Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

Camphor, which was chiefly responsible for providing nitrocellulose
with this set of possibilities, has continued to be its best and most
frequently used plasticizer, but its evaporation – just like that of the
plasticizers used in acetates – is mainly responsible for the
contraction, brittling and damaging of the physical properties of
films. Polyesters – such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) currently
used in filmmaking – and other manmade plastics do not require
such large amounts of plasticizer in their composition and are
therefore subject to a much lesser degree of dwindling physical
properties.
Naturally, the publicizing of a material of these properties triggered
thousands of attempts to come up with similar products. In a lovely
book published in the forties, an endless list of plastics made from
the most widely-varying polymers is provided, and this list, which
has grown tremendously since then, may possibly be just the
beginning * . Its uses were also limitless: combs, hairpins, umbrella
and cane handles, shirt collars, knife handles, baby rattles, etc., etc.,
etc. The possible uses for celluloid were always conditioned by its
chemical instability which makes it inflammable, especially when
made into thin films, and by its tendency towards losing shape and
yellowing when exposed to light. Celluloid’s properties are amazing,
its applications for use almost limitless, but its chemical instability,
the ever-present possibility of its catching fire, would eventually lead
to its replacement with other plastic materials of perhaps lesser
properties but safer which would run celluloid off the market. In
August 1889, when George Eastman went to use celluloid instead of
paper as a medium for the films for his Kodak cameras, he would
lead the way to the best-known use of the most far-reaching
importance ever conceived for celluloid.
The collaboration between Eastman and William K. Laurie Dickson
would lead to celluloid being used as the film medium for Edison’s
Kinetoscope (initially patented in August 1891) and to its later use
by the Lumière Brothers for inventing their Cinematograph. Afterwards,
from the triumphal presentation of the Lumière Cinematograph in
December 1895, following ten years of wandering with tents from
fair to fair, the history of this material - which first came into being
in Germany as the result of the intuition of a chemist who realized
that he had produced something really new -, would lead to the start
of the industry which has had the greatest impact on twentieth
century culture, a century whose history would be completely
impossible to imagine had this new, unstable, even self-flammable
material, which had practically ceased to be used fifty years ago, not
existed.
* Burke, R.: “Fabricacion y trabajo del celuloide, bakelita, galatita, ebonita y
demás materias plásticas artificiales”. Spanish Edition, Editorial Ossó,
Barcelona, 1943.
45 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000
ello hace ya casi cincuenta años que
perdió su importancia económica.
Este material, cuya historia empezó con
un químico que comprendió que había
producido algo nuevo, quedará para
siempre ligado al inicio de la industria
que más ha influido en la cultura del
siglo XX, un siglo cuya propia historia
resultaría totalmente imposible de imaginar
sin la existencia del celuloide.
(El texto completo de este artículo está
disponible en español –
alfonso.delamo@icaar.mcu.es)