From: Rick Prelinger (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2007 - 11:53:42 PST
Some say that the beginnings of 16mm as a professional production medium came in the late 1930s, when Calvin Company (Kansas City, Mo.) developed reliable 16mm sound recording and optical effects. That is certainly the point when hundreds of visually complex projects with sound and color start to be produced in 16mm. World War II brought about a huge expansion in the 16mm production and distribution infrastructures, but the templates were already there.
Our oldest 16mm film produced using A&B rolls with optical effects was made in 1937. Before that, everything is single-strand and usually silent, or otherwise shot in 35mm and reduced to 16mm for nontheatrical venues.
Rick
-- Prelinger Library: http://www.prelingerlibrary.org NEW: Prelinger Library Digital Collections http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger_library __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.