I am grateful to Bill Potts for the additional information he found in USMA 13826 >Just a follow-up. > >35 mm movie film was introduced by the Lumi�re brothers in 1895. There were >other widths available at the time, but 35 mm became the standard. > >There's a very good history at http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/filmsize.html. >There's a section on the 9.5 mm film ("neuf-cinq") I mentioned. > >35 mm still cameras were introduced in 1914, using the same frame size (now >known as a half frame) as the movies. The 24 mm x 36 mm frame came later. > >There's an interesting page at http://www.subclub.org/shop/halframe.htm, in >which the author notes that 35 mm film is actually 34.8 mm, and that it is, >in fact, 1-3/8" wide. I have checked and he is right. The Lumi�re brothers were the first to present a public performance of motion pictures. I have visited the room on the Rive Gauche in Paris where the show took place. If the film is only 1-3/8" wide it is a modification due to (American) Society of Motion Picture Engineers. I started my professional career with Kodak Limited, Harrow, Middlesex, and I never heard a suggestion that 35 mm was really 1-3/8". It is unlikely that Agfa would produce 1-3/8" film and call it 35 mm. Also, if SMPE shaved down the width of the f9m, why did they preserve the metric sprocket spacing and the metric frame size? I suspect that American engineers may have referred to the film as 1-3/8" as a measurement that Americans could understand, but that it was really 35 mm. Joseph B. Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
