Le Livre de fabrication de la compagnie générale des phonographes cinématographes et appareils de précision: The Pathé Frères Laboratory Logbook of Joinville-Le-Pont (1906–8)

In 1905, the Pathé Frères Company opened a second laboratory in Joinville-Le-Pont to expand the activities of its Vincennes operation, where the tinting and stenciling of film prints were part of the daily work.¹ Thierry Lefebvre’s study of the Joinville factory shows that 265 prints were manufactured every day.² Until 1910, only the Vincennes laboratory was processing camera negatives.

Le Livre de fabrication de la compagnie générale des phonographes cinématographes et appareils de précision is a five-hundred-page unpublished logbook written by the Joinville engineers in the research and development department between June 16, 1906, and September 3, 1908.³ The department’s main researcher was Clément Lair, a former student of the French scientist Pierre Curie who would much later become president of Kodak-Pathé in 1939, following the earlier merger of the two companies in 1927.⁴ The logbook has been preserved by the Kodak France Archives, which created the Cercle des Conservateurs de l’Image Latente (CECIL) to manage Kodak’s French archival holdings. The logbook can be consulted at the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé (http://fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com).

Le Livre de fabrication combines a series of reports written by Pathé’s engineers, some of which were addressed directly to Charles Pathé, codirector of the company. Along with detailed accounts of the chemical analysis of color, the logbook describes a variety of other technical developments, including a new machine for print processing, the creation of film titles, comparison tests between different types of film stock (Blair, Eastman, Lumière, etc.), experiments in stereoscopy and with nonflammable stocks, and notes on increasing the properties of toning baths. The logbook lists each day’s experiments with meticulous entries on their results and the overall progress of the lab’s various technical innovations. Each of the daily entries has subtopics, which allow the reader to easily analyze the results, especially concerning research on color.

Although the logbook touches upon many aspects of research and development at the Joinville factory, we focus here primarily on the techniques of coloring during these early years, as well as on the diversity of the tools and methods used, including the hand painting of the positives with brushes, stenciling, tinting, and toning baths. One of the most interesting things that we learn from the logbook is that Pathé was already experimenting with an additive coloring system as early as 1907. On the basis of these various entries, we demonstrate how Le Livre de fabrication is important for the history of color, particularly as Pathé was already established at the time as one of the leaders of color cinema.

From the logbook, it is clear that between 1906 and 1908, Pathé was innovating its methods and styles of coloring, looking for more natural and subtle coloring techniques for its films. At that time the stakes were high both economically and technologically. Color film sold much better abroad, and Charles Pathé wanted to beat the competition in this field by having the most advanced technology possible. New competitors, such as Éclair in 1907, made for an increasingly competitive marketplace. At the same time, Gaumont’s Chronophone system, which brought effective sync sound to the screens, helped to push Pathé’s business model toward increased specialization, resulting in its growing expertise in color, as reflected in the logbook. We should also remember that Charles Pathé was actively seeking out inventors and technicians to support the company’s continued effort at patenting new mechanical devices that would reduce costs and the time-consuming and uneven technical labor required in the laboratory.⁵ For instance, in 1907, he ordered a stencil machine with a cutting stylus attached to a pantograph from inventor Jean Méry to help cut holes in stencil reels. The project for this patent is described in 1907 in the logbook, including a drawing most likely by Méry, but without attribution to him...