The Latham Loop is used in

film projection A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Moder ...

and image capture. It isolates the filmstrip from vibration and tension, allowing movies to be continuously shot and projected for extended periods. Invention of the Latham loop is usually credited to film pioneers

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison. Early life William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in ...

and

Eugene Lauste Eugène Augustin Lauste (17 January 1857 in Montmartre, France – 27 June 1935 in Montclair, New Jersey) was a French inventor instrumental in the technological development of the history of cinema. By age 23 he held 53 French patents. He emigra ...

. Both men worked with

Woodville Latham Major Woodville Latham (1837–1911) was an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and professor of chemistry at West Virginia University. He was significant in the development of early film technology. Woodville Lath ...

, developing a motion picture camera and projector in 1895. Dickson later acknowledged Lauste as inventor of the loop, though rival claims were made in support of another Latham associate, engineer Enoch J. Rector, who used the technology to shoot an hour-and-a-half-long

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

, ''

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight ''The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight'' is an 1897 documentary film directed by Enoch J. Rector depicting the 1897 boxing match between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons in Carson City, Nevada on St. Patrick's Day. Originally running for more tha ...

'', in 1897. Woodville Latham applied for a patent on June 1, 1896. In his patent application, Latham wrote, :In order that these parts f the film projectormay operate as described, it is essential that the loop of slack film be maintained at all times ready for the intermittingly-acting device and also that the slack-manipulating and the intermittingly-moving devices be positively driven by mechanism which will absolutely insure the presence of the slack and the accurate movement of the film. The reason these parts and their arrangement and method of operation are such important and valuable features of the invention is because their action is necessarily exceedingly rapid, and if the intermittingly-feeding mechanism were heavy, so as to have much inertia, or if any considerable portion of the film or either of the reels which support it were stopped and started at each transition from picture to picture there would be such strain brought to bear on the sprocket-holes in the film as would speedily tear it adjacent to such holes, thus ruining it... By 1905, virtually all motion picture projectors used the Latham loop. The patent expired in 1913. When

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

excluded his competitor Biograph from licensing Edison's key motion picture patents in 1907, Biograph retaliated by purchasing the patent for the Latham loop. In a patent infringement suit by Edison against Biograph, a federal court upheld the validity of the Latham patent.''Edison v. American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.'', 151 F. 767, 81 C.C.A. 391 (March 5, 1907).

References

External links

U.S. Patent for Projecting-Kinetoscope
filed 1896, patented 1902.
The "Latham Loop": A Loop of Film that Freed an Industry

The Camera Technology That Turned Films Into Stories
''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', January 11, 2017 Film and video technology {{film-tech-stub