n January 1923 the Eastman Kodak Company announced the culmination of several years of research into a new system of amateur film making based on a new 16mm film size. Work had begun as long ago as 1914, when J. G. Capstaff of the Kodak Research Laboratory saw an experimental camera built some years before by F. W. Barnes, manager of the Hawkeye camera works of the Eastman Kodak company. The Barnes camera used 35mm film run twice through the camera to expose two rows of pictures. When the film was processed and printed, Barnes proposed to project it by attaching a lamphouse to the same mechanism. t the time, the project had come to nothing. Capstaff used the camera to work out a satisfactory method of processing the film exposed in the camera to give a positive image directly, without the need to print on another film. Capstaff considered that such a reversal process would reduce the cost of amateur cinematography to a reasonable level by eliminating the need for two seperate films. By 1916 a suitable process had been worked out, giving good quality, fine-grained positive images. arious subdivisions of the 35mm frame size were tried out in the Barnes camera, until Capstaff decided that a frame size of one-sixth of the standard frame represented the best compromise between economy and quality. The picture area was 10mmx7.5mm in size, and adding an extra 3mm on either side for perforations, gave a film width of 16mm. Since this was not a convenient subdivision of 35mm film, it greatly reduced the risk that others might supply dangerous nitrate-based films, instead of what Eastman saw as the obligatory safety film. fter a break in development work after America's entry into the First World War, work was taken up again in 1919. A prototype 16mm camera was completed by May 1920, and a projector was designed soon after. The 16mm film's perforations were arranged one on either side of the line between the frames. The new format was demonstrated to various technical societies early in 1923, and the new 16mm film, the Ciné-Kodak camera and the Kodascope projector were announced to the photographic trade in June 1923.