints were made on a semi-opaque safety (cellulose acetate) base, and were processed by the manufacturer.

In July a color transparency process bearing the name Ansco Color was announced. It was stated that the amateur would be able to develop his own color prints by this method when it became commercially available after the war. No technical information on the process was published.

Two important announcements were made by the Technicolor Corporation during the year, namely, that 16-mm. Kodachrome film was being used for some studio photography from which 35-mm. prints were made in Technicolor, and, secondly, that the so-called integral tri-pack 35-mm. film (a Kodachrome-type film) was being used to a limited extent for camera work. From these transparencies, color separation negatives were prepared and, finally, Technicolor prints. One of the most beautiful Technicolor releases of the year was the animation feature picture, Bambi. This production was made by Disney, who used his multiplane camera to obtain stereo perspective for many of its scenes.

Amateur and Professional Photography.

Interest in photography apparently continued unabated throughout the year. The war obviously placed many restrictions on the amateur, but it also stimulated picture-taking by the soldier and his family. The manufacture of most photographic equipment was curtailed greatly during 1941 and practically ceased during 1942, except for military uses. A high priority was necessary to permit the purchase of precision miniature cameras or amateur motion-picture equipment in dealers' stocks. The leaf-foil Photoflash lamp was discontinued early in the year, and the number of styles of the shredded-foil and wire-filled lamps was reduced.

Salons and exhibitions of photography reflected the spirit of the war by the large percentage of prints of military character. One of the most forceful exhibits of the year was shown in May at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It was entitled 'Road to Victory' and was arranged by Lieut. Comdr. Edward Steichen with captions by Carl Sandburg. Publications, especially the photographic magazines, continued to reproduce a large number of fine pictures. A somewhat wider use of color photographs was noted in several publications. Life magazine reproduced the first multiple high-speed color photographs: triple-flash pictures of ballet dancers made by Gjon Mili.

Temporary shortages of certain photographic chemicals occurred, but these did not compare with the lack of some chemicals which existed during the first World War. Occupation by the enemy of countries having the bulk of the world's tin supply forced the adoption of more glass and cardboard for use as chemical packages. Pyrogallol, a developing agent made from Chinese gall nuts, disappeared almost entirely from the market, but its loss was not serious as it had lost favor in recent years to other developing agents. Useful substitutes for constituents of stop baths and fixing baths, particularly for acetic acid, were described.

Small lightweight portable units for high-speed Photoflash photography were made available to the staff photographers of the Milwaukee Journal, probably the first newspaper in any country to make this type of equipment available to its staff. The most remarkable table-top photographs of battlegrounds and battles of the present war were prepared with great care by Normal Bel Geddes, well-known designer of miniature sets. Some of these pictures were so realistic that they appeared to have been made from an airplane flying over the actual battle area.

New Apparatus.

Several types of new lenses were made available to different branches of the armed forces, but information of their design will probably not be released until the end of the war. Data was published, however, on three new Ektar anastigmats of the following focal lengths: 8½, 10, and 12 in. Kingslake prepared a useful paper on lenses for aerial photography which reviewed the development of such lenses since 1914. The characteristics of wide-angle airplane-camera lenses were described by Washer in an article published by the National Bureau of Standards. Contrary to foreign propaganda, the quality of American lenses and optical glass for many years had not been surpassed by glasses made in other countries, notably Germany.

A new compact motion-picture camera was designed for use under the severe conditions of actual war combat. It was called the Cunningham Combat Camera and it had the following useful features: notched handgrips and shoulder stock permitting very rigid support of the camera during exposure, a quick-set four-lens turret, a large full-field finder, and a unique focusing device.

A portable 16-mm. motion-picture developing machine for reversal development of film was introduced by H. W. Houston, Hollywood, Calif. This company also supplied a portable 35-mm. developing machine.

Bornemann and Tuttle described an intensity-scale sensitometer which worked at the intensity-time levels found in practical photography. A direct-reading photoelectric densitometer having a reading range of 9.0 to 3.0 was designed by Sweet.

Applied and Scientific Photography.

Ohio State University offered the first academic degree, bachelor of fine arts in photography, to students who complete a new course which was announced during the year. Instruction will be given in all branches of fundamentals of the subject, as well as in microfilm processes, photographic shop management, and theory of photography.

American soldiers, sailors, marines, and other members of the armed forces were assured more rapid transmittal of their letters and of letters from their homefolk as a result of the establishment of the V-Mail system. This plan, a development of the Eastman Kodak Company, provided for microcopying every letter onto 16-mm. film, which was sent by rapid transportation to a location relatively near the addressee, where the tiny letters were enlarged photographically to one-half original size for delivery. Standard letter forms were available by fall of the year in every post office in the country as well as in Alaska, Hawaii, and other remote points in the world where American troops were located. In 1941 the same system was organized by Kodak Limited, under the name 'Airgraph,' for use between British troops in the Near East and England. It was extended very widely during 1942 to many parts of the British empire.

One of the most interesting examples of microfilm work during the year was the complete copy of the Seventh Symphony of the great Russian composer, Shostakovich. The total of 252 pages, said to have been written during the siege of Leningrad in 1941, were reduced onto 100 feet of 16-mm. film and then flown most of the way from Kuibyshev, U. S. S. R., to New York where the symphony was given its première on July 19 at the N.B.C. Studios under the direction of Toscanini. Microphotography thus made possible the playing of this great work in this country many months, or perhaps years, earlier than it would normally have been possible.

Several firms introduced new fine-grain x-ray films for industrial radiography which facilitated more rapid and accurate examination of metal parts of equipment and vehicles used in the war effort. The use of 4 x 5in. x-ray films for general radiographic examination of men for the armed forces was extended during the year. Special green-sensitive films were also being used quite extensively when photographing the x-ray image on a fluorescent screen.

Many new lines of research were simulated by the demands of the war, and the applications of photography in specialized fields were extended. When peace comes again the benefits of these new developments will probably be realized more fully.

