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1901: Film on Disc
Although celluloid was firmly established as the material upon which moving images were recorded, some technicians still viewed glass discs as a viable alternative - especially for non-professional cinematographers insufficiently aware of the dangers of highly combustible film stock. One such technician was Leo Ulrich Kamm, who manufactured what was advertised as the 'filmless cinematograph' at his factory at 27 Powell Street, Cromwell Road, London.
Kamm's Kammatograph consisted of a twelve-inch disc containing either 350 or 550 tiny pictures in a spiral formation. A cam-screw mechanism kept the images on the disc (which was enclosed in a wooden box) in line both as they were exposed and as they were projected. The 350-image disc showed a film lasting just thirty seconds, while the larger disc ran for approximately forty-five seconds. The Kammatograph was sold for a few years, meeting with modest success. In 1901, a model was purchased from Kamm by William Norman Lascelles Davidson, who used it in his colour experiments with Dr. Benjamin Jumeaux.
From Nature: A weekly illustrated Journal of Science, London, 2 February 1901.)
The difficulties
involved in the manipulation of a long celluloid film have prevented the
extensive use of kinematographic apparatus by amateur photographers. To avoid
this objection, Mr Leo Kamm has invented a camera - the Kammatograph - in which
a circular glass plate takes the place of the celluloid film. The plate can be
made to rotate rapidly by means of a multiplying gear, and at the same time it
travels laterally. A small lens forms an image upon the plate, and when the
plate is put in motion these images are multiplied into a series of pictures
arranged in spiral ... The plate is, of course, developed precisely in the same
way as an ordinary negative, and a positive is taken from it. To display the
series of pictures it is only necessary to place the positive in the camera and
to arrange the camera so that the beam from a lantern close to it can pass the
lens. The plate is then rotated as before, and the succession of the pictures
projected upon the screen reproduces the original movements.
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