THE FATHER OF THE FILM.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13496, 16 June 1914, Page 7

THE FATHER OF THE FILM.

How many of those who claim more than a casual acquaintance with photography in its .various branches could mention off-hand tho name of the inventor of the film ? According- to the 'fNew York Herald," this was the.Rev. Hannibal Goodwin, who, for many years rector of the House of Prayer at Newark, 'devoted nearly the entire later part of his life to research and experiment, developing and perfecting the principle of the camera filfti. ( He lived and died in the most modest circumstances, and shared the fate of so many inventors and pioneers, being forced to realise at the last that his rights to discovery were in doubt and might be disproved. But his widow, aided by his adopted son and daughter, have been steadily continuing the fight for recognition, and now at last the Eastman Kodak Company has admitted I the prior right in the patent of the | Goodwins, and is to make a. substantial settlement. It was primarily Mr Goodwin's love of children which prompted him io invent the film. His widow relates how he used to experiment m | photography so as to be able to display the pictures through a stereopticIcoii before the children of his Sunday LSchood. So engrossed did he eventually become in his experiments that he would spend practically every penny of his small stipend, over and above his actual living expenses, on them. A member of his congregation remembers that he would often leave the church at the close of a service to hasten to his studio, forgetting even to remove his vestments, and equally often he would come from the laboratory direct to his pulpit with his h>r»l • -tamed and scarred by chemicals, st?..-.:h:ig out in an 'almost ghastly manner a::;ainst his surplice. Needless to say, his preoccupation with ' photography brought him ■\ to conflict with his congregation, and eventually cost him the rectorship of the church.