1941: Photography

Every photographer has probably dreamed of that ideal process of photography which would have as the result a photograph in natural colors. Many attempts have been made during the past fifty years to achieve this result, and a few processes have shown great promise such as three-color carbon, the Vivex carbro, wash-off relief, and Chromotone. Each of these methods is open to the objections that it is somewhat complicated to work and rather expensive. Considerable time is also required to prepare a satisfactory print. The introduction of Kodachrome film in 1936 for snapshot photography with miniature cameras made possible the making of beautiful color transparencies for projection but color prints could not be made from them by any simple method. Not until August 1941 were prints by the Kodachrome process announced. As with Kodachrome film, the new prints were to be processed only by the manufacturer and supplied in two standard sizes, two and five times the original miniature color film. Actual sizes were 2 x 3 inches and 5 x 7 inches on a white pigmented safety (cellulose acetate) base having a smooth glossy finish. Thus, it became possible for any amateur who had a miniature camera to take color pictures for projection and obtain sharp, brilliant color prints.

Amateur Photography.

Besides the debut of color prints, the year was marked as outstanding because of the introduction of several fine American-made cameras of precision design. These were the Ektra, the Bantam Special, and the Medalist. Each of these cameras was fitted with lenses having glass surfaces specially treated to improve light transmission, reduce flare, and minimize any tendency for 'ghost' images when strong lights are included in the picture field. Other features of these cameras were: Ektra—a rapid film advance combined with shutter setting lever, focal plane shutter with a variable slit permitting accurate exposures from one second to 1/1,000 second, magazine backs for quick loading of various kinds of film, and a split-field coupled range finder with diopter scale for adjusting finder to users' eyes; Bantam Special—an f/2.0 lens of 45 mm. focal length, a high precision shutter with a range of one second to 1/400 second, and a military-type range finder; Medalist—takes an 8-exposure roll film (picture size, 2 x 3 inches), an f/3.5 lens of 100 mm. (4-inch) focal length built of a new type of optical glass, an automatically set shutter when film is advanced, a helical thread on focusing tube of lens, a view finder with parallax correction, an accessory back for sheet film, film packs, and plates, and a coupled split-field range finder.

Other apparatus of interest to the amateur were: parabolic adjustable safelight lamps; plastic safelights; flash lamps using shredded magnesium foil and a new type which did not use foil or wire but employed a combustible material on the lead-in wires in the bulb; improved synchronizers for flashlight photography; new models of enlargers, projectors for 2 x 2-inch slides, and a convenient daylight-loading developer tank for 35-mm. film.

A long list of ready-mixed chemicals was available for amateur use such as developers, fixing baths, toners, and solutions and powders for special purposes. In the last named group were included wetting agents for prevention of non-uniform drying of films and plates, stop bath and fixer test solutions, and liquids to insure print flexibility. A new fine-grain developer and replenisher called Finex was marketed by Agfa Ansco, for which it was claimed that low graininess was given without loss of film speed.

A wide variety of films were supplied for many purposes, including high speed photography, pictures at night, photocopying, infrared pictures, direct positives by reversal, and direct color photography. Further interest was noted in the use of exposure meters with most types of film and for indoor and outdoor photography.

Professional Photography.

Evidence continued to accumulate that a wider use of color photography was being made each year by a larger number of commercial photographers. Color-separation negatives were made to a limited extent with one-shot cameras (three negatives with one exposure) but sheet Kodachrome was preferred by many commercial illustrators. The technique of making color-separation negatives from Kodachrome transparencies improved appreciably, especially as a result of the introduction of the masking method a few years ago. Masks were prepared by exposing with colored light through the Kodachrome while it was in contact with a panchromatic film or plate and developing the negative to low contrast. This negative as then bound in register to the Kodachrome while color separation negatives were made. This method was improved still further during 1941 by the introduction of a special masking film consisting of a panchromatic emulsion attached to a thin support which could be dry-stripped and cemented to the Kodachrome. Exposure, development, and negative separation could then be done and exact registration was always insured. Much less hand correction was necessary when cuts were made from separation negatives in this way.

Another development of considerable importance to the commercial photographer was the announcement in August that enlarged color prints in sizes as great as 30 x 40 inches could be produced from any good quality sheet Kodachrome. These prints were made on an acetate sheet support by the Eastman Kodak Company and supplied under the name 'Kotava-chrome.'

Several new cameras were introduced for the press photographer and some of them were used by commercial photographers. The Graphic View camera was designed for use with 4 x 5-inch materials; its novel feature was the replacement of the conventional two track support by an inverted V-bar on which the entire camera frame moved backward and forward. The Super D Graflex incorporated an automatic diaphragm control which kept the iris at full opening while focusing and closed it to a selected setting just previous to the exposure. This camera was also equipped with a built-in open flash synchronizer.

Several improved fast orthochromatic and panchromatic films and plates were added to the already imposing list of sensitized products used by the professional photographer. Certain of these new materials were recommended especially for the making of color separation negatives. Black and white positive prints from Kodachrome or other transparencies could be made on a new direct reversal paper.

The necessity for hand correction of color printing plates made from color separation negatives of artists' drawings was practically eliminated by the use of a method known as the Fluorescence Process. A set of 18 water colors containing fluorescing pigments was supplied for the artist's use when preparing the original sketch. When the sketch was illuminated with arc lights covered with special filters which transmit ultraviolet rays and some visible light, and then photographed, a virtually correct set of color-separation negatives was said to be obtained.

Superior quality halftone cuts were being made by the use of the contact screen process, which was said to be applicable especially to the making of 200- to 300-line halftones. The important new steps of the process were (a) the making of a continuous tone magenta (dye image) negative from the print or copy, and (b) printing this magenta negative by contact through a special screen (orange, vignetted dot) on an orthochromatic film of very high contrast. Yellow or rose filters were used over the printing light source to control the contrast of the screen positive. The special screen was manufactured by a photographic process. One of the uses of the contact screen method which gave very encouraging results was the preparation of maps for civil and military purposes.

Banks of lamps emitting infrared radiation were adopted by photo-finishers for the drying of roll films and packs following their processing by automatic developing machines. It was claimed that this type of radiation penetrated the gelatin layer of the film and started the drying from the inside first with an actual saving of 50 per cent of the usual drying time.

Photographic Manufacture.

