Hannibal Goodwin

Hannibal Williston Goodwin (1822 to 1900) was an American Episcopal clergyman who became an unlikely figure in photographic and motion picture history. Born in Ulysses, New York, he served parishes in New Jersey and California and was rector of the House of Prayer Church in Newark for twenty years. Looking for a clear, unbreakable base on which to show pictures in his Bible teaching, he built a small chemistry laboratory in the rectory attic and worked out a transparent, flexible roll film made from nitrocellulose. He filed a patent in 1887 for a photographic pellicle for roller cameras, but it was not granted until 1898, by which time George Eastman had already begun producing roll film by his own process. The film base described in his patent was of the kind used in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. His patent was later sold to Ansco, which won a large infringement judgment against Eastman Kodak in 1914. Goodwin died in 1900, before his own film company had started production.