Color Cinema

Working alone in his Newark, N. J., laboratory Frederick T. O'Grady, inventor in his late 30's, produced a system of color cinemagraphy that has some advantages over the system recently worked out by the vast Eastman laboratories.

The Eastman system (Kodacolor), exploited a month ago with appropriate ado (TIME, Aug. 6), uses a corrugated film. When projected upon a screen the pictures are excellent. But the screen may not be larger than 16 1/2 by 22 in. If larger, the images show the corrugations of the film. And no copies of the film can be made.

Inventor O'Grady has been working on his system for eight and a half years. Twenty one years ago he worked for the Kinemacolor company. Its pictures showed only two colors. This came from taking two films simultaneously, one through one color screen, the other through another color screen. Then the two films were glued together. Technicolor and Prismacolor pictures shown at present-day theatres come through similar processes.

The present O'Grady system, called Natural Color, uses a revolving shutter attachable to any standard size movie camera. The shutter contains a circle of gelatin sheets tinted to allow the seven primary colors/- to pass through. As each section or "frame" of the film pauses its swift fraction of a second behind the camera lens** it receives the impression of a single color. Only those parts of the scene that are blue will be photographed through the blue screen; only the yellow scene parts through the yellow screen; etc. The next frame gets another color impression. And so on around the shutter colors. The photographs are taken a little faster than ordinary moving pictures.

For reproduction, a similar shutter is fixed to a projecting machine. Before starting the machine the operator adjusts film and shutter so that the frame that is to show red is back of the projecting lens and the red gelatin before the lenses. Then as the picture goes, frames and color shutters follow in unison and so rapidly that to the eye the colored scene parts upon the projection screen appear as a composite, whole, colored moving picture.

When Inventor O'Grady exhibited his apparatus last week at L. Bamberger & Co.'s Newark department store the colors seemed natural. But the pictures, shown large, flickered. Positives can be printed in any numbers from the original film, an advantage commercially. Entrepreneurs at once offered Mr. O'Grady a million dollars for his invention. He refused it. He has his own company going--on a small scale, last week.

/-Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

**For a description of cinema production principles, see TIME, Aug. 20.