During the past decade or so, the film manufacturer has demonstrated his ability to do many remarkable things, such as selective sensitizing, coating of multi-layer films, and application of many types of anti-halation coatings. One of the most important recent discoveries was the method of making a film product which could be stripped while dry from a paper support and cemented intimately to metal, wood, or other sheet material. This product, Eastman Matte Transfer Film, was used extensively in the automotive and airplane industries for the making of photo-templates or part patterns which resulted in speeding up delivery of parts for trucks, tanks, airplanes, etc., for military defense. A considerable economic saving amounting to many hundreds of thousands of dollars also was effected.

For more than 25 years, several American firms with the aid of the Government have striven to make this country independent of Europe as a source of optical glass and it is now regarded to be so. This independent position was established further by the announcement of the Eastman Kodak Company in April that it had been successful in the production of a new type of optical glass. The work was based on suggestions made several years earlier by Dr. George W. Morey of the U. S. Geophysical Laboratory. No silicates were used and certain rare elements such as tantalum, lanthanum, and tungsten were employed in its manufacture. The new glass possesses a much higher refractive index than other glasses having the same dispersion.

Further progress was reported by several of the subcommittees of Sectional Committee Z-38 of the American Standards Association who were attempting to formulate recommended practices, dimensions, and definitions regarding materials and equipment used in photography. Proposed standards were published for printing and projection equipment, printing frames and masks, sizes of film pack cases and tabs, and other apparatus. A method for determining the speed of film was proposed and a standard agitation technique and apparatus for development.

Stereographic Photography.

The introduction of a sheet polarizing material, known as Polaroid, by Edwin Land in 1935 stimulated greatly the interest in methods of three-dimensional or stereographic photography. Progress in this field was reviewed by J. A. Norling at the meeting of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers in Rochester, N. Y., in May 1941, and his paper was published in the Journal of this society in November.

Two projectors for still stereo pictures, black-and-white or Kodachrome, were demonstrated during the year. Both projectors required the use of Polaroid filters over the lenses and the wearing of Polaroid spectacles by each member of the audience. The Model SA projector made by the Society for Visual Education took 2 x 2-inch slides and used a new type of double filament lamp containing two 300-watt filaments placed one above another. The Real-Life Automatic Projector supplied by the Three Dimension Corporation required standard slides of 3 x 4inch size.

Military and Aerial Photography.

It is probably safe to state that no national program during the past forty years has utilized photography as much as the defense program. Many thousands of workers in defense industries were instructed in the use of tools and the manufacture of parts of equipment and munitions with the aid of slide films synchronized with records, and with sound motion picture films. A number of the training films were in color.

An enthusiastic response was reported from both officers and men of all branches of the service with regard to the value of still pictures, slide films, and sound motion pictures for supplementing oral and written instruction. A program of 160 training films was in production under the auspices of the U. S. Army Signal Corps. These films were being made at several studios in Hollywood, Calif., with the cooperation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Another Signal Corps production laboratory was located at Fort Monmouth, N. J., where Col. M. E. Gillette was in charge.

Active research and training programs were also in progress at the U. S. Army Air Corps Training School at Logan Field, near Denver, Colo., and at the Air Corps Photographic Research Laboratory, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio. A well-organized program was also being conducted by the U. S. Navy and maps for most branches of the service were made by the Corps of Engineers at the Engineering Reproduction Plant in Washington, D. C.

Representatives of the U. S. Army, the Navy, the Department of Agriculture, the Army Air Corps, the press, and photographic industry helped prepare an exhibit on 'Photography in National Defense' and give a series of talks and demonstrations at Rochester. N. Y., in October. The meeting was held under the auspices of the Rochester Technical Section of the Photographic Society of America.

In Europe and Africa, aerial photography was used extensively by the fighting armies for tactical purposes, such as mapping and intelligence work. Examples of the latter were: the locating of troop concentrations and gun emplacements, spotting of targets for bombers, analyzing the effect of shellfire and bombing, detecting camouflage, and locating ships in harbors under repair or refueling. Fast panchromatic film, infrared film, and to a limited extent color film were known to be in use for aerial photography. The effectiveness of anti-aircraft fire up to 25,000 feet made it necessary to confine most photography to a region around 30,000 feet. For night photography, it was understood that the British Royal Air Force usually dropped flares to reveal the target, and then opened the camera shutter just before dropping the flash bomb. The shutter was closed by the light of the bomb when it acted on a photocell which was connected electrically to a shutter closing mechanism. The U. S. Army Air Corps, on the other hand, used a photocell device to open the shutter so that the exposure was synchronized with the peak of the flash bomb explosion. Small motion picture cameras using 16mm. film were mounted in the wings of combat airplanes and operated in synchronism with the firing control of the armament of the plane. The U. S. Army Air Corps used specially designed trailer darkrooms with side tents for map-making equipment. Small darkroom tents were also being used, which were set up very quickly by forcing compressed air into sections of the tent walls. Special processing and printing apparatus was described for the rapid development and printing of negatives during flight of an airplane, which permitted the finished print to be dropped to the ground within a few minutes after exposure.

A very high speed panchromatic aero film and an improved fast infrared aero film were introduced during the year. The former was reported to be very useful for night flashbomb photography and the latter for camouflage detection and haze penetration. Lack of a fast color film which could be processed in the field limited the use of this type of material; nevertheless, much experimental work was known to be in progress in this country and abroad.

Flashbulbs coated with black lacquers which transmitted infrared radiation were used in England for 'black-out' photography. In this country, the Wabash Photolamp Corporation marketed a similar type of lamp which was used by press photographers and by the Signal Corps during maneuvers.

An application of the Recordak system of microfilm photography was put into operation during the year as a rapid method of mail transportation between England and the British forces in Africa and the Near East. A special sheet of paper was used having a space at the bottom for the address to be inserted in block letters. These sheets were photographed on 16-mm. film and shipped to England by airplane where they were enlarged onto rolls of paper to give a 4 x 5. inch print of the original 8 x 11-inch letter. These were processed on special machinery, cut apart by an electrical chopping machine, folded so that the address panel showed through the opening in an envelope, and delivered to the addressee. About 1700 letters could be copied on a 100-foot roll and 85,000 letters in this form weighed approximately 20 pounds compared to an estimated 1 tons in the usual size in an envelope. The project was called the Airgraph System and it was carried out by the British Post Office and Kodak, Limited.

