[Leica] Brit Mags - Amateur Photo's "A Century of Photography" Special Edition - a bit of Leica history - long

[Cummer Family <cummer@asiaonline.net>]

Dear Luggers,
Just got the above Dec 25 edition of Amateur Photographer (things move a
little slow for magazine distribution here in the former colonies ) and my
eye caught the following story which I would share with you in part from
page 36:
Origin of the Species
"Who was the father of 35mm photography - George Eastman, the founder of
Kodak, who first made the film? Thomas Edison, for whose Kinetoscope the
film was originally designed? Oskar Barnack, whose vision created the Leica
and eventually set the convention of 24 X 36 mm images? Or Ernst Leitz II
for having the courage to mass produce and market Barnack's camera?
"Well they all played their parts in the story but the true pioneers of
35mm film were a young Englishman and an American Episcopalian preacher.
Their names: William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and Hannibal Goodwin.
"At the age of 26, Dickson had left London to work for American inventor
Thomas Edison. He was ordered to reseach the work of Eardweard Muybridge on
movement. Dickson took the concept of transparent celluloid (developed by
John Carbutto and persuaded Hannibal Goodwin to gift his method for coating
photographic emulsion onto celluloid to Gearge Eastman, with whom Dickson
had formed an alliance. The purpose was to have strips of film move in
front of a lamp to get an impression of movement and the result was a 35mm
wide perforated film - the 35mm format was born. The year was 1889.
"It was 22 years later in Germany that Oskar Barnack was recommended to
Ernst Leitz II by Emil Mechau, a new Leitz recruit and former colleague of
Barnack's. A year later, Mechau was working on a 'flicker free' projector
but was destroying so much film in his tests that Barnack agreed to build a
sturdy metal cine camera to adequately replenish the destroyed film.
"The big problem was exposure, so he also determined to build a small still
camera with variable apertures to determine the correct exposures. The
product of this tangential requirement of a favour to a colleague was the
prototype of the Leica camera. Given the relatively low resolution obtained
on a standard cine frame (18X24mm)Barnack went for a larger film format
(initially 24 X 38mm, but later 24 X 36mm) to get results that would show
enough detail for meaningful exposure information on each frame.
"From the vision of two young men, seeking to replicate the images of lots
of still photographic plates on a moving film and the other trying to
replicate the exposures of a moving film on a single image, the 35mm
full-format still camera was born".
Comment: Whatever happens to Leica, no one can take away its history. I'm
sure most luggers know parts or most of this story in detail, but it is
gratifying to see it repeated in a popular photo magazine.
Cheers
Howard Cummer
Hong Kong.