John G. Capstaff

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John George Capstaff (born February 24, 1879 in Gateshead , † January 31, 1960 in San Diego , California ) was a British-American photographer, engineer and inventor.

Life

Capstaff attended Rutherford College's Heaton Science and Art School in Newcastle and then studied at Armstrong College, specializing in physics and engineering. He then worked for the photographer Edward Lyddell Sawyer (1856–1927) in Newcastle. There he learned the basics of photography and specialized in coloring printouts. He later opened his own studio and worked as a portrait photographer. At the same time, he increasingly devoted himself to mechanical problems and experimental photography. He developed various modifications of the photographic process, including a fine printing process similar to Carbro printing and the production of photographs that only became visible after the paper was exposed to light.

In 1912, through recommendations, Capstaff met Charles E. Mees , who at the time was building the Kodak Research Laboratories in Rochester , New York . Capstaff was initially trained in the London company Wratten and Wainwright, which had been bought by the Eastman Kodak Company , and worked in the research laboratory in Rochester from the following year. He worked for Eastman Kodak until 1954. During this time he was significantly involved in the company's new technical developments and submitted over 100 patents.

In 1914 Capstaff began developing the Kodachrome two-color film (referred to as "Fox Nature Color" from 1930; not to be confused with the Kodak Kodachrome introduced in 1935 ). This allowed red and green to be faithfully reproduced in pictures and skin colors to be reproduced realistically. In 1915 the new product was presented at the world exhibition in San Francisco. It was later modified and used for feature films.

At the same time, Capstaff was working successfully on an improved reversal process for amateur photography, based on the knowledge of Rodolfo Namias. He was also instrumental in the development of 16mm film . After a delay caused by the First World War , he was able to expose a film of this type for the first time in 1921 (“A Child's Birthday Party”). On July 5, 1923, the Kodak 16 mm film was presented to the public together with the Ciné-Kodak camera and the Kodascope projector.

In the following years, Capstaff worked on improving the Kodak 16 mm equipment such as cameras and devices for film development. From 1925 to 1928 he adapted an additive three-color process based on lenticular lens technology, developed by the French Rudolphe Berthon and Albert Keller-Dorian for 35 mm films . The process known as Kodacolor or Keller-Dorian Color was used in the amateur film sector until around 1936. In 1927 Capstaff introduced the commercially successful black and white developer Kodak D 76.

In 1944 Capstaff was awarded the Progress Medal Award from the Society of Motion Picture Engineers . In 1946 he and four employees of 20th Century Fox won an Academy Technical Achievement Award for developing a "20th Century-Fox film processing machine".

Capstaff died in 1960 at the age of 80. His grave is in Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego .

literature

  • Charles E. Mees : John George Capstaff In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Vol. 44, No. 1, Society of Motion Picture Engineers, New York January 1945, pp. 10-17 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles E. Mees: John George Capstaff In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Vol. 44, No. 1, 1945, p. 11.
  2. ^ Capstaff, John George In: Carl W. Hall: A Biographical Dictionary of People in Engineering. Purdue University Press, West Lafayette 2008, ISBN 978-1-55753-459-0 , p. 33.
  3. ↑ Kodachrome Two-color in the film historical database by Barbara Flückiger . Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  4. ↑ Jan-Christopher Horak; Kodachrome. In: Lexicon of film terms. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  5. ↑ James zu Hüningen: 16mm film. In: Lexicon of film terms. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  6. ^ Charles E. Mees: John George Capstaff In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Vol. 44, No. 1, 1945, p. 15.
  7. ^ Charles E. Mees: John George Capstaff In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Vol. 44, No. 1, 1945, p. 10.
  8. ↑ John George Capstaff In: Find a Grave . Retrieved January 16, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Capstaff, John G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Capstaff, John George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American photographer, engineer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Gateshead
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1960
Place of death San Diego , California