The use of Matte Transfer Film for making photo-templates by the airplane and automotive industries, as noted in the Photographic Manufacture section of this article, represented one of the most important applications of photography for national defense.

Motion Pictures.

The loss of European markets, except Great Britain, and the expanding program of pictures for military instruction caused a drop in the American production of motion pictures for theater use. Compared with the annual production cost of 1940, however, the production outlay was three times as great.

Progress in many fields of motion picture engineering was discussed at meetings of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers in Rochester, N. Y., in May and in New York City in October. Problems were discussed dealing with many subjects, including: improvements in microphones, sprocket design in cameras and projectors, durability of non-reflecting lens coatings, stereophonic sound recording and reproducing systems, the use of finegrain films for sound recording and release prints, the increased range system for attaining greater depth of field with various lens systems under controllable lighting conditions, color television, and mobile television equipment.

Commercial operation of television stations who satisfied certain requirements was authorized to start on July 1, 1941, by the Federal Communications Commission. It was anticipated that motion picture records will be used to some extent for television programs.

Eighteen feature pictures were produced in color by the Technicolor process during the year. It was estimated that 100,000,000 feet of positive color prints were produced, about 20 per cent more than in 1940. Plans were announced in November for the making of two- or three-color prints in Hollywood, Calif., by the Gasparcolor process. This process is based on the use of a special reversal type positive film containing dyes; the three-color film stock having on one side two emulsion layers containing the magenta and yellow dyes respectively and on the opposite side a third emulsion containing the cyan (blue-green) dye. Color separation positives from Kodachrome or any three color film are required when making prints by the Gasparcolor process.

A rapid rise in the footage of 16 mm. and 8 mm. Kodachrome film consumption was reported by photographic dealers. In September, it was announced that very good quality 35 mm. Technicolor prints could be made from 16 mm. Kodachrome pictures. (See also MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY.)

Applied and Scientific Photography.

The great fire started by the bombing of London on Dec. 29, 1940, destroyed many documents and damaged others. Methods of photographing the charred documents were worked out which gave quite good results. Several applications of a chloral hydrate solution were made on the document until a mass of crystals were formed which produced a 'clarifying' effect on the ink or printed portions of the document. When copied with a contrasting non-color sensitive plate, a readable result was said to have been obtained. By another method, charred documents were illuminated with an intense narrow beam of light from an are lamp and then photographed.

Hall and Schoen reported in April on their investigation with the electron microscope of the structure of the photographic image and showed that silver which had been reduced by chemical development of silver bromide possessed a filamentary appearance. These results were similar in many ways to those of von Ardenne, a German investigator, who had published his work in 1940. Previous to these reports, developed silver had generally been described as having a coke-like appearance.

Photographs were made of the great auroral display of Sept. 18, probably one of the most brilliant ever seen in this country. Several reels of motion pictures and other photographic records were understood to have been made of the total eclipse of the sun on Sept. 22 at Lintao, Kansu Province, China. See also ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING.

1940: Photography

Two events of the year may be cited as evidence of the great popularity of photography with the public and the abiding faith of photographers in their hobby or profession. These were, first, the millions of persons who viewed the exhibits chosen from more than 50,000 photographs handled by the Photographic Society of America as the appointed sponsors of photography at the New York World's Fair; and, second, in spite of the war in Europe, Africa, and Asia, the fine exhibition staged by the Royal Photographic Society in September and October in London. In the words of the president of this latter organization, such an exhibition '. . . demonstrates clearly and unmistakingly the real position of photography as a living art that no alarums of war can quench.'

Amateur Photography.

Interest in photography at night has been increasing rapidly in recent years as a direct result of improvement in the quality and speed of photographic materials as well as the growing number of useful incandescent lamps that have been designed especially for photographic purposes. Small cameras with efficient shutters and fast lenses have encouraged the amateur to attempt photography under unusual conditions. Blue photoflash lamps were made available, for example, to be used as a supplement to daylight exposure with Kodachrome. Several new flashlight synchronizers were introduced, improved exposure meters were released, and a number of small developing outfits were marketed.

Compared with other years, only a limited number of new films were introduced. One of the most interesting was a direct positive panchromatic film for use in miniature cameras. After exposure in the usual way, the film was developed to a negative, bleached, cleared, and developed to a positive of extremely fine grain. The transparency so obtained could be projected or used to print a very fine-grain negative.

Another sensitized product that attracted considerable attention was a multiple contrast bromide paper. One type was introduced originally in England in May and two others were announced in the United States in August. With each of these papers, the degree of contrast is controlled by the use of blue or yellow filters, or combinations of them, in the printing light. Thus a single grade of paper may be used to make prints from negatives of different degrees of contrast.

Many amateurs were using various methods of toning for their exhibition prints, such as bluish-gray tones with sulfocyanide and gold, sepia tones with selenium, and dye tones with coupler developers.

Professional Photography.

A brisk demand grew up during the year from the leading portrait and commercial photographers for coated lenses. Such lenses have had their component surfaces treated with substances such as metallic fluorides, which form an extremely thin layer. An increase in light transmission results and the amount of inner reflection is reduced. Developments were reported also of lenses made from plastic materials, such as the 16-inch aspheric condenser of Lucite at the Kodak Research Laboratories for illuminating color transparencies when making color separation negatives.

A commercial model was introduced of an Edgerton condenser-discharge lamp for making ultra-rapid 'frozen motion' photographs. This new lamp utilizes a long-life gas-filled electrically operated flash tube, which gives extremely bright flashes of 1/30,000 second duration. A great advantage of this lamp is that it permits aperture settings to be used on the camera and spontaneous action can readily be recorded.

Another illuminant that was winning the approval of the portrait and commercial photographer was the fluorescent tube. Mercury vapor radiation is absorbed by a powder coating inside the tube which then emits visible light. Low current consumption, long life, and low temperatures of operation (about 120° F.) are features of these lamps.

A valuable method has been worked out for removing the last traces of hypo from photographic paper prints and thereby eliminating possible fading or yellowing of images resulting from subsequent decomposition of the hypo. The treatment consists in bathing the washed print in a peroxide-ammonia solution which changes the hypo to sodium sulfate, which is washed out easily. Fading of prints caused by external agents, such as coal gases, may be minimized greatly by another treatment whereby an extremely thin layer of gold is deposited on the silver grains when the print is bathed in a gold-sulfocyanide solution.

Nine subcommittees of the American Standards Association were working under the chairmanship of the Committee Z-38 on Standardization in the Field of Photography. The scope of these subcommittees covered the formulation of definitions, dimensional standards, recommended practices, and the establishment of methods for testing, rating, and classifying the performance characteristics of materials and devices used in photography, including its industrial applications but excluding cinematography.

Military and Aerial Photography.

Perhaps no phase of military service is more important in modern warfare than military photography. Men are trained with the aid of still photography and motion pictures and every military objective must be photographed before, during, and after an action takes place. Photography is also of value for influencing public opinion and for entertainment of the armed forces.

Very few pictures were released by censors of the invasion engagements in Holland, Belgium, and France although a number of remarkable photographs of the evacuation of Dunkerque were approved for general circulation. Reconnaissance planes usually carried cameras and the observer-navigator operated them. One officer of the Royal Flying Corps described these cameras as being box-shaped and heavily insulated against great changes in temperature and humidity. The cameras weighed about 28 pounds and were loaded with 55 feet of film capable of 125 exposures, each about 5 inches square. The lens was set at 'infinity' focus and the shutter electrically actuated. Arrangements provided for vertical pictures through an opening in the floor of the plane and for oblique exposures through a special window on the side. Dispatch runners delivered the cameras to the observer-navigator just before the take-off. The photographic ground staff set the shutter-speed and installed the correct filter, based on weather data.

With the use of infrared film, camouflage may sometimes be detected, and it is reported that color films were finding valuable uses for military photography. Many aerial operations were conducted at night and information was published of the use of large flash bombs timed to explode at the moment the camera shutter was open. Tests on the efficiency of these synchronizers were made in October at Rochester, New York, under the direction of Major Goddard of the U. S. Army Air Corps. Sufficient illumination was produced to permit the photography of an area five miles square.

Color Photography.

Each year an increase is noted in the number of persons who use color films, and this has been growing more rapidly since the introduction of cameras and projectors at moderate prices. The colorful exhibits and buildings at the New York World's Fair and the beautiful lighting effects at night were photographed on color film by thousands of people.

Quite a large number of professional photographers who make advertising copy for the leading manufacturers in this country have adopted sheet Kodachrome film in place of single-exposure three-color separation cameras. It is understood that photoengravers have learned how to make very satisfactory reproductions from such color transparencies.

Photomechanical Processes.

Several new films and plates for use for various types of process reproduction were announced during the year. Color correction of printing plates by manual methods was being replaced gradually by a masking system which corrects for imperfect printing colors. The use of fluorescent pigments for three-color separation work was demonstrated by Murray at the Photo Lithographers convention in Chicago. The first natural color news picture to appear in the news section of any Pacific Northwest newspaper was a photograph of the Lake Washington Pontoon Bridge which was printed in the Seattle Times of May 4, 1940. A printing rate of 38,000 copies per hour was used and no black printer image was employed.

Motion Pictures.

The longest feature color motion picture ever made, Gone With the Wind, was shown throughout the nation during the first half of the year. As an experiment, the projection equipment in twenty-five theaters showing this picture was fitted with special coated lenses which increased the light transmission from 15 to 30 per cent over that of an untreated lens. The musical production, Fantasia, which was produced by Walt Disney, had its initial public showing in New York in November. Work had been in progress on this unique combination of cartoon artist drawings and musical recordings for more than two years. Some of the best known classical music was recorded on 400,000 feet of film at Philadelphia under Stokowski's direction and animated drawings in color were used to dramatize it. The sound was played from a separate projector than that used for the picture and a film having four photographic sound tracks was employed. Loud speakers were located at selected points in the auditorium as well as in the standard position behind the screen.

Television.

Beach and garden scenes photographed on 16-mm. color film were transmitted by television to produce a 343-line image of a picture in color. A special demonstration was held in New York on Sept. 4 under the direction of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Reception of the image either in color or in black-and-white was possible depending on the type of receiver used. An investigation by a subcommittee of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers reported that normal film print characteristics were quite acceptable for all the different methods of television scanning. When the time arrives for commercial introduction of television, it is readily apparent that both 35-mm. and 16-mm. film will play a major part in this field. Improved television program service for the New York area was announced by the Radio Corporation of America in March and the initial steps were being taken to construct a television relay system for simultaneous service to and from other communities.

Applied and Scientific Photography.

Micro-filming of documentary material is becoming more extensive each year. Thousands of banks and commercial companies achieved greater protection of their records by copying them in reduced size on film. Engineering firms protected their files of drawings from possible destruction by fire and made them more accessible and more easily duplicated by photographing them on micro-film. The New York Public Library, for example, had photographed more than 130,000 pages of newspapers for their files. Vastly improved equipment had been brought out in recent years and the skill of the operators was greater. It was stated that 120 full letter pages could be copied per minute, or 20 newspaper pages containing over 150,000 words, or 10 complex engineering drawings — tasks which require from several hours to weeks by manual methods.

In the United States National Draft Lottery in October, all numbers were photographed immediately after they were drawn. Each number was dry-mounted on a form and when 250 numbers had been mounted, the form was photographed with a Micro-File Recordak. Next, enlarged prints were made from the micro-file negatives, and photo-offset plates from the enlargements were used for printing copies of the master list for distribution to the 6,175 local draft boards throughout the nation.

Photography is not usually thought of as a production tool except in the graphic arts trades, but in the design and production of aircraft it has become recently a most valuable means of saving time and costs and of elimination of errors. Engineering drawings are photographed with a large camera and then printed to a maximum size of 5 by 10 feet on aluminum sheets coated with a photographic emulsion or on coated surfaces such as linen, paper, wood, or plastic glass. Tool design and making have been speeded up greatly because drawings can be duplicated exactly as to any desired size and many copies made within a short time. A saving of more than $80,000 was effected in 1939 by the use of these methods at the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland.

Photographs made with the electron microscope at the Kodak Research Laboratories have revealed for the first time the actual structure of silver grains in a photographic image. It was shown to be of a filamentary character rather than a coke-like mass as had been described theretofore. Extremely minute hair-like threads about 5 to 10 atoms thick were shown quite clearly with the apparatus which has the advantage over the optical microscope of great depth of focus as well as high resolving power.

A high-speed X-ray technique was developed at the Westinghouse Laboratories, which consisted of passing the discharge from a bank of condensers through a cold cathode X-ray tube. With the resulting surge of about one millionth of a second duration, it was possible to make X-ray photographs of objects moving at a high rate of speed, such as a football being kicked, a golf ball being struck by a golf club, and a bullet cutting its way through a wooden block.

Further applications of the X-ray radiographs were described as follows: the partially decomposed body of a man which was found in a refrigerator car near Rochester, N. Y., was identified as John Dunphy who had served in the U. S. Army for nine years from 1908 to 1917. Identification was possible chiefly through soft X-ray radiographs of the skin from the fingers, supplementing the usual finger-print impressions. The use of X-ray radiographs of pearls was accepted quite generally by leading jewelers as an accurate means of identifying natural, cultured, and synthetic pearls. Satisfactory radiographs were obtained at the Kodak Research Laboratories by using a special masking technique whereby scattered radiation was eliminated.

1939: Photography

The centenary of the introduction of photography as exemplified by the Daguerre process was celebrated throughout the world during 1939 at the invitation of the Societe Francaise de Photographie et Cinematographie. On Jan. 7, 1839, Arago announced Daguerre's discovery to the French Academy of Sciences and on Aug. 19, 1839, the process was made public. The year also marked the 100th anniversary of the earliest published use of the word 'photography,' which, according to the German historian, Stenger, occurred in a daily newspaper, the Vossische Zeitung, on Feb. 25, 1839.

Amateur Photography.

The enthusiasm of the average amateur photographer was aroused by the publicity concerning the World's Fairs at San Francisco and New York. Those fortunate enough to see these great spectacles made the most of their opportunity to record on ordinary and on color film the architectural beauty and the colorful displays by day and night.

Many new cameras, home processing equipment and sensitive materials were introduced during the year. Interest in fine grain development appeared to be waning slightly, perhaps as a result of the realization that the use of a slower film of inherent fine grain when developed in a normal developer gave as good if not a superior result as a faster film processed in a fine grain developer.

Miniature cameras continued to be popular and several high quality enlargers were marketed, some of which were capable of being used for copying, photomicrography and other special work. A wide variety of synchro-flash equipment was available; even a few box cameras were fitted with such devices which permitted simultaneous exposure and flashbulb ignition. Interest in the use of color films in miniature cameras grew very rapidly throughout the year, in part as a result of the introduction of a scheme by one large manufacturer of color film, for delivery of the developed films mounted as slides ready for use.

Several special airplane excursions near New York City were conducted for camera users and prizes were awarded for the best pictures made on each flight.

Professional Photography.

Illustrative photographers gained further experience with the sheet color film during the year and the trend continued for greater use of such pictures for reproduction in magazines and books. A few new cameras for single exposure sets of three-color separation negatives were displayed at national photographic conventions, and numerous schemes for making three- or two-color prints from such negatives were noted. Most of these methods represented modifications of the well-known carbro, imbibition or wash-off relief processes.

Methods of standardization of the speed of photographic materials were discussed at several meetings in various parts of the world but no general agreement was reached. A certain amount of confusion existed because each manufacturer of film as well as the exposure meter manufacturers published speed values which were determined in different ways.

New films of greater speed, improved latitude and color sensitiveness were made available for portraiture, color separation and commercial work.

News Pictures.

Perhaps the event of the year that aroused the most interest to news photographers on this continent was the visit of their Majesties, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, to Canada and the United States in May and June. Photographers from every leading newspaper on this side of the Atlantic, as well as many from abroad, covered the various ceremonies, and every newsreel service was represented. Newsreels of their visit to Washington and New York were flown across the Atlantic on the Yankee Clipper to be shown in theaters in London within 48 hours after the event.

The outbreak of hostilities in Europe in September resulted in a very strict censorship of news pictures but a fair number were transmitted by radio to New York. The quality of these pictures was much better than that of radio-pictures of several years previous. In this connection, it was reported in an English magazine in July that the Western Union Telegraph Company had placed a new process for trans-ocean transmission on a commercial basis in April. Cables instead of the ether were used as the transmitting medium.

News cameras of extremely long focus (60 inches) were used by the Associated Press to cover athletic contests such as baseball games, etc., from the top of the grandstand.

Photomechanical Processes.

Within recent years, the problem of photographic reproduction of color on the printed page was a matter of the work of several days or even weeks. In January of this year the Chicago Tribune printed a color photograph which had been made the same day. A German weekly newspaper was illustrated almost completely in color from photographs made with the Bermpohl camera and with Agfacolor and Kodachrome miniature color films.

Stripping film appeared to be replacing wet-plates in photolithography. Improved resolving power, thinner coatings and better sensitizing properties were noted in films for photomechanical work. Special equipment was designed for reproduction of miniature color transparencies using the indirect method for making the screen separation negatives. Progress was noted also in the use of fluorescence photography to exaggerate contrast and to facilitate the production of highlight screen negatives. The fluorescent material is mixed with the pigment used for the artist's sketches. When subjected to ultraviolet radiation the pigment fluoresces and an enhanced contrast results.

Aero-photography.

The great program continued of aerial survey of various sections of the United States for crop estimation, erosion studies and mapping. A new aero-camera was being tested which took the largest single film negative (18 to 18 inches) ever made with one lens. The camera used an F 6.8 lens of 12-inch focal length and a 600-exposure film. In England, a 7-lens aero-camera was produced under the direction of the Air Survey Committee. With this camera 1,000 square miles of country could be photographed from an altitude of 15,000 feet with 140 miles of flying.

The European conflict stimulated extensive use of aerial photography for reconnaissance work. Even pigeons were equipped with tiny cameras with a clock-driven movement which made a series of exposures after the birds were released in areas at the front. The possibilities of utilizing color films for more accurate records of terrain and camouflaged artillery positions were studied by army air photographers. Improved machine gun cameras, using 16-mm. film, were used to train aerial gunners. Motion pictures were used as a quick training medium for the U. S. Army. (See also MILITARY SCIENCE.)

Color Photography.

Probably the most unique use of color photography was in the Great Hall of Color in the Kodak Building at the New York World's Fair. Here, on a screen 22 feet high and 187 feet long, color panoramas were projected from eleven specially designed projectors, each of which held 192 slides made from 1 by 1½-inch color transparencies. A specially matched sound film was used to operate the projectors in synchronism and provide a spoken and musical accompaniment. Each tiny color picture was magnified about 50,000 times in area when projected on the screen.

A gradual extension of the use of color films was noted among amateur as well as professional photographers although no simple process for making good color prints had been introduced.

Motion Pictures.

An enlarged schedule of color motion pictures was completed during the year. The Technicolor Corporation, world's largest color picture producer, had nine color features in production during July, the most ever under way in a single month. A feature-length cartoon in color, 'Gulliver's Travels,' by Max Fleischer, was released in December. The Disney cartoon, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' was reported to have made over $8,000,000 during the two years since its release in December 1937. This is the largest sum ever made in two years from the showing of a single motion picture.

A falling off in motion picture exports and imports was reported by the United States Department of Commerce for the first nine months of this year compared with 1938. It was stated, however, that more duplicate negatives were being sent abroad, which was considered to explain some of the loss in export of positive film. The production of motion pictures in Finland, until the outbreak of the Finnish-Soviet conflict, had shown an encouraging growth since 1934.

Announcement was made in May by the Cinecolor Company of a single-coated 16-mm. color film. Film of 35-mm. width had been supplied for several years by this concern for the production of motion picture 'shorts.' The popularity of amateur 'movies,' especially those in color, showed a continued growth during the year.

Television.

Motion picture films were used daily as part of the television programs broadcast by Radio Corporation of America at the New York World's Fair. The Columbia Broadcasting System announced a new method of scanning motion picture images for television, which was said to have resulted in better quality reception and permitted the film to move continuously rather than intermittently. Much more portable equipment for television fieldwork was introduced. It was generally agreed, however, that further progress was necessary before successful commercial television would be practically possible.

Photography in Education.

Chicago's public schools were reported to be among the largest users of educational pictures of any city in the nation. Every elementary school was equipped with a stereopticon, 95 per cent had 16-mm. projection facilities, and every high school used both silent and sound films. Over 150,000 reels of films and 1,250,000 slides were shown annually. The Australian government included 18 quarter-hour sessions using educational films in three school terms of the customary curriculum. A technique was announced by psychologists at Harvard University for the use of motion pictures to improve the speed of eye-reading of students.

Applied and Scientific Photography.

Perhaps the most significant event of the year in astronomical circles was the opening of the new MacDonald Observatory at Mt. Locke, Texas. Within six weeks after the great 82-inch reflector telescope had been put in operation, the discovery of two new 'super-heavy' stars was reported by Prof. Kuiper. An unusual display of the aurora borealis on August 11 was photographed very completely at Cornell University in black and white and in color.

Two new cameras were used to photograph marine life about two miles below the surface of the sea. The cameras with their lighting equipment were developed independently by Prof. Harvey of Princeton University and by Dr. Hofmann, an engineer at Munich, Germany.

An Oklahoma City bank invited its customers to have their checks photographed for compact filing record purposes. The reading machine at the bank was made available for use of customers who wished to examine their records. This is only one example of a very extensive documentary recording program which was in progress throughout the world.

X-Ray Photography.

See MEDICINE: X-Rays.

1938: Photography

Public interest in photography was reflected in many ways during the year as shown by the large number of camera, film, paper and equipment sales; the continued and increasing popularity of 'picture magazines'; a rapidly-growing list of camera clubs; more widespread use of color films; the extensive use of photography by newspaper and periodicals with color pictures beginning to predominate over black and white in some publications; and active public support of the numerous photographic exhibitions throughout the country.

Amateur Photography.

Never before has the photographic amateur been faced with such an array of attractive products for his use. Almost unknown two decades ago, the miniature camera was supplied in over a hundred models, for which a wide selection of films could be obtained. New fast panchromatic films having four times the speed of the older orthochromatic emulsions were made available as well as films of much finer grain than any manufactured heretofore. Improved color films were also announced and the number of users of such films has been increasing constantly. For certain small film cameras infra-red sensitive films and films of great contrast and fine grain for microcopying were in use.

Estimates placed the number of camera clubs in the United States at over 5,000, with new ones being organized nearly every week. The need for lectures for so many clubs was supplied in part by lecture services of several of the manufacturers of photographic products who loaned prepared notes and slides on request. Amateur cine enthusiasts were said to be using 250,000 small motion picture cameras. About 17,000,000 cameras were stated to be in use, or one for every eight persons in the country.

Many non-photographic magazines have started photographic sections and several new periodicals devoted exclusively to photography have made their appearance. Upwards of 16,000,000 all-picture magazines are said to have been purchased each month in the United States. Since 1931, it is claimed that there has been a 40-per cent increase in the use of photographs by the daily press, who have spent over $5,000,000 on this department of their papers.

Special train trips and boat cruises were sponsored in various parts of the world to enlist the interest of the amateur photographer. Snapshots at night were made much more easily with the aid of the faster films, and improved photoflood and photoflash lamps.

Professional Photography.

During the year both illustrative and portrait photographers worked hard to supply the demand for more pictures for advertising, magazine illustration and news photographs. Their work was aided by the introduction of films and plates of finer grain and improved color sensitiveness and speed. Commercial cameras of greater rigidity and all-metal construction were made available. The majority of paper prints were made by projection on enlarging papers of high speed and wide emulsion latitude. Direct warm tone papers were quite popular.

Color Photography.

Perhaps the most outstanding event of the year was the introduction in October of a sheet color film in sizes to 8 x 10 inches. This film consisted of three color sensitive emulsions coated integrally with separating layers of dyed gelatin. This monopack emulsion could be loaded in commercial cameras and exposed in much the same way as an ordinary film. Development to a three color transparency was done by the manufacturer; the final color image being pattern-free and almost grainless. A similar type of color film (35 mm. wide) had been used by illustrative photographers previously but the larger sizes offered several advantages because the resulting transparencies could be copied more easily by photoengravers.

News Pictures.

Film emulsions of greater speed and latitude helped the press photographer to satisfy the request of his newspaper for a larger number of better pictures. Photoflash bulbs with a longer maximum-intensity period proved a boon to the cameraman when synchronizing the exposure with the 'flash.' More compact cameras were made available for news photographers and a larger percentage of such workers carried miniature cameras for 'candid' pictures and 'sequence' photography.

Aero-Mapping.

The most comprehensive aeromapping program ever undertaken was in progress in the United States under the direction of several government departments. The total net area photographed from 1926 to June 1938 was over 1,500,000 square miles of which 65 per cent was primarily for the estimation of crop areas. New precision single and multiple lens photogrammetric cameras were in use and others were under construction. Aerial photographs were being made at night with a special camera synchronized electrically with the firing of a flashlight bomb.

The greatest area of glacial ice outside of the Polar regions was photographed in August by the Harvard University—National Geographic Society Alaska Expedition, and maps will eventually be made from the photographs of this hitherto inaccessible region. Color photographs of extensive glacial areas were also made for the first time by air.

Most aero cameras have a capacity for one hundred feet or less of film, but this quantity was soon used up in a comprehensive aero-mapping job. To meet this need, a camera was designed by a Michigan firm to use 500 feet of film and make more than 600 exposures. This camera was tested in an unconventional pusher-type airplane especially designed for air-mapping photography.

Greater precision in map-making was assured with the aid of the non-shrink topographic films and papers. A new lens was said to cover three times as much area as hitherto possible from a given altitude. Improved panchromatic films of very fine grain were made available especially for aero-photography.

Cinematography.

Two general developments were noteworthy in cinematography during the year; first, a more widespread use of color photography, chiefly by the technicolor process, for feature pictures, cartoons and 'shorts'; and second, a rapid acceptance for production schedules of the new fast panchromatic fine-grain films. The technicolor plants in the United States and Great Britain had a stated capacity of 130,000,000 feet of color prints. About 50 per cent of that capacity was said to be contracted for in 1938-39, whereas only forty million feet were delivered in 1937. Other useful advances in cinematography were: new fine-grain films for sound recording which gave less surface noise, greater volume range and more faithful sound reproduction; improved fine-grained films for background work where a moving scene is photographed as it is projected on a screen to form a background behind the players; further refinements in camera design; optical printers for pictures and sound; and better quality of picture and sound reproduction in theaters.

Studios were using portable equipment for the major portion of their sound recording for pictures; this plan permitted quick interchange from studio to location. Theater prints were occasionally being made from duplicate rather than from original negatives because of the improved quality of film emulsions for duplication.

Television.

Developments in television were being followed with great interest by the motion picture industry, especially with regard to the employment of motion picture film as the source of images for television programs. A successful large scale experiment was conducted by the Bell Telephone Laboratories. It consisted in transmitting images from a motion picture film over a coaxial cable from New York to Philadelphia. Similar experimental work was in progress in Great Britain and Germany. (See also RADIO.)

Scientific and Applied Photography.

The use of photography for documentation has been well known for many years but only comparatively recently, with the introduction of miniature cameras and emulsions of finer grain did this field begin to expand quite rapidly. Several new types of copying equipment using 35 mm. film were introduced and devices were announced to facilitate the rapid inspection of the small images. The American Documentation Institute was incorporated in Washington for the development and application of micro-photography to library and scientific work. A quarterly Journal of Documentary Reproduction made its bow in January. Similar projects have been undertaken abroad, especially in Great Britain, France, Germany and the U.S.S.R. The entire file of the London Times has been photographed on motion picture film. The Constitution of the Soviet Union has been printed by reduction onto thin sheets of platinum for filing in their archives. Over 13 per cent of the banks in the United States were said to be using equipment to photograph all checks which were handled daily. The Bank of England was reported to be making photographic records of everything in its files — back to 1694.

Education Films.

Pedagogical applications of photography have grown slowly in this country but seem to be developing somewhat rapidly abroad. Within the past three years schools in Germany were furnished with 20,000 16 mm. projectors, and about 300 educational films have been produced. In Great Britain, the motion picture was recognized quite recently as a normal part of the school equipment and it was estimated that 2,250 teaching films were available. Impetus was given the program in America by favorable reports of several groups, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Education Association and the New York State Regents Inquiry on Character and Cost of Education.

Photographic studies on highway safety have been conducted by several organizations in the United States in an effort to reduce the number of fatal accidents. Members of police departments in many cities throughout the world are equipped with small cameras for the use of their members. Photographic evidence is used effectively by government departments of justice in the prosecution of criminal cases as noted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A remarkable time-lapse film of root growth was shown at the Royal Society in June. Actual growth rate was speeded up 30,000 times in the film, a phenomenon possible to be shown only by photography. Cavitation, or the formation of vacua behind airplane propeller blades with consequent power loss, was studied with the aid of high speed photography at a United States Navy Yard. Exposures of the order of 1/50,000th second were required to stop the motion of the propeller blades which rotated at 1400 r.p.m. Natural color motion pictures were made at the General Electric Research Laboratories with a high speed camera (1,000 pictures per second) of electric arcs being struck in different gases. As slowed down by the camera, the brilliantly-colored flames were seen to push out tiny flashing globules of molten metal around the tops of the glowing electrodes. Pictures were shown in Germany, at the National Educational Film Bureau, of bullets striking armor plate, the exposures being made at the rate of 250,000 per second. In theory it was claimed that frequencies of 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 per second were possible, but the problem is presented of finding a subject which moves fast enough to photograph at such speed.

In the field of astronomy, Mount Wilson Observatory prepared a beautiful dispersion spectrum, 15 feet long on a natural color film, of the star Arturus. The McMath-Hulbert Observatory at Lake Angelus, Michigan made a remarkable motion picture of solar prominances, which are great masses of incandescent gases thrown off the sun's surface. A peculiar phenomenon was revealed for the first time in these photographs when it was observed that many of the prominances after being thrown off several hundred thousand miles were sucked back to the surface again.

The photographic emulsion provides a unique medium for the study of the atomic particles ejected in natural radioactivity and the disintegration caused by cosmic rays. Examples of this technique were displayed at the September exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society in London.

Only a few of the many applications of photography have been noted but it is safe to say that there is scarcely a field of endeavor in science or industry which has not been aided in some way by this useful medium.

See PAINTING AND SCULPTURE: Graphic Arts and Photography.